Russell and Eileen's Church Missions: WATER PROJECTS AND WEDDING

We had a busy 10 days of traveling. I (Eileen) will share some of our experiences on this week’s blog and then save the wheelchair donation ceremony we participated in last Monday for next week.

One of our major projects we have worked on in Indonesia is providing clean water for areas that are without access to clean water. Here are a few staggering statistics regarding the Global Water and Sanitation Crisis.

• 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water, roughly one-sixth of the world's population.

• The average person in the developing world uses 2.64 gallons of water a day. The average person in the United Kingdom uses 35.66 gallons of water per day. The average person in the United States uses between 100 and 175 gallons every day at home.

• Some 6,000 children die every day from disease associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene - equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day. You can see why providing clean water and sanitation facilities would be a very important initiative for us.

A week ago we attended two ceremonies in Central Java regarding clean water. One was a closing of a project in Boyalali. The other was an opening of a water project in a place called Magelang. In both areas our church has or will be facilitating clean water for the people of the area-between18,000-20000 people respectively. Along with the clean water we have and will be building sanitation facilities so that families will have a place to bathe and use the restroom to prevent disease. The area in Boyalali is high in the moutains in a beautiful rural area. Some of the children walk 2 hours to get to school. This is an area where I previously taught hygiene classes to the children in the area. Our visit to Magelang was the first time I have been there. The water sources for the area were disrupted when Mount Merapi ( a volocano) erupted in 2010. Ash covered the area and changed the landscape. Water pipes broke, water distribution systems were destroyed, locations of springs changed and courses of rivers were altered and many people have been left without sources of clean water. We have had a civil engineer come and draw up plans and will have engineers here follow through with those plans to make sure that everything is working well. When our church builds these water sources we depend on the community to “buy” into the plan. In Boyalali there is a specific man from the community that walks the trail every other day (several miles uphill) looking for any leaks in the system. If there any problems he is trained to fix them. Someone is on call 24 hours/day so that if there are any problems they can go immediately and hike the trail to find the source of the problem. The water is free for the community if they gather it from a local source. If they have it piped into their home they will be charged a small fee, about 50 cents/month as a contribution for the water.

While in Central Java we also attended a wedding that was very ornate. There were 1000 people invited and they were all offered dinner. The bride and groom were gracious enough to allow the missionaries to sit near the front of the hall and come up and have their pictures taken with them. I am grateful that my daughters are already married!