Mosaic church story: help build wells in africa!!!

          Imagine a young girl that lives in a povrished village in Uganda (Africa). Early every morning she wakes up with her baby brother, mother and grandmother. Her and her mother, gather two large woven baskets and then her mother picks up the baby while holding one of the basket on her shoulder. The girl says goodbye to her grandmother who is now too old to make the 20 mile trip. The girl and her mother both join the steady stream of villagers on their way to the only water source within a fifty mile radius.

          The trek is long and hot even in the early morning hours the scarce trees provide very little shade and it will take them half the day to get there and half the day to get back to the village. The villagers grow tired but they know they are close because the trail has become very familiar to them. For generations the village would have to make the long journey. When they arrive they walk into the murky dirty water. The watering hole is just a small pond with a slow moving stream constantly feeding it, although the water is moving the it does not move fast enough for the it to filter itself and always seems to have a fair amount of misquotes flying around it. The villagers fill their baskets with the filthy water, they know that the water most likely has disease in it and is not healthy for them to drink but they have no choice. They walk half the day up to the watering hole and all they have to show for it is disease riddled water.

          The trip back is harder than the trip up because now it is noon and the day has reached its hottest point. The sun blazing over the villagers heads and baking the ground under their feet the girl’s muscles ach under the weight of the water filled basket, unlike her mother who has made the trip to the water hole many times, she even used to carry the girl when her younger brother had not been born yet. When the group finally arrives at the village the stream breaks up taking their baskets and pots to their houses. Back at the girl’s house is her grandmother waiting for them. Her mother and grandmother take the baskets and start to empty the water of all of the undesirable things inside trying to make it as clean as possible before they drink it because the leading causes of death in the girl’s village are starvation and poisoning of water. Several years ago the girl’s father had died from this. The two women work hard trying to make sure the water is drinkable while the girl tries to calm down her baby brother who has started crying.

          Later that day two helicopters fly over head landing on the far end of the village. Once the rotors come to a complete stop and the dust clears, several Americans and Africans come out. A tall African man leads the little group who apparently speaks the language because he says something to the leader of the village, who had come out to meet the visitors. The man tells the villagers that they have come to build a freshwater well in the village, and that the money came from an organization in America called Mosaic. This organization (which is also a church) had a fundraiser to raise money specifically to build wells in Africa. The village is very happy and promises to help as much as they can to build the well.

          The next day two more helicopters fly in with a load of tools, pipes cement, filters, cement many, many cases of water bottles for the so the villages have clean water while the well is being built(the bottles are recycled). Then the villagers and the Mosaic people start to dig and dig helping one another. The plan was to pipe the route to the water source that the villagers had had to drink from for so long.

The first day they had piped five miles running in the direction of the water source, then the next five more then the next day five more and so on until finally they arrived at the filthy watering hole. Together the group had piped some, 20miles all the way to the water source. When the water was turned on the villagers drank. They were thrilled the entire village seemed to be united in happiness. The girl and her family have clean water to drink, which is a gift like no other.