Technology vs.

Yesterday was one of those great missionary days when everything takes longer than you think it will and nothing goes as planned. Our quick stop at the hardware store to order yet more cement and more blocks turned into a quite enjoyable, but long visit. In order to get the best deal we had to wait on the owner. We had a delightful visit with the staff while we were there, and Danny was able to select a lesser expensive electric pump so we could pump the water out of the septic tank hole. We have had somewhat conflicting suggestions on how to resolve the problem. We had instructed Fran to begin to take the water out using buckets. The master builder told him not to do so, but to begin to fill the tank itself with water. So Fran, a man who obeys orders, began to do so.

He started filling the tank, but had to stop when the electricity went off and stayed off so long that he couldn't pump water anymore. In the meantime the engineer here who is helping us told us to fill the septic tank with water; this would force it to settle down to the bottom. The only problem is there is a lot of mud under there and it's not settling anywhere! So Fran and another worker began to dig out the mud from the sides of the septic tank.


While all this was going on I had the opportunity to communicate with Mike Ravan, who led the Carpenters for Christ team that helped us back in February. He had seen the same problem several times and was able to give us some great counsel. Following his plan, we headed to the hardware store to buy a pump so we could get the water out a little quicker and see just how the septic 'boat' would settle. We were not going to fill the tank with water because we had learned that if the tank settled unleveled, we would need to correct from inside the tank, thus needing a dry surface. However, we saw when we arrived that the tank was partially full anyway so we allowed that to continue. In fact, Danny regulated the well pump to allow more water to flow so it could be accomplished a little faster while we had electricity. Then he went to work building the piping system we would need to use the pump to take out water from the hole. He's so very good at things like that and built one that worked perfectly. That is, it worked perfectly the few minutes that the generator providing power was working.


It seems that at some point in the last few months a bolt holding the carburetor was lost. People had been making it work and rigging it to do its job, but it was no longer cooperative. So it was back to the bucket brigade. It's so funny sometimes when all of our great inventions and technologies are reduced to a 'bucket brigade'.