Immanuel Madina

Our morning stated with a short, relatively speaking, jaunt to the outskirts of Accra to a community named Madina. Think of it as a suburb with no paved roads.

The church is doing well! It's obvious from the minute you drive into the compound that their members are engaged.

They had a group setting up for a wedding that was to take place that afternoon with the reception being set up under a big shade tree.

We met with their water board and it was another good meeting. They really only have 1 issue with producing clean water - source for water. Immanuel is set up with a roof collection system for rain water. Problem - no rain since December. They attempted to fill their huge in ground cistern with purchased water - but the water they purchased after being processed did not taste good - so they stopped.

The good news is in our meeting it was shared that Immanuel that they can purchase water from a known water company that has been tested by a previous IPC-LWW team and that water company is close enough to deliver. So they think they can be back up & running within a month, as Michael wants to make a simple plumbing change to make it easier to receive the water from a tanker truck.

The second issue that the Immanuel water board brought up was the need for smaller bottles, i.e. the 5 gallon bottles are just too heavy to carry. We have heard this several times on this trip, so we have made a change to Monday afternoon's schedule so we can visit a local manufacturer that blows bottles with a hope that we can identify a solution for a smaller bottle. This smaller bottled really comes up as an issue with the system that are in schools or service schools.

Now so that you all know that giving and service is a circle - as we concluded our water board meeting, I wandered over to a court yard where I heard drummers and kids. I asked one of the board members what was going on and he said "Compassion". Compassion is an outreach program that Immanuel has where on Saturdays the church members bring in kids that have no one "watching them", i.e. orphans, kids living on the street, etc. and feed these kids all day, play games, sing, etc. and generally play in a safe environment.