The Water Saga

When we first purchased the institute farm there were plans to connect to the village next door's well (that the government dug for them.) The mayor at the time tried to charge us a connection fee of $6,300, that he would personally pocket and also half of the overall water bill of their village. Over a year ago one of our supporting churches gave money for us to dig our own well. We have contacted people all over Guatemala, even well digging "ministries", but all want to charge an unfair amount of money except for one company that is actually based in Petén. Yes, there are well digging "ministries" here in Guatemala where people in the States have donated all of their equipment and they charge missionaries and villagers alike obscene amounts of money to turn a profit for themselves. Yikes!

 Anyway, so this one company that is fair is getting all the business, so we are way down on the list. So far we have been waiting for over a year. They currently have several government contracts (and governments overpay) so that is clogging things up.  

So what are we doing for water in the meantime? God provided this huge water tank on loan for free from our missionary friend, Jesse. This is such a blessing to KBI. Before Jimmy was hauling water in a cistern in the back of his pickup from our house. This water tank holds about 5 times more than that cistern.   

On top of the students' needs, lots of water is needed at the farm for all the crops and livestock too. God takes good care of us!

There has been another recent turn of events in this water saga. The town next door… you know, the one that poaches our wood, threatens us with guns, beat our old guard, threatened to squat on our land and take it over (that's how they got the land they are on now, they stole it from the guy we bought our land from) and tried to burn the whole farm down (the new guard put the fire out). I'd say they're pretty friendly neighbors as a whole. They got the mayor of San Pancho to fix up the dirt road that leads to the farm and their village… by threatening to kill him and burn the police station down. That benefitted us. See they're team players! 

{Poachers from our favorite village actively stealing from our farm}

Well several families from there have started attending our church (I posted about that before.) Then we found out that the new elected mayor claims to be a Christian. He is applying to study at the institute. (He obviously is far from being approved, since Jimmy hardly knows anything about him yet, but it's still interesting.) Well this new mayor offered to hook the farm up to their well for free and just pay based on how many houses are connected, but pay twice as much per house. That would be about $4 a month per house instead of $2. This would help subsidize their town's cost, which would be an incentive to keep us connected. The pipes that need to be laid for this to happen could later work for the well once it is dug too if we are ever cut off, so that money wouldn't be wasted. So please pray as Jimmy seeks direction and sorts out this possibility. Everything here has to be as complicated as possible!