Jan 3, 2017

A successful project from Sierra Leone:
In October last, we were invited by the community called "Down The Hole" in
Treeplanting/Freetown to visit their dipping pool. Indeed, it was just a small dipping
pool about 3'X4' and a couple of feet deep. Because of its odd shape only one person
could dip water at a time and it took approximately 3 to 5 minutes to fill up a jerry can
(depending on the size and strength of the person dipping). Because it took so long and
only one person could dip at a time there was constantly a long line of people waiting
for their turn. Children were cueing up at 2:00 a.m to fetch water. Small children were
shoved out of line and forced to go to the back of the line by the bigger children. The
smaller children spent a lot of time trying to get water and often did not go to school.
There was an unpleasant attitude among the people because of the long wait. We got
digging around in the dipping pool to see where the water was coming from and we
discovered there were two more sources. We asked our contractor to visit the site
with us and he discovered more sources. He interviewed multiple women who were
fetching water and confirmed the dipping pool never goes dry even in the dry season
and learned there were 4 more sources higher up the mountain but they were on
private property. His conclusion was that there were enough spring sources that we
could build a 30,000 liter spring box that would fill every 12 hours . His idea was if we
placed two 10,000 liter Milla tanks beside the spring box, we could fill the tanks all day
and let the spring box recharge at night. That way they would always have 20,000 liters
of water on hand. We decided to go ahead and submit the project. Once approved we
began construction. As the contractor's crew built the spring box, there was so much
water flowing that they had a crew of men bailing the water out so they could build the
spring box. Each Milla tank has 4 taps and a jerry can can be filled in about 45 seconds.
so there are no longer lines of people waiting to fetch water. The community
purchased a submersible pump, got connected to electricity to run the pump and
bought a back-up generator in case the electricity goes off. They hired a caretake to
collect a small fee for each jerry can and have made plans to use the collected money to
build a large wall around the spring box and two Milla tanks.
I wrote the above for Sister Nay who is in charge of putting together a history of the
Humanitarian Projects for 2016.
Today we had meetings -Oh they were so good! The following was the agenda and I
will make a few notes:
Welcome and Seminar Objectives- John Buah
Opening Prayer- Sister Wollenzien
Spiritual Thought - Chidi - I could not understand him - he is a native
Keynote Speaker- Elder Vern Perry Stanfill of the West Africa Area Presidency
"The Savior wants God's children taken care of"
As Missionaries we are spiritual representatives and are looked to for spiritual
guidance and leadership. We are building the Kingdom of God.
He talked about the story in the new Testament of the rich young man who asked
the Savior what else he must do to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Savior's
reply was to sell all that he has and give it to the poor. Elder Stanfill said he wished the
Savior would have used the word "good young man" instead of "rich young man". To
Elder Stanfill, the rich/good young man was doing everything he was suppose to do but
what the Savior was asking the young man was to go to the next level of discipleship.
He told us we have gone to the next level of discipleship by being on a mission for the
building up of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth because of our love for the Savior.
He quoted James 1:27 "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted
from the world." Again he said, "The Savior wants God's children taken care of"
He than quoted D&C. ? I will have to find it but it says something like "I will bless
those of the world with what I will bless them with. . ." He talked about we don't know
why God has blessed some people with so much and other people suffer.
"The continent of Africa is a continent of people who are very faithful and believes.
Our job is to relieve suffering.
Break
Presentations from Humanitarian Couples
Lunch
Discussion of Successful Projects
Closing Remarks - John Buah
Closing Prayer - Sister Carley
Temple Session
Dinner: At a very nice restaurant