Justina's Joys

We need water. We all do. It is the source of life. My children are thrilled with the ice water that I bring them when they are doing their sports and I'm thrilled to have running water in the house today. For a variety of reasons that's not always a given here. People here in the grand city of Yaounde routinely say "there is no water in Yaounde". What they mean by that is that, in many neighborhoods, there is no running water because the water company can't keep up with the needed repairs. Many people go for miles to carry their water. My friend Emelda lives in a little corner of a neighborhood where the pipes had been broken for a long time. Eventually, one wealthier man who lived nearby decided he'd had enough and he dug a well. Now he shares that water with the others, charging less than what the city charges.

Here in our new house, we had to have a well dug. There are no city pipes out here and we are generally happy with that arrangement. We didn't like having the water cut off as it did regularly in our last two houses, often for days at a time. Many of our friends still live in that area we left and are still dealing with this regular situation of having no water. So we're very thankful to now have our own well. BUT, it needs to be deeper! There isn't enough water in it at its current depth, so it runs dry after a little laundry.

Even with our well, we still can't drink the water; we still need a water filter to clean it. If you can get your well deep enough, past all the contaminants,  to get pure water, then you could drink it straight from the tap, but that is a WHOLE lot deeper than our well will ever be. While living in our previous house we needed a new water filter and decided to try a standing filter (see picture). We've had these kinds of filters in the past, and generally have found that they don't produce enough clean water quickly enough to keep up with the needs of our large  family, and that, unfortunately proved to be the case with the new filter that we bought. So, when we moved to our new house, we got another kind, what we call an on demand filter which connects directly to the tap and filters as much water as necessary. Now that we have the new one installed in out new house, we've got as much drinkable water as we need. But, we still had this extra filter.

Justina's daughter, Casandra, with the new water filter

I decided to ask my new househelp, Justina, if she had a filter. She did not and the happiness that came over her when I offered her our old one was truly my joy to watch. She and her husband are so thankful for this clean water source for their family.

Water and Jesus, the true source of life. Next I need to find out if Justina has heard or read any of the Bible in her own language and see how her face lights up for that one.