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Well 2 Short Video

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 16:56:34 +0000

LIM WE!! We start well 3 in

March 2-3: Finishing the Well... Well!

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 14:47:03 +0000

Grace left at 6 A.M. on March 2 with the other wives on the team to go to a retreat in Ghana called “Women of the Harvest.” It’s for the many women who serve here in West Africa, to encourage, to relax, and get to know other’s in the area better. She’ll be there until next Tuesday.At 7 a.m. I headed out to go search out some parts to finish the well and arrived around 8:15 to start work. We did “developing” all day, which isn’t as tiring as drilling, but is still pretty fatiguing after having worked so hard making the 9m hole. We finished the well today and it’s working great. I was able to do the last three days by myself with the crew since Dave took time off to spend with his family and is watching his 4 children this week. My plan was to work there all day, spend the night, work the next day, visit in the afternoon and then come home tonight. Elections are tomorrow and the embassy has requested we Americans stay indoors until it’s all over. Anyway, I’d like to share my journal entry from my time last night and this morning while staying the night in Lassa Tchou.
“Grace left yesterday to go to the ladies retreat so I decided to stay the night in Lassa Tchou after working the day on their well here. At noon I drove my motorcycle over to Jean Mari’s house to make sure his wife Christianne knew I was staying and to unload my tent and clothes. It was so cool to see how happy their children (all orphans) reacted when they realized I was staying. I’m not known for being particularly awesome with kids, but out of the abundance of their grace all of these kids love me. I came back around 5 p.m after developing the well and sat under their big mango tree behind their compound. It was awesome to watch people coming to get water at one of the wells we put in last year and I got to hop up and pump water for several of the guys on our drilling team too. After about thirty minutes Christianne came out to say I could set my tent up (she had swept a spot in their courtyard). I showed the kids and Jean’s 4.5’ mom how to set up the tent (which they thought was amazing and kept saying “mmm..ugh...white people...”. I then inflated my sleeping pad (which i’m pretty sure they all thought was weird) and invited all the kids to climb in to see what it was all about. It was like they were sitting in a McDonalds playpen. Each one wanted a picture taken and after it was all said and done they all agreed it was awesome. I think they’ve probably seen tents before (we have interns sleep in villages when they come during the summer) but i’m not sure if they’ve ever gotten to play in one before.
It got dark quickly and as village life dictates, I was hurried to take an outdoor-shower before the sun came down. As this was happening the sky was quickly filled with huge bats, coming from who knows where, and I was quickly assured that “we eat them if we can.” I was hopeful none would fly low enough for us to have such an occasion that night. I learned my lesson in Uganda about waiting to bathe until dark, that got me a guy standing next to me with a lamp while I cup-bathed. I bit the bullet and thankfully Christianne told the kids to go play somewhere else so I had some privacy. There’s something refreshing about bathing with cold water after being killed by the sun all day. After that I got out my book light and Bible and read Isaiah 1-3, where God so clearly expresses his detest for false-religion. I thought of how false mine is so often and how we so trick ourselves into thinking actions of worship/sacrifice will please God on their own. I then read Acts 1-5 and really noticed how transformed the lives of the believers were. They were giving all they had to others, selling what they had, and living like Jesus really is raised from the dead. I thought first that my life was semi-transformed then immediately realized the foolishness of that thought. Either I am or am not, and I am not. I’ve got so much more to give before I even resemble a shadow of Christ. I know He accepts me and loves me even now, but I have so much more to give up to become like Him.
Before dinner I heard the loudest fart noise ever and really though one of the kids had done it for real. Of course, I burst out laughing. That resulted in a good fifteen minutes of Oliver making fart noises with his mouth on his little adopted-sister Essosinam’s back. For dinner we ate “moto” which is feed-corn ground into flour and then boiled down into a paste. We had that with bean and soybean cheese sauce. It was actually really good. Christianne made me some rice, but after explaining to her I had been eating moto for lunch for the last two weeks while drilling I think she thought more highly of me. Eating is such a big part of Kabiye culture. Jean Mari got back from Alibi around 7 p.m (he and I had been going to do literacy and bible studies but with well drilling in full swing he has been going with Matt Miller and this week alone.) He is a great example and gives up his time just to serve Christ. He receives no salary for teaching. It was really nice to sit around and shoot the breeze with him at his house. I watched him encourage the orphans with their studies and at 8:30 had each one say a good-night prayer with his closing them out. IT was so precious to hear them pray and to have them pray for me and Grace as well. Well it’s around 7 a.m now Wednesday morning, getting close to time to head to work!!....continued
Well, I had plenty of time to get to work but not enough to get to the woods. I cut my writing short because I had to go to the bathroom, rather suddenly, and in and effort to be polite to myself and future readers wrote “work” instead of “oh no!”. I didn’t make it, but I did bring extra under-roos. I went and pumped another bucked of water from our well and enjoyed another outdoor shower after such a tragic event. I’m “cidicidi” now (the work for clean in Kabiye), still waving at the kids waving at me and coming close to talk about how fast I write. I’m happy today is my birthday, a day we usually use to indulge ourselves, and that today I get the opportunity to serve others instead of myself. I hope we finish this well by noon and this afternoon I will probably help dig out a spring for the 15 baptisms happening here in Tchou this Sunday.
2:00pm. Well, I’m at home. By noon I had gotten sick 8 times and had run out of toilet paper...The well is finished and working great. I loved announcing that to the houses around it and seeing the ladies dance and praise God. At each house I said “My mothers, God is Good, there is water!” in Kabiye. “Lim we”, or “there is water” is becoming music to my ears. I’ll spend this afternoon making trips to the bathroom but it’s still a good birthday. I know at least 30 people today will be enjoying the fruits of our labor, the best cake I could have, LIM WE!

