More Water

In the past week I've made a couple trips in support of the PAZ water filter program, each being fun and interesting in it's own way.

Testing stream water

The first trip was just for an afternoon, out to the local municipality of Belterra.  Those of you who have been here to visit will recognize it as the place where Henry Ford had one of his rubber plantations.  From there we headed down to the banks of the Tapajos River to the community of Porto Novo, where the first team I ever brought here stayed.

Fellow missionary Ken and I took a couple men from a visiting US team to do some water tests.  I learned about various organizations that are working throughout the developing world in the area of providing clean water.  We tested some source water at various locations such as small streams, the river, and a well.  Then we took other samples of the filtered water to compare.

Informational Meeting

Last week, I headed out with a small team of missionaries to do water filter maintenance in a couple communities in the flood plane of the Amazon River, Costa do Aritapera and Ilha de Sao Miguel.  I lost count, but we serviced over 60 filters in our 3 day trip and gave two informational meetings for the locals.

The river is quickly rising and the water levels are coming up much quicker than normal, being a month ahead of 2009, when the Amazon River experience a 100 year flood!  Pray with us that the water doesn't reach that level, as it would be disastrous for these communities.  Finding water here is not the problem, but finding potable water sure can be difficult.  When the river is low during the summer, the water is full of clay and silt, making it almost white.  When the river is high and flooding, the water is much cleaner, but now super contaminated by all of the cattle and human feces from communities and agricultural practices.  Remember, we're still in a land of outhouses, so you can imagine what happens to outhouses and cattle pastures when the flood water comes!

Take your boat to school!

But even in the search for clean water, the real battle comes in finding Living Water.  Praise God for the tools that He has given us to use in evangelizing and discipling the Amazon Basin!