Dear Friends,
Here are a few more from Bolivia. Also had two requests for help today, one from Nicaragua and one from Mexico. They just keep coming. I talked to Teo and he says they have four rigs with four well clubs working right now in four communities. Fun stuff! This is kind of my dream to be able to sit in the air conditioning and our guys send me pictures of all the wells they are doing. Jeremy and I will be working in the heat tomorrow though, can’t sit in the air conditioning too long! Neat to see families drilling their own really deep well with the little drilling rig too. Thanks for praying for WFA.
Many of you responded to the note from Sybil. What faith! Thanks so much for praying for her. I hope someday I have half her courage. Also forgive me for sending the previous report twice. Something happened on the server. Hope you just get this one once. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Terry
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
Wanted to share with you some of the latest wells and WFA happenings.
We just had a great drilling class to teach folks our drilling method who are headed overseas to places like Kenya and Niger and Sierra Leon. Then Gary Mitchell from Idaho who we taught to build and supply our bits for us, spent the week after the course with Jeremy and I working and helping us do some test drilling on a hole. Right at the end of the course I got a batch of photos from our water clubs working in Bolivia and Ethiopia. Pretty fun to be teaching folks to drill and get photos of wells being drilled all over at the same time. At the same time I also received notes from former course attendees who are drilling in Uganda and another soon to be drilling in the Gambia. This is getting fun!
See below and thanks for praying for us.
We have three clubs working in Bolivia simultaneously right now, with requests backed up. Cayo our pastor who helps there seems really pumped and excited about the project. Thanks for praying for him. He says we will probably do 70 wells there this year. 17 wells so in three communities. It is going to be a busy well drilling season. I head back to Bolivia in July and August to help plus to train Rick and Malcomb and John. It gets crazy with so many clubs working and Teo and crew will need help to keep families supplied with materials and all the drill rigs pounding away. Plus Bolivar who we trained from SIFAT has arrived in Xiamas and is working in villages there. These families water problems are now solved for good! And you just wouldn’t believe how far out in the middle of nowhere these wells are. Really fun stuff to see our WFA crew of 3 working so well and helping so many families. And these are deep wells, some in the 200 ft range. We have the motorized rig working in club style in one club and manual rigs working in the others. The families are getting along fine with the motorizied rig.
A bolivian mom pumps her brand new well. It is just finished and will clean up fine.
Joe just sent me fotos of the 19th, 20th,21st, and 22nd wells he and Rob and Ofella and families have done in Ethiopia this year around Gora. He also says Yared who he trained earlier continues to drill in another area. This is the fun part when you train the poor to do their own work and simultaneously in several different countries rural families themselves are drilling away making wells. This is why WFA exists! Great fun. One becomes a cheerleader going around the jungle slapping folks on the back for doing a good job. They love it and I love it too.
Thank you so much for praying for us and helping us reach families like these. They deserve to have their own water well. Every rural family does! It is a privilege to get to work with families like these. Please keep Joe and Rob and Ofela in your prayers. The work is really hard. Joe and Rob are just knocking a home run. Pray God will send us more young people like this willing to give up an easy life and go to serve in the hard places in Jesus’ name. Pray for Ofela and the little church in Gora.
Below are pics of our recent missionary training.
We are still working on figuring out how to have a permanent training place for WFA missionaries and have more courses like the above. We have a new young man, James, a Kenyan MK coming on with us in the Fall. (Kneeling in white shirt next to me in the photo.) Great young man who has already been back to Africa in the hardest of places, like Sudan. We also teach how to make a simple slow sand filter at the course and James told us he recently was in an area where families were forced to drink from a mud hole in a river along with cattle etc and this filter would have saved lives. We are really looking forward to having James with us for more training and then to figure out how to send him to Africa. Be praying for us and James. To train young men like James who is committed to going off to live with and help the poorest of the poor is why we are wanting our own little training farm. At this course we had also had a team of guys from First Baptist Arlington who are working in Sierra Leon and Niger. Also a great family from Tennessee. A great group of folks that just left us amazed. Jon will also be going for more training in Bolivia. We had great hard work and great fellowship too. God’s Kingdom is absolutely wonderful!
Thanks for praying for us! We have another course with JBU in June in Oklahoma/Arkansas and then I head back to Bolivia.