matt

Well Videos

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:47:57 +0000

Well Pictures

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:41:21 +0000

Tis the Season

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:10:40 +0000

Hello from Togo! It’s been a busy two weeks. We started drilling our first well in Lassa Tchou on Wednesday February 17th, with meetings and transporting supplies to the location that Monday and Tuesday before.
To preface all of this, Dave Reeves, our teammate who has served among the Kabiye for 9 years now, began teaching and experimenting with a primitive well drilling technique two years ago. His work here at that point shifted toward development with an emphasis on wells. Dave and his wife Becky and 4 children (Hannah, Elijah, Gabriel, and Caleb) are leaving Togo at the end of July 2010. Their family will be spending a year in the US (seeking an overseeing church and Becky finishing a Nursing Degree) as they transition to a team in Rwanda. There leaving is difficult for all, but they firmly believe that it has been part of a calling God has given them to go and start a work in Rwanda. Dave is training me in this well method so that when he leaves I can continue to train teams to drill wells, while seeking families open to the Gospel, where we can both bless them by improving there living conditions and provide the gift of living water at the same time.
Early on in this work, our team planted one community of believers in Lassa Tchou. It’s from this church that we were able to make contacts and reach out to make another church plant last year in Tchamba/Alibi 1. The first well was put in a neighborhood adjacent to the one where there is a church. L.T. is the largest or second largest village in the region known as Lassa here in Kabiyeland. There are over 700 people living in L.T., spit up into 5 neighborhoods. Starting at 8 a.m., eating lunch provided by those surround the well, and finishing at 5 p.m. every day, we sunk the first well in amazing time. The first day we set up the derrick, started our pilot hole, and dry drilled three meters. About two meters into the drilling we hit clay, which allowed us to sink to 7 meters on the second day. While clay makes for easy drilling, it does not make a well. Clay does not release water very well, so we continued drilling and at 7.5 meters on the second day started hitting laterite rock. Laterite is a soft rock, similar to slate. The percussion technique we use combined with our arrow-shaped-bit allows us to hammer through this type of rock. We hammered through 3 meters of this type of rock, sand, and gravel on the third day. Here we made an error, instead of switching to the larger bit, enlarging the hole, and casing it we waited until the next morning. When we began on the third day tons of clay had collapsed into the hole. It had became saturated and fell in. So the fourth day we were pumping out thick, heavy clay mud. This was extremely difficult and because it was so thick it refused to pump out, forcing us to unscrew and remove all of the galvanized tubing to empty the mud out. We did this until noon, when we had reached our initial depth, and quickly installed the well casing. God had spared us and saved the well. Day 3 was then spent backwashing the well, pouring water in through the casing, forcing it up and around the casing and out onto the ground. This is especially important with clay. Day 5, we continued to backwash and then started the “development process.” This is taking a plunger on the end of a 12 meter pipe to push and pull water inside the casing. This pushing and pulling forces water in and out of the casing and helps settle the sediment around the well. We then slide a check valve in, attached to 12 meters of tubing, and pump the casing dry. The more you develop, the more water you have in your casing and the clearer the water you have in your casing. This process allows us to pump the sediment out and helps the well recharge more quickly. Toward the afternoon we fabricated the rising main (a slightly smaller pipe than the casing which has a check valve fused into the bottom) and pump. Day 6 we installed the rising main, pump, spout and handle.
As soon as it was finished we began speaking with a family who has a small field just downhill from the well about irrigation and are strongly encouraging them to begin planting tomatoes before the rainy season so they can benefit from high market prices in town. Two days after we finished their hand dug wells had dried up completely and they were singing praises and pumping clean, fresh, water like nobody’s business.

