“Everything you have told us has come true. You have never lied to us”. These were the first words spoken to us by an elder of one of three villages in which we oversaw the installation of wells due to the generous giving through the Advent Conspiracy project of Bethesda LB Church inEau Claire , Wisconsin . And then the chief spoke up, saying, “Our thirst has been quenched”. Dan (LBIM missionary) took this opportunity to share the story of the woman at the well and the eternally thirst quenching water offered by Jesus. Can you imagine a better introduction to a village that you want to minster to?

My two sons, John and Grant, and I had come to Chad from Bethesda LBC to join Dan in the process of overseeing the installation of these wells and meeting with these communities. We were helped in this process by a LB Chadian missionary and a local well technician. At one of the villages, prior to the well, the villagers were either walking 30 minutes each way for water or drinking dirty pond water. One local elderly man who could not walk that far to get water said he had been sick for years due to drinking bad water. He had already noticed the difference in his health after drinking the water and said that he felt “delicious”. This term surprised us at first, but after seeing the warm, dirty water they drank most of the time, this cool, clear water would be like eating a warm double chocolate cake with raspberries and a scoop of ice cream. “Delicious”.

The well that was replaced in another village had been an open well. A little girl accidentally dropped her bucket down the well. A young man went down the well to bring the bucket back up. He was exhausted when he reached the top, slipped and fell 40 meters back into the well and died. As a result, nobody was comfortable using the well, and so they had to walk 30 minutes each way with their buckets and jerry cans.

The need for wells is great in Chad . It is hard to explain all the blessings these wells will bring to each villagers’ life. In addition, the credibility these gifts bring our own missionaries cannot be counted. Each village had to come up with a portion of their own funds for the well, which is a very wise thing Dan insisted on. At each village we would sit on mats and discuss how important it was for the village to start a fund, with each villager to contribute to, used to maintain and repair the wells in the future. They would form a committee with a well manager, a treasurer and secretary and sometimes have two people for each position to keep everyone accountable. It was exciting to me that these same committees could be used for forming farm cooperatives in the future.

It was a bit hard to justify spending $2,500.00 for my ticket. Was it really worth it? Shouldn’t we have just given the money for more wells? After struggling with this for the first week, we no longer thought it was a waste or unwise. Bethesda LBC adopted this people group years ago, engaging ourselves in the support of ministry among them. We are convinced that we ourselves had not fully adopted these people until we met them personally, and spent time talking and eating with them while sitting on their mats. All three of us look forward to our returning toChad someday. We have fallen in love with these people and our visit and the funds spent were a wise investment.     Dean Hansen