Pray my old body holds out. I am 51 now and after drilling class last week was complaining of aches and pains to our visitor Gary. We had been pounding through rock all week with Jeremy. Gary is a bit older than I but tough as nails, and I noticed he too was limping and bent over and nursing various joints. He said , “Well Terry, getting old just ain’t for sissies no matter what you do”. It sure isn’t! So I quit complaining. So pray we won’t be sissies and keep on doing this. I guess life means aches and pains no matter what, so might as well get them doing this stuff. Seems funny how sometimes the better things get, (things are wonderful with WFA right now with so many clubs working and classes etc.) the more aches and pains! But these are sure good aches and pains and we are super thankful to have them and to get to do this kind of work and want to thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for supporting and praying for Water for All! We really do live on your prayers!
Again thanks for praying for Cayo, he seems much encouraged.
Sincerely,
Terry Waller
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
Here is a note from Joe our WFA coordinator in Ethiopia. He and Rob are doing great work. Jason is home and better. Thanks for praying. Now pray he gets well enough to go back. We miss him.
I am on my way to Texas. I had to walk through a road block in Pailon this morning but made it. Wasn’t too long a walk. I would have walked miles I am ready to see my family!
We had a great service baptizing yesterday. Plus Santos called saying they had drilled another well! That is well number 4 for that club and a new club starting tomorrow. Teo and the club already have their material bought. I had hope Rufino our neighbor who had been in jail with lots of problems was going to get baptized too. He didn’t pray for him though. Yoli, Amalia’s daughter, was baptized! Plus some other youth. God is very very good. Pray for Cayo our pastor that he stays fresh and friendly and inspired. Pastoring is hard! The Hope Bolivia women are doing great too, at a fair this week developing local markets. They are excited and say thanks.
We do live on your prayers!
Terry
Third well in Yotau club finished Wednesday. New club starting in the morning of 10 families. Santos wrote and said the club has finished their 4th well.
Yoli being baptized. She gave her life to Christ. This is Amalia’s daughter. Amalia is raising her little boy, Bebo, who is a cutie!
Thanks for praying for us. We have courses in Texas and Oklahoma in May and June then back to Bolivia in July. Lots of families lined up for well driling. We are workng in a whole new area. Please keep praying for us. Kathy’s Mom is so pray for Kathy too.
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
A few pics from WFA stuff in Bolivia. Thanks for praying for us and the little church here. Pray especially for Cayo our pastor. He seems a bit tired. Pray I can be a shot in the arm for him. Pray for our well drilling. Guy came by today with a request. 50 families need wells. They are drinking from the river. We live on your prayers.
Terry
Rice farmed with our rig, sprayer, tractor and planter.
Our fish ponds. We have four other families raising these two now with windmills and all.
Harvest, each worth $3 plus. 2 legged alligators ate most of the harvest. Out of 800 only 200 and something that we harvested. The local two legged alligator predators got the rest. We are learning. You have to put a fence around your pond, one for four legged alligators and one for two legged. We heard gossip at the motor cycle taxi stop that everyone in the world has been fishing in our ponds! I hope they enjoyed themselves!
Pacu, note the “people teeth”
Where we were drilling last week.
An old cane mill in the middle of nowhere.
Drilling away
Couple of new wells
Very marginal wells, families decided to drill on the flats next week.
Great people though, our host in Yotau. One of the first outsiders to live in Yotau 20 years ago when it was still all Guarayo people. Stout homesteaders and good folks.
Good bye beautiful hill country of the Chiquitania. Back to the flats of San Julian.
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
All going so well with WFA that we can’t hardly stand it. Attached an update from Rob in Ethiopia. I think you will like it. Great photos of wells and windmills and Ethiopia. Joe, Rob and Jason knocking home run. It is possible to really work and live side by side with the poorest of the poor and make an impact as you can see from Rob’s pictures. Note the gardens being irrigated by the wells and windmills in the pictures. We have the chance to make a huge impact in this area. Thanks for standing with us and praying for us. Pray for Jason who is new and has been really sick. He is helping us make the windmills in Ethiopia. Jason is a great guy and fruit from our U.S.A classes. Also got word a new Christian group is drilling with our method in the Chaco of Argentina. Joe also finished technical drawings of our windmill, and Jon who attended our last class is making a cool custom phone app for our windmill caluclulations that need to be done in the field. Malcolm brought us a drilling rig last week and we built another one and are doing drilling trials and experiments in San Angelo. I go to Bolivia next week. Life rushes buy way too fast. We have a new couple that may be going with us to Uganda. He will go with me to Bolivia in July. Course in May is filling fast. All is just going so well for WFA. Pray for us as we seek to lease/purchase a little farm where we can put new folks through long term training. Pray for Rob, Joe and Jason as they learn more language and Cayo and Teo in Bolivia and for me to as I travel.
