Water Project for Ujan Village

 
 One of the big things that LDSC does all over the world is to get clean water to the villages.  Armenia has 935 villages.  335 of them do not have their water systems supported by the Government.  These are very poor villages.  Next summer we will provide clean water to about 40 villages at a cost of about 3/4 of a million dollars.  This is your Tithing and Fast Offering money at work, as well as money from other sources.  The village of Ujan was the last of the water projects from this summer.  They were not able to finish their project as budgeted.  They had to bring the water about 5 km, over a mountain to get it to the outskirts of the village.  The pipes inside of the village were okay.  When we went out to look at it in mid August, the trench that you can see in the first picture was dug, but there was no pipe.  They had run out.  The original plan was to take the pipe line over the mountain, but they had to go around it because of the very large rocks.  We approved additional funding for the project. 

You can see the covered trench.  That brought the water from their source to the village pipes.

This is the ribbon that was cut in the closing ceremony.  The metal housing holds the valve where the new pipe was connected to the village water system.

Cutting a ribbon is nothing new to Sister Rich,  as a member of the Sunshiners, she was part of many ribbon cuttings.  We have the Mayor of the village standing next to her and the Marz or area Mayor next to him.  We also have several Mayors from the surrounding villages in attendance, as well as the new media and local Priest.  This is a large village with about 8000 people living there.

This fellow is going to turn on the water.  Remember that before we did the project there was only a broken pipe connected to the uphill side of the valve.

 The valve is turned and walla, water.  This is a relief valve.

With the water turned on, there is now clean water in the village.  We will provide fountains, similar to this one, however, this was not one of ours.  Most of the people drank the water, I did not.  It is against Mission rules to drink any unfiltered water.  It does prove that the water gets into the village.

As part of the ceremony, the Priest blessed the water.  He was doing a good job of avoiding us.  The Armenian Church is not too fond of the LDS Church.  I went up to him after and  thanked him for what he had done and told him that he had a beautiful voice.  He sang most of the ceremony.  He seemed to warm up a little.  The local people and news people had probably never seen a Mormon Missionary and a Priest talking in a friendly manner.

There was a symbolic table set at the ribbon cutting site with bread, cheese, honey and fruit.  These represent the necessities of life.  There was also a lot of Armenian Brandy, used to toast the project.  There was some bottled water for us. 

These kids brought us flowers.  They were wearing some traditional Armenian costumes.

They also brought a large piece of lavish, (flat bread) and salt.  This was symbolic of life.


We have started putting together the first water project that we will do next spring.  You can only do the  work in the spring and summer.  We have selected 16 villages.  The project will cost about $300,000.  We are looking forward to doing it.  Our task is to help the poor and needy and bringing them clean water is a good way to do it.