Monday

We arrived at the church in the morning, and as we were getting out of our car, we saw a boy riding a bike carrying a live turkey in a bag.

Amy asked “Is that lunch?” He said it was. I tried to honor the turkey for his or her approaching sacrifice and went on my way.

Later, we discovered that that turkey was indeed lunch, but not that boy’s lunch. It was our lunch!

Poor little guy. The soup wasn’t quite as good today because I had become friends with the main ingredient.

The installation team kept working on the system all day today, while the education team and their crew of young women decorated the church for the evening celebration.

Guess what? Today was hotter than ever!

We had running clean water by the time our celebration occurred, and the church was pretty. The girls had done a nice job making it look festive inside and out.

Brent draws the first fill:

Cheryl and three students take a break from decorating:

Feeling good about our progress, we took a little time to have some fun!

Jerry impresses the girls with his limbo abilities:

Tod and Jim join an impromptu volleyball circle:

Brent and Freddie discuss their interpretations of scripture:

We zipped back to the hotel to prepare for the ceremony, eat, change clothes, etc, then headed back out to town to join the party!

During the ceremony, we presented the local church with a banner and a bible, brought out some clean water and raised glasses in front of the congregation, and praised God for the opportunity to do this work and meet such wonderful people.

We finally got our chance to sing Seek Ye First in front of the crowd, and thanks to a little practice together earlier, it actually sounded pretty good!

All the local education students and installation men were presented with certificates of completion for all their hard work, we hugged, shook hands, took hundreds of photos with everyone, changed our shirts (into the ones they had given us yesterday) and took hundreds more photos, then we went outside into the plaza to have some food and cake and fried dough.

We have many pictures of individuals getting their certificates, but we will save those for later. Here we are with all the adult women who took care of us all week and Pastor Ismael: We did it!

I have the most sincere hope that this system and situation that we are leaving here will bring years of clean water and healthy people to this community. Everyone here is so generous, so friendly, soft-spoken, and sweet. They deserve all kinds of goodness.

We slipped out as the party was winding down and made it back to our hotel a little before eleven, though it always feels later because of the way we spend our long days and how the heat takes away our energy.

Still, it was a satisfying conclusion to the day. Our glasses (of clean water) are raised to the people of Pencuyut!