WELL. DONE.

You may know that we do clean water wells for desperately needy locations. (Check out the website listed here on the blog) You may NOT know what a difference a single well can make. Here's a letter from Eric Wright, a wonderful Ohio businessman who was in Haiti this April with a construction team. They really benefitted from a well just drilled by Clear Blue a few weeks earlier. If you have ever prayed, given, or gone for Clear Blue, what a difference you are making! Well done.

I just got back from Haiti a couple of weeks ago... The well was an overwhelming blessing in so many ways. Let me try to count them for you:

1) The people of Greffin no longer have to walk a mile or two for UNCLEAN drinking water (from a stream along the road where clothes, cars and motorcycles were washed as well). From my recollection of the drive to Greffin, CLEAN drinking water would be 3 to 5 miles away and only available certain times of the day with very long lines.

2) The feeling of hope (perhaps the most important) and gratitude outpoured from the people more than water did from the well. The well LITERALLY was pumped from sun up until sun down. The ladies and children of the town operated it nonstop by filling large buckets and carrying it to concrete mixing sites, the water filtering station and to their homes (tents).

3) The value of the well to the people was obvious as I saw not one bucket spilled or dumped in a playful manner…, even as they walked barefoot over rough terrain. Each bucket was carefully used.

4) Hired workers as well as their families were able to get buckets of water to shower and clean after a long, hard and dirty day's work.

5) This well not only provides drinking water, but it provides tools for hygiene, washing clothes and building structures. This well has and will play a VITAL role in expanding the church, building the new school, the new latrine and housing for the homeless. Drinking water is the tip of the iceberg.

6) As stated in the above comment, effective jobs were created because of the well. This was and is a priceless gift to Greffin owed in large part to the well since the unemployment rate is 80 to 90 percent in Haiti and much worse in Greffin itself where the well was drilled.

The well transformed our teams abilities in many ways:

1) Cement CAN NOT be made without water. We would have been blessed to accomplish a portion of the foundation of the building without the well. Having water 100 yards from the area we built the structure was invaluable. I could not have imagined the work without the well. A fraction of our actual work done there would have been accomplished without the well.

2) I don’t know (honestly) how our team would have effectively stayed hydrated without the well. The average temperature stayed right around 100 degrees the whole time we were there. We worked from 8 to 5. We worked in the sun all day and it was a struggle even with the well. Water from the well was constantly filtered for our hydration needs as well as the 20 to 25 Haitian workers we hired every day.

For the record, the well was VERY productive. If I can use my experience in any way to help you with your cause, let me know. I would be willing to speak about the well if it would be of benefit.

You are not drilling wells, you are changing lives and generating hope in hopeless areas. Keep up the great work. Again, please let me know if I can help in any other ways. Your well impacted my life.

Eric Wright
Director of Operations
Gasearch, LLC.

I Do, I DO!!

This is the wedding season. Dear young friends were married April 10 in a beautiful ceremony, another couple will wed this next weekend, my own son Jacob and his beautiful bride-to-be Jessica will take the plunge May 22, and then more this summer. As I prepare for all these promises, I have thought how in a world where commitments are increasingly short-term, the words "for better or worse, as long as we both shall live" sound beautiful, but realistically unlikely to most people. We push those thoughts to the back of our minds in the midst of the celebration. But as we look at broken promises on all levels, not just marriage, we wonder, "Does anyone keep promises anymore?"

Yes, some people still make and keep promises. They choose not to quit when the going gets rough because they promised to see it through. They stick to causes that seem lost. They hold on to a love that seems sadly cold. They stay with people who have become royal pains in the neck. They are brave enough to make a promise, and have enough integrity to keep the promise they have made. Lewis Smede challenges me when he says, "If you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you cannot abandon, then you are like God."

See, when a person makes a promise, that person reaches out into the unpredictable and unertain future and makes one thing certain: I WILL BE THERE.  I will be there even when it costs me more than I want to pay. In a world where most things seem out of my control, when I make a promise like this, I control at least one thing: I will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be. Smedes says, "When you make a promise, you take a hand in creating your own future."

This spring and summer is a great time to reflect on the promises we have made to God, to people, to the church--and to focus our energy on keeping them. There is nothing more fulfilling than working with God to keep your commitments, and receiving the reward that comes from being a keeper of covenants, a person like God.

I promise. Better than that, it is HIS promise.