8 SEPTEMBER 2026 WorldWide Drilling Resource® by Rod Bartholomew, submitted by Gary Bartholomew The dry season had come earlier than usual to northern Guatemala and settled over the land in a way that left people feeling hopeless. Week after week, the heat pressed down on the land around La Compuerta, a small community near the Belize border. It's difficult to describe the pain and suffering this community experienced, existing year after year without access to clean water. We had come to Guatemala with the team from Water for Life, the organization based in Spokane, Washington, committed to bringing clean water and the gospel to remote Guatemalan villages. On this particular trip, my role was to help with evangelism and hold dental clinics in the villages and communities where wells were being drilled. The situation in La Compuerta was among the worst I'd ever observed. The village had no clean water source. What they had instead was a low-lying basin nestled between rolling hills. Every rainfall in the region drained into it. There was no outlet, no stream, no river, no drainage. Only evaporation and seepage into the ground slowly reduced it. So it became a catch basin for everything the hills produced. Animals lived and died on those slopes. Waste washed down. Organic matter decayed. Over time, the water turned into thick, stagnant, foul-smelling muck. It was the kind of water no one would ever consider drinking, and yet it was all they had. Families knew it was unsafe. They had no illusions about it. They also had no alternative. Many of the children suffered frequent illnesses. Some families, fearful of the contaminated water, tried to buy bottled soft drinks or fruit juices instead - anything they thought might be safer - but even that was beyond the reach of the poorest households. So the suffering continued quietly, year after year. One of the most devastating realities we learned was children - especially infants and toddlers - were dying in the village with heartbreaking regularity. It had become, in a sense, normalized grief. We left early on a Monday morning in a small four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi pickup loaded with dental supplies and clinic equipment. The roads deteriorated quickly once we left the main routes. In places, it felt less like driving on a road and more like navigating a dry riverbed carved by past floods. At one point, the inevitable happened. A tire gave out under the strain of the terrain. Changing it was its own ordeal. The lug nuts had clearly not been loosened in years. Rust had seized them. We worked in the heat, sweating through shirts, using every bit of leverage we had. What should have taken minutes stretched into nearly two hours before we were finally able to continue. By the time we reached La Compuerta, we were behind schedule and already exhausted, but there was no time to rest. Word had spread quickly. People began gathering immediately. Within a short time, we had nearly 75 patients waiting for dental care. We set up three portable dental chairs under a makeshift cover and began working as efficiently as possible. The needs were overwhelming. Pain, infection, and neglected dental disease - conditions which would have been manageable elsewhere had become severe simply because of lack of access to care. It was in the middle of this that I had a life-impacting experience I will tell about next month. If you would like to help, contact Gary Bartholomew at 509-939-1941. Gary Gary Bartholomew may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com WTR Drilling Fundamentals by: Concrete Sawing and Drilling Assoc. Sawing & Drilling 101 October 12-14 ~ Elyria, OH Sawing & Drilling 201 - Operator Certification October 14-16 ~ Elyria, OH phone: 217-528-3275 www.csda.org/events Foundations by: Pile Dynamics, Inc. and GRL Engineers, Inc. Seminar: State of Practice: Benefits, Methods, Risks and Education Connection Implementation of Deep Foundation Quality Assurance Methods October 12 ~ Houston, TX October 14 ~ Mobile, AL October 16 ~ St. Louis, MO phone: 216-831-6131 www.pile.com/events/ Groundwater / Water Well by: Princeton Groundwater, Inc. The Remediation Course October 26-30 and November 2-6 LIVE ONLINE phone: 813-964-0800 www.princetongroundwater.com/ courses/remediation-course Irrigation by: Rain Bird Academy Training October 5-9 ~ Mobile, AL October 5-9 ~ Stockton, CA October 12-16 ~ Campbell, CA October 12-16 ~ Gainesville, FL October 19-23 ~ Bakersfield, CA October 19-23 ~ Sarasota, FL October 26-30 ~ Riverside, CA October 26-30 ~ Panama City Beach, FL phone: 800-498-1942 E-mail: training@rainbird.com Pipe by: McElroy University Large Diameter TracStar® iSeries Fusion Operator Qualification October 1-2 ~ Broken Arrow, OK phone: 918-836-8611 www.mcelroy.com More education opportunities during events can be found by clicking here online at: worldwidedrillingresource.com
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