A few weeks ago, Brian took a mission trip with a group from our church to El Salvador. We're pretty proud of him around here for the sacrifice he made to go on the trip and all the hard work it took to successfully drill a well with his team. I asked him to write a blog post to memorialize his trip because I knew that I couldn't do it justice.
Without further ado, here's Brian's recap in his own words!
Hey guys, this is Brian. Rebekah asked me to make a guest blog post. I asked if I could write about the Cowboys (first game is only 47 days away!)…she said no. She told me to write about a mission trip I took earlier this month to El Salvador with an organization called Living Water International www.water.cc/. I guess that’s fine too.
Living Water is an organization that goes all over the world and drills water-wells for communities and villages that have no access to clean water. They also have a strong evangelical focus, so telling these villages about Jesus, the true living water, is equally important, if not more so, than the actual water-wells. So I'll give you a brief rundown of how we drilled the well and how we saw God work through our week in El Salvador.
Living Water in El Salvador owns three trailer mounted drilling rigs. Two of the rigs are air-drilling rigs, which essentially use compressed air to pulverize the soil and rock as it drills and then utilizes that air to push the spoils back to the surface in the form of “dust”. The third rig is a mud driller which pumps a high viscosity liquid down the bore hole and then returns the spoils back to the surface in the form of “mud."
Air drilling is faster, easier and cleaner. Mud drilling is slower, harder and much dirtier.
One of the air drilling rigs was out of commission, additionally there was a second living water team in El Salvador at the time and they got assigned to use the other air driller, so that left us using the mud drilling rig. We didn’t fully understand the difference between the two methods until we got home on Monday night and found that the other team had finished early and had been swimming in the Pacific Ocean for two hours and we looked like we had just gotten back from mud wrestling at the renaissance festival. We really didn’t spend anytime being bitter about that.
The community we were to drill the well in was called Las Tablas, which means your debts are forgiven (Sometimes God gives you analogies that are lay-ups). Our days in Las Tablas were spent getting water from the river for making mud, mixing mud, shoveling mud, pumping mud, filtering mud, wheel barrowing mud and trying not to fall into the large pits we dug to contain the mud. Most of us were really good at not falling into the mud pits, but one of us wasn’t. It wasn’t me!
Without further ado, here's Brian's recap in his own words!
Hey guys, this is Brian. Rebekah asked me to make a guest blog post. I asked if I could write about the Cowboys (first game is only 47 days away!)…she said no. She told me to write about a mission trip I took earlier this month to El Salvador with an organization called Living Water International www.water.cc/. I guess that’s fine too.
Living Water is an organization that goes all over the world and drills water-wells for communities and villages that have no access to clean water. They also have a strong evangelical focus, so telling these villages about Jesus, the true living water, is equally important, if not more so, than the actual water-wells. So I'll give you a brief rundown of how we drilled the well and how we saw God work through our week in El Salvador.
Living Water in El Salvador owns three trailer mounted drilling rigs. Two of the rigs are air-drilling rigs, which essentially use compressed air to pulverize the soil and rock as it drills and then utilizes that air to push the spoils back to the surface in the form of “dust”. The third rig is a mud driller which pumps a high viscosity liquid down the bore hole and then returns the spoils back to the surface in the form of “mud."
Air drilling is faster, easier and cleaner. Mud drilling is slower, harder and much dirtier.
One of the air drilling rigs was out of commission, additionally there was a second living water team in El Salvador at the time and they got assigned to use the other air driller, so that left us using the mud drilling rig. We didn’t fully understand the difference between the two methods until we got home on Monday night and found that the other team had finished early and had been swimming in the Pacific Ocean for two hours and we looked like we had just gotten back from mud wrestling at the renaissance festival. We really didn’t spend anytime being bitter about that.
