No paved roads. No national power grid. No running water.
To people in modernized parts of the world, a life without the conveniences of paved roads, electricity, and running water is nearly unimaginable. Yet for the people of the Ubangi province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these problems are every day realities. The Ubangi is roughly the size of Indiana, covered with rolling hills, sitting on the North edge of the Congo Rain Forest.
The water project that Do: Living Water works through is funded to bring clean water to the people of the Ubangi. The problem was stated well in an email that I received when I started getting involved with DLW two years ago:
"Imagine every lady in the state of Indiana having to go down the hill two or three times each day to carry a huge basin of water on her head back up the hill to her home for the only water they have. But imagine the water they find at the bottom of the hill is just muddy from all the other ladies who were standing in the water before she got there. And the water was also used for bathing, washing clothes, and for animals' drinking. Even if there are few people where she is getting the water, it is contaminated from people in villages upstream."
Although efforts have been taken to preserve the purity of stream waters, only about a tenth of the villages in the Ubangi have taken action towards this, leaving a long way to go. By drilling wells, water can come to the Congolese in a much cleaner way in far more areas of the Ubangi. Two specific areas where wells will be drilled are Tandala hospital and the Elikya Training Center.
With the possibility of the first well being drilled as soon as April, I'm excited for what God will do for these people in the Ubangi. Keep the development of these wells in your prayers, that God would move in a mighty way in the Ubangi to bring both physical water and the Living Water to these people.
