Dear family, friends, and CEED supporters,
The last time you heard from me was back in 2020. A team of 20 people from America visited us in Hoima, Uganda. It was a great team, and things were going fine, and then the news of COVID started to fill the airwaves. Flights into America were changing by the hour. The team was finally able to secure a flight home. I stayed in Africa thinking this COVID thing would pass. A couple of months later I caught one of the last flights out of Africa to America.
Not wanted to set up a household right away, I traveled the country and stayed with friends and family. As I traveled, Graham, the president of CEED, suggested that we should take drilling boreholes in Uganda to the next level. CEED’s drilling in Uganda started with percussion drilling 15 years ago. This form of drilling is done manually and is very labor intensive. After a couple of years of percussion drilling, we set up a business in Africa. We had the remote villages’ market pretty much to ourselves; nobody has the compact drilling rigs that CEED has. The problem is the remote villages do not have the funds to pay for drilling a borehole. That money comes from you. To start a business, we would need a commercial drill rig.
CEED board meetings begin and end in prayer. With this new project in mind, we asked God to lead us in the direction He wanted us to go. We put the word out to our churches, friends, and you, our donors. In my mind, this was going to take some time, so I made plans to go back to California. I figured God needed a little time to think this through. Two weeks later Graham asked me if I could go to India to oversee the assembly of CEED’s new drill rig. I am in Hyderabad India now. What was supposed to be a two-week stay in Hyderabad turned into about 40 days.
El Shaddai Rigs is the company that is building the new rig. Although they come highly recommended, I don’t think they have the sense of urgency that an American company might have. It’s ok. I am enjoying the culture and making friends. From here the rig will be shipped to Uganda. I will leave here and fly to Uganda to train our drill tem in operational and maintenance procedures on the new rig.
Sitting here in India, I think back and wonder how I got here. I volunteered one time to go to Uganda to work. Percussion drilling was labor intense, but it was something I understood. It was simple—you pound the earth until it gives up its water. I didn’t know anything about drilling procedures, drill rigs, troubleshooting, and a host of other things. I believe early on God was going to give me a heart for drilling and put me on a path where I could be used. I could have never worked this out myself. God used so many of you to make my journey in Africa possible. I have been able to thank some of you, but there are many who have given anonymously and without recognition. Thank you for believing in what CEED does and for making my life exciting. May God bless all of you.
Sincerely,
West
