Tag Archives: Clean water

January 12, 2023 · 11:47

Happy New Year!

Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

We had planned to be in Tanzania for Christmas. That plan died when my urologist announced that I have prostate cancer. The Cyberknife (focused radiation) treatment was scheduled to be completed before Christmas, but because of a mechanical failure, it was completed on Dec. 27. The treatment was easy; the side effects were devastating.

The two weeks following my treatment, I became very ill. Twyla and I spent New Year’s Eve in the ER. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ve never felt so bad. I was unable to eat solid food for a week, and had to have a Foley catheter. The oncologist was shocked to hear all the difficulties I had. He thinks that my symptoms cascaded, each symptom creating more difficulties. We are thankful that I am now feeling well. I am weak from being sick, but I’m exercising every day to regain my strength. Please pray for continued improvement and good health!

Returning to Tanzania on February 22!

Once the oncologist announced that he doesn’t want to see me for 6 months, we bought tickets for our return flight! I still need to be cleared by the urologist, but since I am feeling better, we felt confident that by mid-February, we would be ready to go. Ticket pricing helped us narrow down the date. Unless the doctor has more concerns, we plan to be in Tanzania on February 24 (it’s a 2-day trip).

We expect to fly from Memphis to Chicago by Southwest on the 21st, then onward from ORD on the 22nd! Again, we ask for your prayers as we plan this trip.

We are so proud of these guys!
This is the church planting team at Lorkisale. These men have committed to be in this village for 4weeks trying to plant a new Church! This mission is entirely planned by the Monduli Juu Church of Christ!
They are doing door-to-door evangelism from Monday to Friday, and worship on Sunday! After 4 weeks, 3 men will stay to work with the new Church here until next year. The young man in the green shirt (Isaiah) is originally from Lorkisale.
Sadly, Lomayani (2nd from left) was killed in a motorcycle accident on his way home after the Sunday service in Lorkisali. He leaves behind a widowed mother, who had no other support. The church is requesting assistance to care for Lomayani’s mother. 

Each year, the Monduli Juu church hosts a Bible seminar for the young people who are home from school (and everyone else comes too!). There’s lots of preaching and teaching. This year, they extended it to two days. Several people were baptised, and there was great fellowship!
The church has started an “English Medium” school. That means the classes are held in English instead of in Swahili, and the children who attend are better qualified for advanced schooling when they are older. It’s a way for the church to educate their own youngsters as well as an evangelism opportunity, as this paves the way for relationships with the children’s families.

These notes are from Koimere, our preacher in Monduli Juu:

“The MJ church’s four major goals for 2023

  1. Rain Water projects
  2. New English medium school (They have already started with the pre-school)
  3. Start Monduli Juu Bible College
  4. Plant two new congregations (one church plant already begun in Lorkisali)

“The year is starting so we are going to have some discussions about all Church projects! Will be running for raining water project, English medium school project, Bible School project and planting new Churches project! “We started the Pre-Primary school at the Church already this year! We have some small things we need right now! We need to feed them before they go home. Before we can feed them, we need to build a temporary kitchen, and we need 100 cups! So please try to share this with the brothers and sisters for any help! Already we have 50 children who report to school!”

Two more Rainwater Harvesting Projects! We are ready to begin the 2nd (larger) phase of the rainwater harvesting project at the Irmorijo Primary School, with funding from a Rotary Global Grant. The church leaders are gathering the documents required for the finalization of that grant, and we hope to build this before we return to the States for my oncology follow-up in July.

This is the Eluwai Primary School, which the leaders of the Monduli Juu church have chosen as the site for our next rainwater harvesting system. As you can see, there is one tank and some gutter in place, but there is no first flush (which means that the water is dirty) and the quantity is insufficient for the school. The money given by the Church of Christ at White Station will help us provide water for this school, and build our relationships in this community, so we can be more effective evangelists.

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January 28, 2016 · 02:14

Exciting New Developments

We’re excited about two developments regarding Biosand Water Filters!

