wfn.org | Missionary Well Digger

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3466 notes).

Note 3459 by UMNS on March 3, 1997 at 16:37 Eastern (4779 characters).

SEARCH: missionary, wells, United Methodist, Sierra Leone, West
Africa, 
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Ralph E. Baker                         105(10-71B){3459}
          Nashville, Tenn.  (615) 742-5470           March 3, 1997

Well-digging missionary hopes
to return to Sierra Leone

by Dean Snyder*

     Lee Weaver is biding his time raising hogs and cattle on his
farm near Mifflintown, Pa., but his heart longs to be digging
wells and latrines in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
     A former Dictaphone Corporation manager and later executive
of his own construction company, Weaver, a Baptist, spent most of
1994 in Sierra Leone heading the United Methodist Church's
well-digging project there. 
     Before coming home for the Christmas holidays in 1994, Weaver
had managed to get a complicated $250,000 well-digging rig
operational, dig 15 wells and five latrines, and complete the
first year of a three-year program to train a local crew to use
the equipment.
     When he was about to go back to Sierra Leone in January 1995,
a church official there suggested he delay his return because of
increasing rebel violence. Since then, Sierra Leone has been in
turmoil with an estimated two-thirds of its population displaced
into five urban centers to escape violence.  Farming stopped,
people starved, and digging wells was out of the question,
according to Weaver.
     Rather than attempt to restart his construction business,
Weaver, 55, began raising hogs to earn some income until he could
return to Sierra Leone.  He now has "1,500 hogs on feed," he said.
With the election of a new government, stability is delayed and so
is returning to Sierra Leone; although Weaver believes it will
take several more years for rebel violence to end completely.  "At
this time, you and I would not feel free to travel throughout the
country," he said.
     Weaver visited Sierra Leone for 10 days in January of this
year to arrange for the well-digging rig, which survived the
violence, to be reconditioned.  He took replacement parts with
him, but drilling wells was impossible since essential supplies --
chemicals, casings and other materials -- were lost when rebels
raided the warehouses where they were stored. "They took all our
supplies and everything," Weaver said.
     He hopes to return to Sierra Leone and resume well-digging in
the fall or by January 1998 at the latest.  He needs to find
someone who can operate his hog farm and to raise about $20,000 in
addition to $40,000 currently held by the Central Pennsylvania
Conference from before the project was delayed.
     Eventually, Weaver and a committee of the conference Board of
Global Ministries, which supervises his work, will need to raise
$140,000 to continue the project for four more years.  For now, an
additional $20,000 will be enough to buy supplies and cover
operating expenses for the next 15 wells, he said.
     Weaver sinks his wells at sites -- hospitals, clinics and
schools -- chosen by a committee of the United Methodist Church of
Sierra Leone.  A primary school in the village of Rotifunk, for
example, did not have potable water.  "In the morning they would
assign four or five boys, give them buckets, and they would have
to walk a half-mile to get water every day," he said.  
     The well he dug at the school was on church-owned property
but provided water for the entire community.  He also drilled
wells for a United Methodist hospital and a TB clinic in Rotifunk.
     Weaver's involvement with Sierra Leone began in 1984 when his
wife, Peggy, a nurse, accompanied a United Methodist neighbor on a
missionary work camp there.  She returned on another United
Methodist-sponsored work camp in 1990.  When she went back in
1993,  Weaver accompanied her.
     The Central Pennsylvania Conference had purchased the
well-digging rig and transported it to Sierra Leone but had not
managed to dig any wells with it.
     The Rev. Roberta Jones, a central Pennsylvania Conference
minister working for the United Methodist Committee on Relief at
the time, became convinced Weaver could make the well-digging
effort work and invited him to head the project. 
     Being Baptist and working as a United Methodist missionary
has not been a problem for Weaver.  "In Methodist organizations, I 
have met some absolutely beautiful people that love the Lord," he
said.  As long as people believe the basics of the faith, "I don't
care if you've been sprinkled, I can work with you."
                             #  #  # 

     * Snyder is editor of The Link published by the Central
Pennsylvania United Methodist Annual Conference.

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