The water dribbled out of the faucet like a leak rather than like the only water source for a camp of 10,000 refugees. The possibility also existed that the rate may even drop from a pitiful rate of one-liter per second. In the middle of a winter blast of record cold, it promised to be daunting to find a better source.
The morning the project team met with the drillers, the conversation was discouraging. They calculated they would have to drill down 620 meters just to hit water, without knowing what pressure they might find. It wasn’t likely they’d get what the camp really needed.
A humanitarian aid coordinator on the project tells the story from his perspective:
“While that worry hung over us, I suddenly met another pressure. One of my colleagues, not a particularly religious man, turned to me unexpectedly, ‘Well, you’re the one who prays about things like this.’
“Of course I would have been praying even without his suggestion,” the coordinator explains, “but I knew how difficult a project this might prove to be, and now there was more on the line than the necessity of water or the cost of the project. Would God show without a doubt that He’s interested in people’s simple, daily needs? Does He value those who have met war, seen death, fled their homes, and are barely surviving? Yes, I do pray about things like this.”
So the coordinator tells how he prayed as they set up the drill, as the motors kicked on, as the growl of the drill drowned out everything else. 100, 200, 300 meters. The crumbling, dry dirt became thick, then damp. They hit water at 320 meters. And by 550 meters there was so much water that the machine operators stopped.
“We didn’t know what to expect next,” he recalls. “So I prayed more as the pumps were turned on.” One liter/second quickly rose to 5, then 10, 15, 20. Everyone watched silently, then in disbelief, as the gauge passed 25 liters/second, then 30, 35. The end pressure of 40, which will be slightly less by the time the well is completed, surpassed our highest hopes.
“I praised God,” the coordinator recalls, “He brought us more water than we needed, but He also confirmed to everyone watching that He cares about the welfare of a refugee camp and can more easily answer their needs when we care along with Him.”