Sincerely,
Terry
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
You know I miss terribly being on the field full time. I mourn for it sometimes. I love growing WFA and giving courses but really miss being with the poor daily. But it all becomes worth it when I get emails from our WFA programs in Bolivia and Ethiopia running all by themselves without me and expanding and when our drilling course here fills up with folks headed to different places overseas and my inbox is filled with requests from all over. Makes me realize I am probably better used here and traveling and encouraging and growing WFA than doing the work myself and that God has many resources. We have great news from the field again today since my last note. 4 new WFA family wells below in Ethiopia, drilled by the poor themselves (with Rob’s help), plus some rice fields planted in Bolivia with our little tractorcito and zero till seeder, and windmills being made in Ethiopia! We hope to help 10 families or so get windmills as a pilot program. Rob and Joe and Jason are just knocking a home run in Ethiopia. Pray for them. Plus other great news, Sara and Jeremy are EXPECTING! Pray for Sara as she is on bed rest for a week. Also pray for our drilling course this coming week training missionaries headed to Africa and India. Also pray for Gary a WFA trained guy and great friend drilling right now in Kenya. Bolivia is doing great, helping families get windmills, and plant rice and raise fish and drill wells. The church is growing too. I can’t wait to see them in April. Also pray as we try and figure out how to buy a little farm in San Angelo where we can multiply our selves many times over and train many others to go too and start WFA type programs. If we get the farm we can also give courses on windmills, tractorcitos, water well drilling, cross cultural preparation, everything! Thanks so much for praying for us. Also Kathy is back and her mom some better. Thanks for praying for Kathy. Drilling Course next week and then I head to Bolivia April 5th. We live on your prayers! Joe says we just got a manufacturer’s license for the windmills and Rob is “jabbering away in Oromo”! Yea! What a great privilege to get to help the poorest of the poor and share the Gospel and see young people like Joe and Rob and Jason and Cayo and Teo and Elias and Jeremy and Sara carry it on.
Enjoy the photos below, your prayers and support at work!!!
Rob reports they are now helping folks in the neighboring village drill family wells. These are Rob and Joe and Jason’s Gora neighbors. Notice the elderly man next to the well. He has elephantitis in his right foot. The poor face many sorrows as we all do. Pray for Rob and Joe and Jason as they learn the language and culture. Stress is great dealing with extreme poverty daily. Pray they have soft melted hearts that overflow with God’s love for the poor. Pray their joy in the Lord would overflow and they be a blessing. I know from experience they need your prayers daily.
Family windmills in production for our pilot program.
Campesino rice field planted with our little tractorcito made in village shop in Bolivia. Someday we’ll make these too in Ethiopia.
Sunday school kids in San Julian.
Hope Bolivia Ladies. These are the ladies who make the scarves all dressed up on a recent outing. This club has brought joy and meaning and income to many very poor Bolivian ladies and their families and children.
Sincerely,
Terry
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org.
Tags: Bolivia, Newsletter, Water Wells
Dear Friends,
I am back in Texas for a bit and wanted to share some of our activities and photos of 4 more family wells in Ethiopia just done and one in Uganda. Pray for Rob and families as Rob is staying out in Gora with families helping them drill wells. Rob is just knocking a home run helping families drill as he learns Oromo. Also pray for Jason and Joe as they make some family windmills for testing with families. This is our dream to see as many poor families as we can with a well and someday a windmill too. We hope to start a well drilling movement! Joe and Jason are also busy setting up a permanent training and demo farm out in the area. We will soon have our very own big round mud house! Teo and crew in Bolivia are making windmills for more families to have windmills and fish ponds. Jeremy and Sara and I are here getting ready for a small training class in March. We are building a new drilling rig right now and in a couple of weeks will be doing a mini training course in California of all places for some guys who came to our course. They want to go to Africa and want a refresher and drill a trial well. They are paying for expenses so we will go. (It will be fun too as I have never been to California.)
