Our Appropriate Technology site has had a big month here in Santiago! Here are two exciting things we want to highlight and share with you:

1. After 11 years of hard work in the Appropriate Technology site, our site leader, Alex, completed building his 400th water filter! Once this filter is installed, there will have been 400 families in the Cienfuegos community that have been reached with a means to clean water. This also means that Alex has been able to enter the homes of 400 families in order to pray for and continually disciple them!

2. Alex, along with the help of one of our short-term teams, successfully and safely completed one of the most complicated installations the Appropriate Technology site has ever seen! This particular filter needed to be installed in the second story of a house in Cienfuegos, with the idea being the A.T. team could utilize a spiral staircase to carry the filter up to the second floor. As the filters themselves are around 300 pounds, this task was going to prove difficult as it was. However, upon arrival, it was quickly realized that the staircase was barely wide enough for a single person to climb up – carrying the filter up the stairs was out of the question. Stepping back, Alex and his team assessed the situation and flexibly came up with “Plan B.” They proceeded to carry the filter up to the easily-accessible roof of a neighboring house to pass the filter through a second story window and into the home in which it was to be installed.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, a three foot gap between both houses was going to make passing the filter through the window impossible. Dedicated to their mission, Alex and his team adapted yet again, going in search of something that could be used as a ramp to slide the filter over the gap on. It took multiple men, a lot of communication, and a slow and steady pace of pushing and shifting the filter over the ramp and into the window, but before long the filter had been installed! Throughout this process, Alex proved to anyone around how dedicated and serious he was about what he’s been called to do: meeting people’s spiritual needs by sharing the Lord’s love and Word with them through the means of providing a much needed physical need in the community: clean water. What many see, the building and installing of a water filter, is just the gateway to the real mission: continual discipleship in the name of the Lord.