The community we were to drill the well in was called Las Tablas, which means your debts are forgiven (Sometimes God gives you analogies that are lay-ups). Our days in Las Tablas were spent getting water from the river for making mud, mixing mud, shoveling mud, pumping mud, filtering mud, wheel barrowing mud and trying not to fall into the large pits we dug to contain the mud. Most of us were really good at not falling into the mud pits, but one of us wasn’t. It wasn’t me!
Over the first two days we drilled to about 100’ deep and ultimately found clean water at the end of the day on Tuesday. The final two days were spent casing the well and installing the manual pump that the community is now using to provide them with clean water.
The work was hard and fun and the time spent with the guys was a blast but what was really special was watching how God worked through our time there. I wanted to highlight a few of them quickly.
· We saw God’s mercy in proving temperate weather. The temperature never really got above the low 90’s and there were two wonderful shade trees next to the site were we could relax and cool off.
· We saw God’s healing power in returning one of our guys to the team in less than 24 hours after he experienced a serious stomach illness. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a stomach bug in Central America and recovering so quickly, so we praise God for that.
· We saw God’s grace in providing two very knowledgeable, experienced and Godly El-Salvadorian drillers to our team. All of us Americans liked to think we knew what we were doing but we really had no clue. Without these two men we might still be in El Salvador trying to figure out how to turn the drill on.
· We saw God’s sovereignty and goodness through the assignment of the mud drilling rig. Right before we reached water we drilled through a formation of rock that wasn’t the large slabs of rock we had routinely drilled through, but it was a formation of smaller tightly packed rock. The drillers told us that this was a formation that would have caused the air driller to get stuck. In all likelihood, if we had been given the air-drilling rig, we would not have been able to finish the well and provide clean water to Las Tablas. So we praise God that he didn’t give us what we thought we wanted.
· And ultimately we saw God’s love for these people and his desire for them to know him as he provided a perfect time just after we had discovered water for one of our men to give a presentation of the Gospel to about 15 local men who had been watching us all week. And so we’re praying for them and trust in God’s promise through Isaiah that his word does not return void and that it will accomplish his purpose… And that is that these men would not just be excited that seven dirty, sunburnt, and exhausted guys from Houston brought them clean water but, that they would know and trust and bow down to worship at the foot of the one who provides the living, eternal water
· We saw God’s healing power in returning one of our guys to the team in less than 24 hours after he experienced a serious stomach illness. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a stomach bug in Central America and recovering so quickly, so we praise God for that.
· We saw God’s grace in providing two very knowledgeable, experienced and Godly El-Salvadorian drillers to our team. All of us Americans liked to think we knew what we were doing but we really had no clue. Without these two men we might still be in El Salvador trying to figure out how to turn the drill on.
· We saw God’s sovereignty and goodness through the assignment of the mud drilling rig. Right before we reached water we drilled through a formation of rock that wasn’t the large slabs of rock we had routinely drilled through, but it was a formation of smaller tightly packed rock. The drillers told us that this was a formation that would have caused the air driller to get stuck. In all likelihood, if we had been given the air-drilling rig, we would not have been able to finish the well and provide clean water to Las Tablas. So we praise God that he didn’t give us what we thought we wanted.
· And ultimately we saw God’s love for these people and his desire for them to know him as he provided a perfect time just after we had discovered water for one of our men to give a presentation of the Gospel to about 15 local men who had been watching us all week. And so we’re praying for them and trust in God’s promise through Isaiah that his word does not return void and that it will accomplish his purpose… And that is that these men would not just be excited that seven dirty, sunburnt, and exhausted guys from Houston brought them clean water but, that they would know and trust and bow down to worship at the foot of the one who provides the living, eternal water
Jesus says in John chapter 4 verse 13-14: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Of course Jesus isn’t referring to physical water he will provide, but to eternal life provided through faith in Him. If you are going through life looking for temporal things to “quench your thirst” then I’m sure you know how fleeting their refreshment can be. I implore you today to turn to the one who can quench your thirst for all of eternity.
Here are a few additional pictures of Brian and the rest of his team to wrap up the post:
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