I’ll head to Bolivia in April for a quick trip to encourage our team there and back here in May for another training course. Then back to Bolivia in July and August for the drilling season. We are also looking for ways to raise money for a training farm.
We have found a little place, 40 acres close to San Angelo. Pray for us about that. To really replicate our selves we need to figure out how we can host trainees for several months at a whack and doing really thorough training. Jeremy and Sara need a place to live and if we get a small farm we can really start recruiting young people who feel called to this kind of ministry. I would love to have 20 or 30 Joes and Robs out in Africa serving the poor. Currently we have six requests from five countries where we could place well trained committed young people to help train local people to drill. All we need is the trained young people and for that we need a training farm. Pray for that with us. We need a place where we can give serous young people a sense of Christian community and good cross cultural orientation and quality basic well drilling and rural development agricultural training. We want to teach all we do, well drilling, windmill making, tractorcito making, animal traction etc, everything that could help very poor rural families. A WFA boot camp in Texas is just what we need, to share our skills with others.
In Uganda the team we trained just finished their second well and trials are continuing. It is tough drilling there and the team needs someone to be with them and encourage them. More trial needs to be done. There is so much need. Pray God would send us just the right kind of folks who feel called to go and serve, and that we can figure out how to buy a training camp to give good quality training so that we can respond to needs like this.
Finally also pray for Kathy and her mom. Kathy has been out in Florida the last week to be with her mom Peggy Webb who is very frail with diabetes and heart failure. She was hospitalized and just home and Kathy and her sister are figuring out how to care for Peggy. I have been Mr. Mom for a week or so and also doing my normal WFA stuff. We are hoping Kathy maybe gets to come home Sunday or Monday. Being Mr. Mom has really be fun, but boy I don’t know how Moms do it. Soccer games, ear aches, DISHES, yikes!
Thanks for praying for us and supporting WFA! We live on your prayers!
Rob at Urgeecha’s new well. Rob is the one out being a good neighbor helping families get a well.
Fitalet and her kids with her new well. (She is a widow.)
Guttama and family with their new well.
Urgegeecha’s family
Guulumaa and family with their finished well.
The Global Care crew we just worked with in Uganda finished the second well! A low flow well but they did find water so far in three holes. The trials will continue. Pray for us and Global Care. The water need as it is all over Africa is just incredible in this area. Pray this partnership goes well and one day we can learn to drill family wells as in Ethiopia. In this area there is 20 feet of rock right at the surface. Makes drilling tough but they did it!
Sincerely,
Terry
P.S. Also pray for Gary Mitchell our good WFA friend who trained with us a couple of years ago, is headed to Kenya to do trials in a desperately poor area of Kenya. He will be leaving Feb. 28th. Sara and Jeremy did a refresher training for him in Kenya this last year and he and local guys drilled two good wells. He will be helping a missionary this trip that lives way in the bush in an area desperate for water. Good luck Gary! Our state side training is slowly yielding fruit. Malcolm who trained with us last course is headed to the Congo or Uganda. Another from the course is headed to another part of Uganda. Pray for our upcoming course.
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org
Tags: Bolivia, Newsletter, Water Wells
Youth Notes
Christmas time is rapidly approaching. Another year has come and gone. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, and forget what is really important. Through the month of December, the youth are studying the Christmas story. I have challenged the students to not take this with the attitude of “this is something that I have heard so many times. There is nothing else that I can learn from this.” But rather, try to find something that maybe they have forgotten or gain some insights from our leaders that maybe they have never heard before. My point of telling you is this: As you go through out the holiday season, please do not forget what it is all about. We are often consumed with shopping, gift wrapping, and preparing for our families to get here, or traveling to see them, that we do not make time in our lives to stop and thank God for his Son. He came to die, so I could live. It is so easy to take that for granted, especially this time of year. He, who knew no sin, became sin for our sake and carried the cross for our shame. That is the amazing love of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Immanuel. Jesus is the reason for Christmas!
