You may remember reading about the large capacity water systems that were donated after the earthquake. One of them was designated for Verrettes, the town where we have one of our regional divisions of AIS-Haiti and we're in close touch with the UEBH pastor. They have had a shortage of clean drinking water, so the filtration system should really be useful out there.
One of the challenges about setting it up was having a pump to input water into the system because it is meant to filter thousands of gallons a day. One of the times we went to the Dominican Republic (DR), Richard went with a Dominican friend-of-a-friend, Victor, to buy the pump, which really means buying the pieces for it. Then Victor spent hours putting it together. Yesterday, while in Verrettes, Richard found out that it is going to work (I really feel like I should say "Lord willing" here, because, well...experiences...).
Please pray for the use of this filtration system keeping in mind the following conundrum. There are very poor people in the area who really need the water and the system was donated, so it would seem logical to give out the water for free. Plus there are costs to maintaining the system. So the church should probably charge something for the water. But some free services and goods put Haitian small business people out of business and we want businesses to grow and prosper so that those business owners can feed their families. So do they charge less because it was a donated system and the people are so poor and there's a shortage in the area? Or do that charge the fair market value to be fair to the small businesses in the area?
If you have any ideas, go ahead and comment.
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