Dear Friends,
Welcome to Myra’s Wells Newsletter – January 2019
It is hard to believe, but 2019 has arrived. We wish you a Happy New Year from Myra’s Wells, and the Lord’s blessing. And with the New Year, it is time to bring you up to date with the news of what the Lord has enabled us to do in Burkina Faso.
In the last newsletter, we said that we hoped to drill 12 new wells before Christmas. In fact, we have news of 15 new wells – including one at Sigr Bila where previous attempts were negative. There is also recent news of one drilled nearly 5 years ago.
Over the next few newsletters, we are also planning to include short articles about the drilling process – from how we choose places to drill through to the new well being commissioned. The first of these articles is included below.
So, here are the details.
Drilling news
As of mid December, we had drilled 15 new wells
The Lord has been good indeed. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to help us have such a good autumn. We appreciate each gift and pray that we will be able to use the funds wisely. We would just like to thank some who have given anonymously – gifts of £100 via JustGiving and £200 via Stewardship have been given over the last 3 months.
The 15 new wells are in different areas of Burkina Faso. Two are in the far west. Three are in the south, near to the border with Côte d’Ivoire, in an area which is new to us. Others are in the east and north east. We heard news of the first of the 15 on 22nd October. News of the last of the 15 arrived on 7th December.
To keep this newsletter as brief as possible, we have made the full details available in a news story on the web site. Click here to read it. A good autumn – Myra’s Wells has 15 new wells
Stories of the first and last of the 15 new wells
The FIRST one – Rouko where their pastor had dug a well
When there is no drilled well, people have to try to find water in whatever way they can. At Rouko, the pastor in the small church dug an open well by hand, 30 years ago. It is 50 feet deep. 16 metres if you were born more recently! As open wells go, it was good. But the water is not clean and, as the district grew, it did not provide enough water anyway. The pastor’s son then dug another open well. But this still did not provide enough water for everyone. So, Myra’s Wells has now drilled a proper well 80 metres deep. The full news story is on this link – it will only take a few minutes to read it!
The last LAST one – Sigr Bila where drilling had failed three times previously
We were overjoyed to learn about this well. Please take time to read the full story on this link! It is a place where, even though we had had three negative boreholes, the people of the village were so thankful that we had even tried to provide water for them. It is very unusual for us to try a fourth time, but we felt it was the right thing to do. We asked for prayer and the Lord answered with water.
STOP PRESS
We thought that 15 wells was all that would be done. We were wrong!
While we were preparing this newsletter, Christine was able to arrange for more drilling! Drilling at 4 more villages produced a well on the first attempt. Then, on 29/12/2018, the second attempt at Riyalo, where the first borehole was negative, was also successful. So, there are 5 more new wells in addition to the 15 and one other where the first borehole was unsuccessful. We will be trying this one again in the near future. Details are on this news item.
There have been 20 wells since October. Even more for which to praise the Lord.
Updates on some previous wells
Stories to encourage us
Valleé de Kou
This is a new district of a small town. But there seems to have been insufficient thought given to the provision of water for the new people coming into the area. So,we decided to try to provide a well for them. The story is on this link. It includes a brief summary of the drilling process – survey, drilling, testing, pump fitting and finishing.
The drilling was successful. This photo is not the best in the world, but it shows the pump mechanic fitting the pump to the borehole now that the water testing has shown the water is good.
Tambetin
Nearly 5 years ago, we drilled a well at Tambetin. Recently, Christine went back there to see how the village has progressed. This is from the email that we received when she got back to Ouagadougou:
“I was glad to hear the pastor and his wife saying that the well never broken down the 2 others wells keep broken down and all the village has to use Myra’s well for some time but still working good and people are talking about this and saying that it is God blessing at this well.”
At another place, she told us this:
“the pastor at … said thank you for the well again and he mentioned all the village is now Christians.”