Tanner House
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KIDS HOPE USA
The school year is flying by as usual. It is hard to believe that this is our last week of mentoring before the winter break. Please keep our KHUSA students and their families in your prayers over the holiday season. Many of them are facing all types of challenges, but most of all, many of them need to know the love of Christ. Thank you for your great response in showing that love by adopting people from our Angel Tree. By the time you read this most, if not all, of the people will have been adopted. Remember that the gifts need to be returned to the church no later than December 20. Thank you for loving these families,
Gena Blasingame
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Preschool Notes
Howdy, I’m so excited to start serving the family of University Baptist. It is always amazing to be a part of something that God is doing. I’m humbled by the opportunity that God has given me to work with the preschoolers and their families here at UBC. It is going to be an amazing adventure. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do here and to meet the new families he is going to bless us with as we begin to grow. Love in Christ,
Jennifer Page
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University Baptist Church,
I have submitted my resignation as Administrative/ Financial secretary effective December 31, 2009. It is time to retire and enjoy life outside of work. I will certainly enjoy doing the things I want to do and spending special time with family and our 10 grandchildren. Randy and I have lots of plans and many things we need to catch up on.
When I was asked to take the job as secretary at UBC by Ed Floyd in May 1981, I accepted based on it being a temporary position for me. After 28 years of service this “temporary” job has ended.
Please know that I love all of you, I have enjoyed working with you and getting to know you better through the years.
My Love,
Jackie Whitlock
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To Our UBC Family,
Thank you for all your thoughts, prayers and cards during the loss of Ruth’s grandpa, Ernest Grubaugh.
Your sister’s in Christ,
Ruth Grubaugh & Annie Heirman
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DEACON OF THE WEEK
December 13, 2009
Kelvin Stapleton
December 20, 2009
Randy Whitlock
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NURSERY HELPERS
12/13/09
AM – Oleane Johnson & Kristin Stapleton
PM – Richard Berry &Kendra House
12/20/09
AM – Sharon Gardner & Erica Henderson
PM - Beverley Jones & Ginger Berry
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December 6, 2009
Attendance
Sunday School……….. 67
Worship……….. 93
Stewardship
Weekly Budget Needs……….. $5,053.71
Receipts 12/06/09……….. $7,180.00
Tags: Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Some more new wells just finished. There are 11 wells in this group all in the 30-40 meter (100 ft plus) deep range. These from the “Nueva Union” water club that just finished up. We have one other club still working up in San Ramon right now. They had drilled two and lacked 8 wells when we left them. Another club wants to start that are neighbors to these folks. We will see if they get too before the rains. The rains are coming. We had showers today. A good drilling season however it works out. With the San Ramon club finishes there that will be 34 wells recently plus another three earlier in the year. Some day I hope each of these wells has a windmill on them and big old fish pond and all these families really prospering. That is what WFA will be working toward. At least they have water now on their homesteads.
Pray for Cayo. His sister is near deaths door, and they are taking her home from the hospital with nothing left to be done. He has been in town tending her for a bit. They didn’t amputate her leg and bad infection looks like it will do her in. Diabetes complications. Pray for Cayo as he has really carried around a big old sack of rocks for a while now. His sisters name is Matha. Sad deal.
To balance the sadness of Martha’s situation last night at church Amalia’s teenage single mom daughter Yoli asked to say something in Church. She said she has invited Jesus into her heart and wants to start a new fresh life and be baptized. It was wonderful! Pray for Yoli too as she starts her new walk with Christ. God is so good and I will praise him!
Thanks for praying for WFA. We live on your prayers! I head home to Texas in a couple of days. I am sad and glad at the same time. I guess that is the way life always is. Can’t wait to see my wife and kids and hate leaving. I guess it will be this way till Jesus comes back. Then we can finally all go home for good!
Terry
And finally the yapa (bonus) of the evening,
Our new little pet bambi deer. My girls would melt if they were here! To keep our crew company and eat the grass in my yard. Melissa raised one like this when we were at the farm and she slept in Melissa’s dresser drawer. Nothing more peaceful looking than a Baby deer after it has had it’s bottle of milk.
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” C.S. Lewis
Water For All/Agua Para Todos
For info on Water For All’s international work visit, www.waterforallinternational.org or email terry@southlandbaptist.org
Tags: Bolivia, Missions, Water Wells