Mission Trip 2009
We Have Been to the Mountain Top!
by Tom Logan

Jocelyn and I returned Monday, November 9th, after 9 weeks in Malawi, a country where two-thirds of the population make 41 cents a day or less.
Marion Medical Mission’s purpose is to share the love of Christ. We do this by working in a horizontal relationship with our African partners providing the extreme poor in Africa with a sustainable source of safe drinking water.
Our 2009 goal was to build 2,000 wells that could provide 400,000 of the extreme poor in Africa (240,000 children) with a sustainable source of safe drinking water. The Shallow Well can only be effectively built at the end of the dry season just before the rains come when the ground water is at its lowest point of the year. This gives us only about 2 months each year to build these wells. Construction on the first well did not start until the first week of September.

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Tom Logan

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Tom Logan speaking at 10,000th well dedication

 MMM’s 2009 mission trip to Africa was the most remarkable ever. It was intense, tough, difficult, dangerous and fulfilling. There were 35 American volunteers divided up into two teams. Each team arrived in Malawi on a Sunday and had an all-day training on Monday. As well as reviewing the emergency and evacuation procedures, they were assigned 4-wheel drive pickup trucks, cell phones, GPSs, cameras, printers, pipe wrenches, hack saws, ratchet straps, bungee cords, etc. Each team was on the ground in Africa for three weeks working hand-in-hand with African Shallow Well Coordinators, Field Officers, Installation Supervisors and the village communities building Shallow Wells to provide the extreme poor with a sustainable source of safe drinking water. The prayers of many were felt and answered; they kept us safe. There were many close calls yet no serious accidents (a miracle in itself).
This is a world of mountains and valleys. We must go through the valleys to get to the mountains–and then the mountains must be climbed–and it isn’t easy. Looking up from the bottom, the mountains seem too high—and we forget it’s just a matter taking one step at a time; then another and another. And before we know it we are on the mountain top and 2,066 Shallow Wells have been built and 2006 pumps installed; in 9 weeks.
Uchindami Kwa Chiuta–Glory be to God. 2066 wells built in 9 weeks!!

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Tom Logan & Mr. Khosa counting pump parts

MMM started in 1985–we’ve been around for 24 remarkable years. We are small but powerful because of God’s blessings. We’ve been involved in the extraordinary; in the miraculous, not just once, but time and time again.


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