The water problem is resolved! We blogged before Christmas about angels, who come in all shapes, sizes and genders. Today’s angel came in the form of a friend in a baseball cap. He was with us for dinner last night while we were waterless, and there had been a long conversation about angels while we sat round the table. It has to be said he’s also a plumber, but he had never dealt with wells and pumps before so there was absolutely no dinner conversation dropping hints about what needed to be done. But after a fruitless day calling plumbers who were either still on holiday or didn’t want to know, the church mice decided to take a look at the offending pump themselves. It took a bit of huffing and puffing to get the concrete slab off the top of the well, but when we saw that the pump had just two water connections (in and out) and a single electrical connection, it looked easier than we had thought. A quick inspection by our friend confirmed that in principle it was no more complicated than putting a new tap in a basin, so we went and bought a new pump, and then the aforementioned friend and one church mouse (guess which one!) spent a pleasant two hours in freezing cold darkness down a damp hole five feet deep but wide enough to easily accommodate two modestly sized individuals. Actually, the cold didn’t matter for long as we soon generated our own body heat down the hole! Unfortunately with it being dark and across an exceedingly muddy field we didn’t get a photo.
The scary bit was doing the big switch on and waiting to see what happened. A pleasant hum announced that it was all working, and sure enough the kitchen tap had water in it again for the first time in three days. So now the church mouse from down the hole is going off to have a nice jacuzzi bath, though the other mouse will probably get to share it as that one made nice cups of tea as the workers’ reward.
Now we know we can sort out water wells, where is our next ministry going to be? What is our well telling us? Not such a daft question as there is no shortage of Bible characters for whom wells were transformational spaces 
