el pozo presents: el pozo
happy new year! school starts today at UDLA and at several other local universities, and i’m excited to be back to a “normal” routine. tomorrow night, we’ll have our first en vivo bible study of the year, and i can’t wait to see all the students who are still trickling back into town after a few weeks of vacation.
i’ve been back in puebla since december 26, however, and the last few days, although out of the ordinary, were not a normal vacation. for a week, el pozo hosted a group from georgia tech christian campus fellowship, the ministry where courtney and i (along with many ex-el pozo staff) were involved during our college years. for the last 2 years, we’ve welcomed a group from auburn christian fellowship down to puebla on their spring break, and it was awesome to have some fellow yellow jackets here for a few days, even though at this point i’m too old to have known the vast majority of current ccf students. in the last several years, georgia tech ccf has taken a special interest in compassion ministry, serving not only in relief situations but also working intentionally and consistently with homelessness and poverty within atlanta.
"putting out the vibe"...apparently quite a techie thing to do?!
seven tech students and one legendary staff member named neal baker came to puebla to work with some great friends of el pozo’s who work with an organization called living water international. this organization provides clean water to people all over the world, while partnering with these needy communities to not only instill proper health and hygiene habits which become possible with access to water, but also to communicate the message of “living water”, which as christians we believe is jesus christ. our ministry, called el pozo (spanish for “the well”), is named after the same “living water” story we find in the gospel of john, chapter 4.
a partially completed springbox! eugenio, on the right, was the brains behind the operation.
the people of la trinidad, the village where we worked were so grateful for the gift of clean water…something that those of us from the united states take for granted. in mexico, we can’t drink tap water…i’ve learned to always make sure we have bottled water in our house before i go for a run (after having to quench my thirst with warm boxed milk just one time i learned my lesson), but that’s a luxury i have by living in a city and earning a quite livable wage. in small rural towns, there aren’t always stores that sell water, and even when there are, there isn’t always money to pay for it.
many people of the town use donkeys to haul several gallons of water from the well at a time back to their homes (that's what the blue buckets on his sides are for). impressed by his strength, i asked to take a picture with him.
so alongside some skilled masons, the georgia tech group, some el pozo staff and students, and the living water group worked hard to create what we call a “springbox” in english. in la trinidad, drilling a conventional well isn’t a possibility (there’s just not much water as you can probably tell by how dry everything looks in our pictures), so we built a stone well around a natural spring that will hold clean water for the people of the town. i’m grateful to have been able to help provide water for these humble and grateful people in la trinidad, but just like at el pozo, my hope and prayer is that they find living water in jesus christ.
our group with the completed well!
leaving our mark on the finished product. for centuries to come, people will be wondering why we felt it necessary to write "el pozo" on el pozo...but you and i will know.
much love – kami