Thursday was interesting.  We started out the day a little later than usually, since we had to arrange for our transportation back to Guatemala City that night - assuming that the water system actually got finished and worked.  Once at the site, we began to add water and pressure to the unit, with the full confidence of Blake Webb that we would find not a single leak.  Now Blake is a first timer, so he was blissfully unaware that we have never, ever started a system without a bunch of unexplained leaks.  This was no exception.  After disassembling a large portion of the system, in jigsaw puzzle like fashion, re-taping all the screw joints, re-gluing, and in some cases gluing, some joints, we tried again.  This time is was water tight, so we added about 50 gallons of water with a high concentration of chlorine bleach to disinfect the system, turned on the pump and nothing happened.  No water circulation, just a pump that was making noise and getting hot to the touch.  Mike Horsley to the rescue!  We failed to open the value on the water tank, so we were pumping air.  That fixed, we disinfected the system by running the chlorine through and letting it sit for about 30 minutes.  We then drain the system and start to make clean water from the dirty river water we are using as a supply.

But wait - something is wrong.  The system has a one foot piece of clear pipe that allows you to see the water mixing with the ozone, which is a gas used to kill lots of the bad stuff.  This water and gas mixture should look like 7-UP as it passes through the glass section of pipe.  However, our water looks flat, no bubbles.  No bubbles means no ozone, no ozone means no killing of small bad things in water.  The system is not working, and they are assembling the tent for the dedication ceremony.  No pressure, why don’t we just start grasping at straws and take things apart.  We try to blow any obstructions out of the hose connecting the ozone source to the system (the fact that the hose is clear, and you can see there were no obstructions does little to stop us).  We take the cover off the ozone source, even though there are no moving parts inside.  We finally remove a small piece called the venturi and stared at it.  The venturi is the joint that connects the water with the ozone gas.  We only have one, and it has not serviceable parts inside.  However, it has eight screws on the outside, so why not take it apart and hope for a miracle.  As the crowd gathers for the dedication ceremony, we take it apart and low and behold, a piece of sandpaper is caught inside the unit; quoting Blake “Thank God”.  We quickly put the thing back together, place it into the system, and hallelujah, we have 7-UP!  I knew taking things apart as a kid would pay off someday.

After that, we started the dedication ceremony, and it was wonderful.  The entire church gathered at the site, sang songs with the help of a guitar, prayed, and thanked the Lord for the blessing of clean water.  The common bond between these people and us was the love of Christ.  You could feel it in the air and see it on everyone’s face.  No barriers of language, culture or distance could stop that. 

Finally, everyone tried the water that three days before was pooled up behind a dam in a jungle cistern.  It was clean, clear, (warm), but it was good.