Pastor Jeremy Stephens

There is an old man who seems to be the church handyman. He is a tiny guy-0maybe 110 pounds of muscle, skin and bones.

 Today we really got into a rhythm with the water filters. Each is a blue cylindrical container about 4ft. high and 12 inches in diameter. We prepare the filters before we go out into the village. First, we put the pieces together, and then we take the strainer that sits on top and run water over the gravel and pour that into the bottom. Next comes finer stone that is washed and poured on top of the gravel. Then we pour 2 gallons of water on top and it is ready to go.

We load six filters, six receiving buckets, and six bags of sandon each truck. The sand has a biological agent in it that eats the bad bacteria of the bad water, and each bags weighs 50 pounds. When it’s dry.

 When they were loaded up in the truck our teams were joined by a local who would guide us to 6 needy families in town. Our guide was the small handyman. When we got to each home, one person would grab the filter, one would grab the receiving bucket, and two people would carry the sand. Usually we would pull up to a home and carry everything around behind the house visible from the path. Often there would be a second home behind it and we installed the filter there (it is important to note that most of these homes were about 8×10 with two rooms).

 We pulled up to another home—this one was on the street paralleling the ocean. As we got out, our guide pointed to his wrist and said in Creole that it was hurting and he couldn’t carry this time. No big deal, I threw the wet bag of sand on my shoulder and carried it.

 As we walked behind the home, I look in horror at an incredibly steep hill over 50 feet high with a path made from conch shells. I climbed the hill and walked around the corner of another house’s roof and the path kept going up. Once I finally made it to the home I threw the bag down in a sweaty huff. It was one of the hardest things I got to do this week—but clearly I needed to prove my manhood!

 By the end of the day, our team had installed 41 water filters—that means at least 410 people with clean water for 10 years.

 By the end of the day, the other half of our team had played a role in the vaccination of over 4000 people for parasites. What an amazing thing God has allowed us to do this week!