World Water Day 22nd March 2019
The UN has designated 22nd March every year as World Water Day. Many charities involved with water will be publicising this. Myra’s Wells has arranged with some of the local schools in Dorset to take part in this. The plan is to raise money towards providing a well in a Christian school in Burkina Faso. Some of the children there need facilities which are not available at government schools. Our church contacts found out about this situation and brought it to our attention. The details of this are on this page on our web site. The school, and the locality round about, do not have enough access to clean water. As with all our wells, if we are able to find water, it will be useful to the community as well as to the school.
Drilling process
Part 1 – Choosing where to drill
In the last newsletter, we included a short survey to help in producing these newsletters. Thank you to everyone who replied! One of the things you asked for was more information on the drilling process. So, we are producing a series of news stories on the web site (http://www.myraswells.org/category/news) which will set out the steps from choosing where to drill through to commissioning the well for use. The first two steps are these:
Step 1 – Choosing villages
The first step is to choose the sites. To do this, we ask our contacts in Burkina Faso to ask people they know, throughout the country through their church network, to nominate places where wells are most needed. For each place, we need to have an application form completed in detail. This contains many questions to help us to understand the situation at each village.
Despite your generosity and the Lord’s wonderful provision, we do not have sufficient funds to drill wells in every village! Government statistics tell us that over 7500 wells were needed about 2 years ago. So, we have to prioritise where we spend the money available. The information that we gather using the application form helps us to do this. Once again, there is more detail in this article on the web site – you can reading it by clicking the link.
Step 2 – Surveying
Once we have chosen the village, we ask a qualified surveyor to go to look at the village. He will be able to identify places where water might be found. This involves some preparation using data available on the internet followed by the visit to the village. There, they use equipment that measures electrical resistance. After some interesting calculations, they identify where the drilling company will drill boreholes.
Again, if you would like more detail, you can read about it in a news story, using this link.
Visit to Burkina Faso – January 2019
Please pray for a safe trip and a time of blessing
By the time that you read this newsletter, Eddie and Karen, Lois (Eddie’s daughter) and Alfie (Eddie’s grandson), together with our trustee John, expect to be in Burkina Faso. They plan to visit a number of recent wells and hope to witness a well being drilled. They will also be talking to the helpers in Burkina Faso to ensure that everything is running well with the drilling and maintenance program. Please remember them in your prayers. The security situation means that travel has to be limited to certain areas of the country.
Please also pray for safety of the helpers in Burkina Faso. We know of other similar organisations working in Burkina Faso and would ask for prayer for their permanent workers based there. STOP PRESS. The security situation has deteriorated over this last week. PLEASE READ THIS NEWS ITEM and join in prayer with us.
Instagram
Myra’s Wells now has an Instagram account – myras_wells – please take a look on this link. If you have an Instagram account, please follow us and “like” the posts.
Online giving – Wonderful and JustGiving
JustGiving is being phased out …
As we mentioned in the last newsletter, we have decided that we will have to close our JustGiving account. A disproportionate amount of the money that is given by our generous supporters is retained by JustGiving and in addition we have to pay a monthly fee of £15 (funded by the trustees).
… but a new service called Wonderful is replacing it
But we have signed up to another online giving site called Wonderful. This site charges NO commission or subscription fee. They are funded by a charitable trust and therefore offer their services completely free of charge. Our Wonderful page is https://www.wonderful.org/charity/myraswells.
Finally
Prayer request mailing list
Last month, when Christine arranged for drilling at Sigr Bila, we wanted to ask for prayer. We were able to contact some of you but didn’t want to multiply emails to everyone.
For similar situations in the future, we would like to have a separate mailing list for anyone who would like to know about special prayer requests. Please just email prayer@myraswells.org to be put on this list.
Thank you for your support
As always, we want to say “Thank you” to you all who support us in prayer and practical ways. With the Lord’s help, many people – perhaps 20,000 or more people – now have access to clean water this Autumn.
We continue to honour our commitment to spend all money we receive on drilling wells. All other costs are paid by the trustees personally.
May you know the Lord’s blessing in this New Year