Our final
stop on our Sunday afternoon scouting tour was at a well and spring in
Bolenge. A special place for many of our
donors and team members. For those
unaware of this significance, I hope I can convey the power of this place.
Bolenge is
one of the areas our team was told about by Don and Barbara Angle who are
members of Central Christian Church in Enid, OK. Don and Barbara served as missionaries in
this area from 1958 to 1974. Janet
Helms, Steve Hanson and I met them at a Global Ministries luncheon First
Christian Edmond hosted back in the Spring.
They were both very moved by our mission and donated generously to the
cause.
But we got
more than financial support from the Angles.
Both had stories to tell and fond memories of Bolenge and the DRC. We heard of long, and I mean really long,
bicycle rides they took on rutted dirt trails and roads. They told us of the warmth and love of the
Congolese people. And they told us about
Edna Poole (more on Edna shortly).
We heard of
the Bolenge Hospital and how it had burned down after the Angles returned to
the States. Then we found out that the
Angles’ Sunday School Class raised over $25,000 to help rebuild the hospital. And then the D4W team was blessed with more
financial support from this same Sunday School Class. They asked that we bring a plaque and hang it
in the hospital in the Angles’ honor. We
will do that later in our trip.
And then
there is Edna Poole. A Disciples of
Christ missionary and a member of our church in Edmond and the first female elder in our church, she
spent years in the Congo opening schools, spreading the Word and doing what she
could for the Congolese people. She
wrote a book of her time as a missionary that several of our team members have
read. And we have a picture she painted
from the banks of the Congo River hanging in our church back home.
Emotions
were high as we rounded the bend and passed the hospital in the faint light as
the sun set to the west. Driving a few
hundred yards more we turned off onto little more than a trail through tall
grass and stopped on a rise overlooking a cutout in the landscape.
Walking down
the slope we found ourselves at a spring that produces clear good water. The spring has been capped to keep the water
source from becoming contaminated, even though the pool of water it flows into
is obviously bad as we see two people in the dim light with yellow jerry cans
filling them up to take home.
As we are
walking back up the slope the vision we have had for many months is in front of
us. A young girl, maybe ten or eleven,
is carrying a 5 gallon jerry can full of water on her head. She is headed home alone with tomorrow’s water in the dark.
We climb
back in our vehicles and drive back over to the hospital. The hospital is comprised of four or five
buildings set just off the road. One
small two-story building is obviously much older than the rest, and we are told
it dates back to the 1930s. A faint
reminder of the past prior to the fire that destroyed the hospital. The remaining buildings are white.
In the
twilight’s growing darkness a strange sight is before us. The hospital is dark. Off to the south by one of the buildings is a
small group of people sitting around a fire talking. And then we see it; hundreds of fireflies
twinkling just at the top of the grass all around us. The sight is truly amazing. It is as if the souls of those before us have
come to welcome us to this place.
Finally, we
inspect the well; the real reason we came today. It is clean water. And, it does appear as though it might be
retrofitted with a solar pump or electric pump (connected to the new generator
that is supposed to be coming) so that water can actually be pumped into the
hospital.
Think about
that my friends…. Here is a hospital that currently has no electric power and
no running water. Do you now know why we
are here?
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