Two Black Water Tanks and a Miracle

Upon arrival at our campus two weeks ago, everything was advanced beyond what I had in mind. I had these ideas in my head about what it would look like here, but fifteen years of great people, hard work, and a focus on Christ has made Harvesters’ campus in the sticks of Yei, South Sudan, beautiful and very well put together and sustained.

Included in this well-put together beauty on our campus, is the water situation. They have drilled a well that allowed for a hand pump and also a borehole that has an electric pump that must be manually turned on and off.

Everything with the water seemed to be running fine, water was being forced up from the pump to two black tanks, with the capacity of holding about 1,500 gallons each. (That would be 3,ooo gallons, together. This will be valuable information later).

At some point last week, something on the pump went south. We pulled the pump up and found a large cut in the pipe, expelling a lot of water out of that spot, so we had to cut off nearly 30 feet of the 150-foot pipe.

Through amateur engineering we figured out that the pump was pushing about 15 gallons a minute. We put the pump back down the hole, minus the 30 feet of pipe we lost, and were able to let the pump run for about 10 minutes before it was sucking air. Our aquifer or whatever it is that the bore hole reached, takes about 50 minutes to refill, then allowing us to turn the pump back on to push water up again. Because of this change to the pipe and pump, I was going to the pump house every hour, manually turning on the power, getting about 150 gallons of water up to the tanks in that ten minutes. To conserve water, we decided to only open the hoses that headed to buildings, three times a day. This process kept our water level in the tank at about 300 gallons or less when I would turn the pump and water off for the last time before heading to my room. When keeping an eye on the tanks, I had not seen the water get over one-half way up in even one of the tanks. 

So, to reset the stage here, we are only getting water when the pump is manually turned on (by me or one other staff member), once an hour, for ten minutes, giving us about 150 gallons each time, which is then mostly used up through the day, leaving us with about 300 gallons or less at the end of the day.

All week, as I walked to the pump house and climbed the ladder, I would just thank Jesus for the water we had and ask Him to continue to provide what we needed.

Fast forward to two nights ago when we had such little water that there was so little pressure that we were barely getting a trickle out of the faucets and shower. I went to bed that evening, slept like a champ, and then got up early the next morning to turn the water on at the pump house. When I turned the switch on, I didn’t hear the water crashing down in the tank like I had for the last week, and I thought, “Ah, crap! The pump’s not working." Going even further I thought, "I hope it’s not busted.” I quickly exited the pump house and climbed the ladder up to the tanks, where I found not one, but both tanks, completely full. Overnight, 3,ooo gallons of water miraculously made its way into our tanks. They were both filled to the top.

As I pondered this event, that we would normally call miraculous, over the last few days, I felt that what I saw was:   
If we understand that God’s nature and character are love and goodness, and if we understand that Jesus came to save us and give us new life filled with love and goodness as a representation of God, then any miracle done is only to deepen our relationship with Him by glorifying the Father and to show us how deeply He loves us. Positioning ourselves to receive, in faith, the good and beautiful love He wants to share. 

I believe that is the only logical reason for an illogical occurrence.