Well 2 started the day after we finished, slightly to the west of the first well, sandwiched between three households. We’re fairly close to a hand-dug well which is dry (because of laterite rock they couldn’t go deeper), which gave us lots of information about what we’d be expecting in the drilling process. This well was all through sand, gravel, laterite, and thin layers of hard metamorphic-ish rock. IT WAS PAINFULLY SLOW! We had our derrick up and were drilling half way through day 1 (Feb 25th), but only got down 4 meters that day (3 was dug dry). Day two we only went down 1.5 meters after 8 hours of mentally and physically painful drilling. We all were still a little tired from the first well and when your drilling and the pipe doesn’t seem to move it’s mentally exhausting. We broke both of our 3 meter double weighted drilling pipe (it’s the first piece in the hole, is stronger, and weighs more to help drive the bit). Day 3 we put on a 5 meter piece of double weighted we had quickly modified and the increase in weight helped us pound down to 9 meters by 3 p.m. At three I knew we were finished by the pinging whatever we were hitting was giving my hands. I could tell we were driving into a hard metamorphic rock (probably granite) and we could call it and case it. At this depth we are 5 meters into their water table (during the driest part of the year), in the best filter material available: sand and gravel. We quickly reamed it and cased it (we had learned from the last well to have everything ready to do this quickly). So at the end of 9 days of drilling, well 2 is cased.

Please continue to pray for our strength. Being gone all day doesn’t allow Grace and I to have the time together we used to enjoy. When it was half days or occasional whole days we could do everything together, but now it requires her to be home for her morning language lessons, and to help keep food on the table in the evenings. She has been able to come spend 2 days with us during these last two wells, which is an encouragement to all. White women (and men while we’re at it) aren’t known for working or enduring the village environment for very long. I truly believe our willingness to get dirty, to work as hard as we can, sweat and ache alongside them, and eat what they eat is a huge testimony toward the gospel we share. On tuesday all the girls on our team are going to a women’s retreat in Ghana called Women of the Harvest. They’ll be there for a week. During this time Dave will be at home watching his 4 children while I hope to finishing up well two in his stead. Afterward I’m planning on camping for two nights in Lassa Tchou, watching how people are using the wells, and partnering with Christians Jean Mari, and Tchozo, trying to find others who would be interested in beginning Bible Studies with Christians from the church there. March 4 is elections here in Togo and we also ask for prayers that this would occur peacefully. We expect it too, but still ask you to petition God toward that effect. We hope to start well 3 on March 10th! Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement as we really begin to feel a full pouring out of ourselves for Him--

matt and grace hangen