First, we have  a Metal Fabrication class which is building a metal form, for pouring the filter vessels! This form will be invaluable when we get to Tanzania. We will use it first to make filters, and then–more importantly, we will show it to our local “metal fundi” so he can build more, just like it! It really helps to see what  the finished product looks like, and how it works. Here’s what one of these forms looks like.

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We also have just found a set of plans for making one of these forms out of plywood! We found this online, at ohorizons.org.  I’m fairly handy with wood, so by next week, we hope to have one of these built. We suspect these may not last as long as the metal forms, but the cost is much lower and the technology is much easier. wood mold production

Either of these forms makes a concrete vessel for a water filter that will produce as much as 36 gallons of clean water per day! The science behind these filters is very interesting. In nature, water is purified by flowing through sand and gravel and by exposure to the sun. This system, developed by a scientist at the University of Calgary, removes up to 99% of all pathogens from dirty water!

Organisms&BSF

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October 22, 2015 · 12:59

We don’t do handouts.

It was a bit shocking the other day, to hear another missionary telling a church, “We don’t do handouts!” Shocking, but absolutely spot-on.

Christ said, “The truth shall set you free.” Handouts, on the contrary, lead to dependency, not freedom. So we don’t do handouts.

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Building a bottle-brick cistern in Monduli Juu

We empower people. We teach them how to use the gifts God gave them, to improve their lives and free them and their children. If we help them learn to read, they can then learn to be free from AIDS, or a fear of AIDS. When they build their own water collection system, and their own water filter, it frees them from disease and from trudging miles to a dirty pond for water. They can raise healthier animals and better gardens, and make a better life for their family.We empower them by working with them to use the resources they already have.

If we gave them water filters, we might have a moment’s contact, from a benefactor to a supplicant. That’s not a good relationship for either person. The real need is not for filters or tanks, but for learning, and learning is a two-way street. When we work together to build a filter or a bottle-brick cistern, we all learn, we all have something to offer, and we all build relationships. When we have finished, the people who have built the filter or the tank or have learned to read can go back to their home and teach their neighbors to do the same.

We have certain principles which we use as a measuring stick, a canon in the classical sense, for choosing the work we will do in the community. This is the first: Can local people do this with materials they have or can afford? Put another way, will they need something from elsewhere (America, for example) or money from elsewhere in order to do this again? The answer must be that they can do this with their own resources, or it is not a worthy offering to them. Each thing we do must free them from being dependent; must enable them to help themselves and their neighbors.

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October 10, 2015 · 11:36

Living on Solar Power: More About Our Future House in Tanzania

If you looked closely at the pictures of our rented house in Monduli Juu, you may have noticed that there’s a solar panel on the roof and a power line tied in on the front porch.

The house is on the electrical grid. However, with power available as little as 4 hours a day, that doesn’t help much. We expect that we will depend largely on solar power.

Our impromptu system: One panel, a car battery, a controller and an inverter.

Our impromptu system: One panel, a car battery, a controller and an inverter.

We experimented with this a bit while we were in Tanzania this year. Lewis Short had a working battery, and we purchased a solar panel and the associated parts. The panel provides 12 volt power any time the sun is shining. The controller manages the power loads so the panel can’t overcharge the battery and the inverter can’t completely drain the battery. The inverter converts the 12 volt DC power into 220 volt power. The extension cord runs through the bedroom window. It was enough to provide power for my CPAP and for charging our electronic devices.

This system costs about $150 (plus the cost of the battery). We will need a system about ten times as large as this, to run our appliances and electric lights. The good news is that we can purchase all the parts (except a 110 volt inverter, just in case) locally, supporting local businesses.

Just south of the equator, and at an altitude similar to Denver, we get lots of sun! In fact, we have to be careful to wear a hat when we’re outside, pretty much all the time.  Solar power is a smart way to go.

It’s especially smart when you consider this story from the BBC, explaining that Tanzania has just shut down all of its hydro-electric power plants, because of a shortage of water. The already tenuous power supply is now further reduced.

That water shortage has much more serious repercussions. If there isn’t enough water to run the turbines, there certainly isn’t enough water for people, or for their animals or their farms & gardens. So while we are installing a solar system for our own needs, we’re looking for ways to help our neighbors meet their need for clean water.

