I haven’t provided an update on the Agua Potable (“Clean Water”) project in Santo Domingo in quite a while because, well basically, there hasn’t been any updates. We have been waiting for quite some time to figure out if the government was going to do anything. Unfortunately, even though they are promising that it will eventually happen, we know that they won’t be interceding anytime soon by them.
The community in which the Water Purification Plant will be located is just outside of the campgrounds. They had collected some money to go towards a field study that could be done to put the plans in place for the project. Unfortunately, we couldn’t come up with all the funds that were needed to pay the engineer to do the study.
But thankfully and as always, the Lord has provided! Through one of the coordinators of FACE, Santiago, we have made a connection with the Central University here in Quito. They are going to send out a couple of students in the engineering program who will do the needed study as their thesis. And this works legally because the engineer who is in charge of the program can sign off on their work and make it “legal.” With this, the community will only have to pay for the expenses of the students: food, lodging, etc, and for the signature from the head engineer. So all of this won’t cost very much at all.
Once the study is completed, then we believe there will be more funds available to support the construction of the plant; funds that weren’t available previously because the study wasn’t completed.
I (Joel) will traveling out with the head engineer and a couple of the students to Santo Domingo to verify that this project will be possible. We are all very, very excited about this most recent good news. Thanks for your prayers!
The Santiago Partnership