We’ve been building water wells since 2008, and our well for 2016/2017 took the longest and was the hardest for the team we work with.  The war in South Sudan resulted in them having to close and relocate the offices in South Sudan twice, and keeping the staff and equipment safe was an ongoing concern for the team. Equipment was stolen and, theft has been a problem everywhere as people get more and more desperate to get food, shelter and water. Right now they are in the middle of a major humanitarian crisis. There are more than one million South Sudanese refugees who have been forced to flee their country for Uganda and the team there found themselves right in the middle of it.

They ended up temporarily moving their drilling rig and the drillers out of South Sudan and into Uganda, which put them way behind on drilling this year, as the Government of South Sudan needed lots of assurances that they would come back, so they held the drilling rig on the border for almost two months until things got sorted out. Then once they got into the camp, they had to set up a new compound and offices from scratch and had to get permission from the local authorities to drill for the refugees. All of this took months to sort out and in August they were finally able to start drilling again.  Finally in Dec. of 2017 the well was done.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.  We don’t put our names on the well, but the kids asked who built it for them so the team gave them our names, and they wanted to thank us with the big sign.

Makes my heart melt!!