Closing Projects

Cold wet winter weather has kept us grounded for the past several weeks. So our usual reports of our weekend adventures have been without fresh information. Besides we have both been very busy in the office. I've been closing completed projects, like the one reported below, and Diane has been helping provide scholarships and grants to students in several of the island nations that we service, such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. The following story was written in by one of our missionaries that has been living in Vanuatu for the past 18 months. This is one of the projects we have just completed there.

The residents of the island of Lelepa,Vanuatu situated north-west of Port Vila, used to have to paddle their canoes across a bay and then climb a mountain to a natural spring to fill their plastic bottles with drinkable water. They would then hike down the mountain and paddle back across the bay bringing their bottles of precious water home for drinking, cooking and other needs.

This had to be done several times each week and bad weather could change the task from being difficult to outright dangerous. When the chore was assigned to younger members of the village, they would be out of school for hours at a time.

Village leader, Chief Barry, was particularly worried about the health of local children. On one extremely hot day he stopped at his friend’s house and was greeted by several children from the nearby school. They had come to his friend’s home to ask for a drink as there was no clean water supply at the school.

All that changed when Chief Barry and other villagers joined with volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to come up with a solution.

It all began when Billy Kalo, a resident of the village, had a chance meeting with a missionary from the Church. Mr. Kalo described his village’s dire water situation to Elder William Rogers who then sent a letter to humanitarian missionaries responsible for requesting the Church’s support.

Many approaches to solving the problems were considered with the goal to get clean water to as many families as possible. A major aspect of the project was to provide a good water supply for the village clinic.

The council of chiefs designated their chairman to work with the missionaries to achieve all of the described goals. He was instrumental in arranging work support from the village and in organizing each day’s activities. There was strong support from the village with forty residents providing over 800 hours of labor.

The final project involved the placing of six large water tanks with the necessary collection system throughout the village. The water tanks have made access to clean water much easier for the entire village.

Volunteers from the Church’s humanitarian services have completed 19 clean water projects in the South Pacific since 2004. These projects are benefiting around 100,000 people in over 300 villages in Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati and Vanuatu.