Nu Poi Camp

The Brethren Church in Paraguay is called "Hermanos Libres", or the "Free Brothers" Church. A dear friend and brother in Christ, Mike Meiers, and his family have been truly "God sent" to help us with our settling in here in Santaní. Mike has a beautiful church camp located on the edge of town where the church has a Bible Institute for pastoral training and over 300 youth for an inter-denominational "summer camp" (held during our Dec-Jan school vacation). However, their hand dug well is woefully inadequate to handle the needs of all this activity. In exchange for all their help in storing our equipment, and in appreciation for their work to advance the Kingdom of God in the region, we agreed to drill them a well.

The second part of this story is a request that we received from Living Water, International, a wonderful group of Godly Christians who train people to drill wells in developing countries, and support water well missionaries all over the world (click here for the Living Water web site). They sent a team of 6 trained, eager drillers down to Paraguay to help with this well, and also donated the funds to cover the expenses and materials. What a blessing!!! We never had so much well trained, eager help - and they all spoke English! Living Water was able to provide some of the funds needed to drill the well and install the pump. The additional funding was generously provided by Duluth United Methodist Church in Duluth, Georgia.

The team had all been through the Living Water drill training at Quantum Lakes, and most had drilled several wells in undeveloped countries. They were all looking to hone their drilling skills, and this well indeed gave them a chance to learn new "tricks of the trade". Lew Hough, the team leader, has been director of the drill training camp for several years, and was a real wealth of information for us here in Paraguay. We encountered several "challenges" - difficult drilling in hard sandstone, several zones of drilling fluid loss, and even a drilling bit falling down the hole.

The lost drill bit was a real surprise to everyone - it simply vibrated off while we were reaming out the pilot hole. This was a first for the entire team. BUT - at Linda's insistence we had recently bought a heavy duty magnet to retrieve lost items from a drill hole - and the team had brought it with them! How did she know we would need it??? It got the drill bit out - no problem. The zones of circulation loss sucked up all the bentonite we had - all 14 bags! We normally used 3 to 5 bags on a well - so this hole was a record. We got very creative at ways to mix bentonite.

The most severe problem we encountered, however was the hard sandstone. As Harry Westmoreland, the inventor and manufacturer of the LS200 drill rig has told us all - its not designed to drill in rock. We found this to be the case on this project as well. Lew came up with a great idea of using water filled drums to add weight to the rig, for better "pull down" force, but we were still only able to drill about 10 feet into rock. We eventually decided to set the well at 52 feet, only about 10 feet into the water table. We may re-drill the well with a rock hammer - deeper to encounter more water-producing fractures.

Tripod for purging the well with the bailer

Adriano and Camp Director Mike Meiers testing out the pump

We developed the well using the tripod and bailer. This is a slow process, and is done by hand. We finally got the well clean and set an electric submersible pump, but the well was too shallow to support the flow rate of the smallest pump available. So - we decided to set a hand pump. Click here to see the next page for details and photos.

Sponsor: Living Water International and Duluth United Methodist Church, Duluth, Georgia

Soil types encountered: Soft clays, rounded fine gravel, medium to very hard sandstone