TBM, WMU partnership empowers poor in Ghana to drill water wells

Thanks to a partnership between Texas Baptist Men and Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas—with help from a nonprofit ministry related to Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo—Christians in Ghana are learning to drill their own water wells using simple technology and locally available materials.

Bob Young, a Texas Baptist Men volunteer from the Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, teaches Christian leaders in Ghana how to dig a water well.

Sandra Wisdom-Martin, executive director-treasurer of Texas WMU, learned about the need for clean drinking water in Ghana when she led an Illinois WMU mission trip there 10 years ago. She met Kelvin Fusheini, a Baptist national born in North Ghana, who described the desperate need for clean, safe drinking water.

“While in Ghana, I saw women walk miles to draw water from a silt-filled pond,” she recalled.

She found out the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board had disposed of the well-drilling rigs they once had operated in West Africa. Since the cost of providing new rigs proved prohibitive, Wisdom-Martin put the idea on the back burner—until she came to Texas, where she learned about the extensive international water purification ministry of Texas Baptist Men.

She contacted Bob Young, a TBM volunteer from Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, who leads the water purification ministry. Young explained TBM provides pure water to people in remote areas by providing simple filtration systems, training people how to use them and taking every opportunity to introduce them to the Living Water, Jesus Christ.

Bob Young, a Texas Baptist Men volunteer from the Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, works on a well in Ghana.

TBM has provided its water purification ministry in more than 70 countries, and an estimated 90 million gallons of water per year is filtered through the water filters TBM volunteers present to people in need.

“For every filter that is given out, we talk about the free gift of Jesus,” said Young, who has traveled to more than 10 counties in the last seven years.But, he explained, TBM lacked expertise and equipment to drill wells.

About that time, Wisdom-Martin learned about Water for All International, a ministry led by Terry Waller from Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo. Water for All operates long-term projects in Bolivia, Ethiopia and Uganda, equipping the rural poor to drill low-cost water wells.

“We also offer training in Texas for foreign nationals, missionaries and development workers who want to do similar long-term programs to equip poor rural families to drill their own wells,” Waller said.

“We want to empower people, not just drill wells for people. The technology is very simple and designed for all tools and bits to be made locally from locally available material in-country.”

The Texas WMU board approved a grant—made possible by the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions—to send TBM representatives to San Angelo for training in what Waller said development experts have nicknamed “the Baptist technique” for drilling wells. Texas WMU also paid half the cost of sending a team to Ghana, with TBM paying the other half.

Young and two other TBM workers—Roy Heifrin from Cowboy Church of Ellis County and Dale Moore from Mayfield Road Baptist Church in Arlington—recently returned from Ghana, where they drilled about 47 feet deep in nine days at the site of a seminary being built in Tamale.

“In the future, wells will be drilled in villages,” Young said. “We worked with Kelvin (Fusheini), our local contact, in training local Christians how to drill.”

The team spent four days locating the materials they needed in local marketplaces. The drilling rig consisted of a 12- to 14-foot tripod, a 50-foot rope draped over a large pulley and a spring-steel bit on a 5-foot pipe.

“It takes about $1,000 to sponsor a water well in a village,” said Mickey Lenamon, TBM associate executive director. TBM typically spends about $100,000 a year on water purification ministry, and it is dependent entirely on designated donations, he added.

Future well-drilling work in Ghana may become part of a multi-faceted partnership with Baptists in that country, Lenamon said. At the request of pastors in Ghana, TBM plans to lead Experiencing God weekends there, and a construction team from Community Life Church in Forney helped build a church in Ghana.

Since 1997, national WMU has been involved in the Pure Water, Pure Love initiative to supply clean water globally, Wisdom-Martin added. The World Health Organization reports more than 6,000 children a day die because of contaminated drinking water.

“It is the most basic of human needs, yet many about the world have no access to clean water,” she said.

“This really is a need we can do something about. If the Bible is our authority and guide, we must take the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 seriously: ‘I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink.’ We don’t want to be goats on Judgment Day.”