Go Beyond

San Lucas, El Salvador

This morning we drove our equipment-laden vehicles from Playa Salinitas on the Pacific coast to San Lucas. This small and nondescript village is nestled beside a dusty road that winds through the hills in an area called Cuisnahuat. There are no signs to tell you when you have arrived. Unless you know where you are going you can easily miss this place that ten poor El Salvadoran families call home. After we off-loaded our drilling equipment, we spent the morning going from house to house to meet the people. The folks in San Lucas don’t have much money but they do have something better. They have family. As many as two or three generations live in each home. Kids grow up here under the watchful eyes of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Life in San Lucas is simple but also hard because of a lack of access to safe water.

As we walked along the stream that bisects the village, we met several women who were doing the family laundry. Folks here do their laundry, bathe, and wash their food all in the same stream. The water in this stream is not safe to drink. Our host and guide told us that diarrhea is a big problem, especially among the children, because of the poor water quality. At one home, an elderly woman asked me if we are the folks who have come to drill a well for them. She was thrilled when I told her that we were here to do exactly that — to provide the community with safe and clean water. I could not help but wonder how many hours she has spent in her lifetime performing water-related tasks like fetching water and doing her laundry at the river. The gift of a water well will be a gift of time to all of the women who devote as many as five or more hours each day fetching water for daily needs.

After eating lunch with one of the local families, we started the process of drilling the well. Unlike the well that we drilled last year for the people of Monte Rico, the Living Water staff decided that we would use a drilling process that uses compressed air. In areas like San Lucas, where they do not expect to drill through rock, it is a much faster process. They were right. After three hours and ten minutes of drilling we found water at a depth of one-hundred and five feet. It was a beautiful sight to see water shooting out of the hole and spraying into the air. We were all a muddy mess but happy to find water so quickly. Folks applauded and audibly praised God at the sight. Tomorrow we will take the next steps to complete the well.

We concluded the day by praying with the local families. We said our good-byes and then made our way back to Playa Salinitas in our wet and mud-caked clothing — happy for the privilege of providing this community with safe water in the name of the One who alone can satisfy our deepest thirsts with living water. Today, the future of San Lucas changed in three hours and ten minutes.