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October 4, 2015 · 12:45

Our Future House in Tanzania

Because our mission is an outreach to the Maasai people,we wanted to live among the Maasai. We had seen where a few people had built brick houses in the area dominated by the Maasai, and thought we might be able to rent one. Through a casual connection, we were introduced to the retired Head Teacher from Maasai Girls School, who owns a vacant house in the Monduli Juu area. This is exactly where we wanted to live! We have rented this house in advance, to move in on June 1, 2016.  I have included an album below; I believe you can click on the thumbnails to see a large image.

This is a lovely house, but this community has no water supply. In order to live here, we will need to build an extensive rainwater collection system. With our landlady’s permission, we hope to extend the roof to increase the area for rainwater collection, and to give us some additional covered living/visiting space. With the additional water, we will be able to use the flush toilet and shower that are already built in the house.

When we saw this house, we thought, “We could move in right away!” That’s almost true. It’s a very nice house, but without a water supply or electricity, it would be difficult to live here (that’s probably part of the reason our landlady lives elsewhere). Desert Water Agency estimates a need of 6000 gallons per month for two people.

  • We must enlarge this roof to provide more rainwater catchement capability.
  • We must be able to store at least 2 months supply on location (preferably 3 or more).
  • Estimated cost: $20,000
  • Solar Hot water system $500.00

We will also install solar panels for electricity, because the electrical system here is very undependable. It is often off for days at a time, and rarely on for more than 8 hours a day.We will have a generator as backup, so we will be living “off the grid.” However, because cell phone service (and internet capability) are almost universal in Tanzania, that’s one thing that actually works better than in Memphis.

  • 5 Kv Diesel generator: $1200.00
  • 10 Kv Solar System: $1200.00

Which brings us to the point: We need assistance with these costs. We’re raising money for our support, but we also need money to cover one-time costs like moving, language school and renovating our house. If you, or your church are interested in partnering with us in this work, please let us know.

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September 27, 2015 · 19:29

Purification: Changing lives with water filters

After we received such positive feedback to our last post, Saving Souls… One Bottle at a Time. I thought it might be valuable to show you another piece of our evangelism strategy: building bio-sand water filters. Like building cisterns using bottle-brick construction, this method has the same clear advantages:

  • It meets a felt need: for clean water & good health.
  • It’s sustainable: anyone can do it with local materials.
  • And it provides a lot of relationship-building time between the local church and the non-believers who want to learn.

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In July, we attended a workshop in Anacortes, WA, on bio-sand water filters. One of the big lessons we learned is that this is a community effort! You can see how everyone was working together in each of these pictures.

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All the time we spent shovelling and sifting sand, mixing concrete, pounding the mold, we were building relationships with the people we were working with. We started our total strangers. After a week of sweating together and eating together, we had become close friends.

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As we worked on this, it became clear to us that this could be a great tool for evangelism. The Maasai understand that dirty water can make them sick; they are constantly looking for maji saafa–clean, safe water. When they come to help build their own water filter, or a filter for their child’s school, they will be building relationships with Christian men and women.

So how well do the filters work?

Organisms&BSF

As you can see from our graphic, they work very well. They work as well as most commercially available filters, but they can be built by local people, using locally available materials. With a simple modification, they will remove arsenic from water!

Consider the effectiveness of the filters in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since January 2015, there have been more than 100,000 documented cases of cholera, with over 2,000 deaths. Our friends at Friendly Water for the World (who trained us) trained two teams of BioSand Filter fabricators (one made up entirely of women rape survivors from the war.)  They installed BioSand Water Filters in 26 orphanages, and taught basic hygiene and community sanitation. Since installing these filters, they have completely eliminated cholera: As of September 2nd, there is not a single case of cholera in any orphanage in Goma.

This gives us an opportunity to be a blessing to the community, and a method to spread the gospel. Matthew repeatedly tells us that Christ went about healing people, teaching and proclaiming the news about the kingdom. We emulate His model in our work in Tanzania.

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