The Importance of Diligence
The Importance of Diligence
One of the most overlooked business principles is diligence. This is the simple act of doing something repeatedly, over time, until one day you look up and realize you have made monumental change. It isn’t quick, and it often feels like a grind. In my experience, you will also question why you are still doing it, if it’s even worth it anymore. But then – you see the results and know without a shadow of a doubt it was worth all the pain, sacrifice, and questioning – and so much more. This is what happened with the Set Free ministry in Liberia.
I am lucky to get to stand on the shoulders of those who came before me. In Liberia, this was Roland Bergeron and Dennis Aggrey. Dennis is local to Liberia and had a vision for planting churches and discipling his country. But everywhere he went, the villages lacked the same thing. Clean water. Across the ocean in the US, Roland was also working on starting a water-based nonprofit. Beginning in Honduras, he was unsettled with the feeling that he was doing the right work in the wrong location.
Roland and Dennis connected at church and it was quickly apparent that this is where Roland was supposed to be drilling wells. Water of Life established itself in Liberia and a partnership was born. Liberia had recently come out of a civil war, the infrastructure was devastated, and villagers were needlessly suffering from water-borne illnesses. It was a slow grind, but one well, one village at a time – we were making a difference.
“This is the simple act of doing something repeatedly, over time, until one day you look up and realize you have made monumental change.”
We celebrated the villages who received clean water and witnessed the immediate impacts. Health improved and children could return to school because they no longer needed to spend so much time walking to collect dirty water. We sent medical teams to help supplement the work with medical care. I can’t tell you the number of antibiotics and de-worming medications we gave out for water-borne illnesses. We also dealt with personnel issues and equipment breakdowns. There were numerous times that we questioned if what we were doing was even worth it anymore. The need seemed overwhelming, and we felt like we were only a drop in the bucket. But we remained diligent.
Additional nonprofits joined in the mission, and The Last Well came along to organize the efforts. This is when our diligence really paid off because there was now momentum behind what we were doing. For 7 more years, one well and one village at a time, we worked towards our goal of reaching all of Liberia. We stayed in the grind, and we were faithful with what we had been given. And then, in December of 2020, it was over. We (mostly) finished the task. The last well was drilled.
This felt like a monumental achievement, and it was rightfully celebrated. But it also still felt like business as usual. We scaled down our work to really focus on repairs and supplemental wells for population growth and/or irreparable problems. We remained diligent, faithfully scaling down the work we were called to do. It felt different, but I still didn’t see the full impact of what was accomplished.
November 2021, the medical mission team made their annual trip to hold medical clinics. This is when the full results of our years of diligence was revealed. We came armed with our usual assortment of prescriptions to treat the usual diseases we encountered. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, worms – we were ready to treat them all. But we didn’t see them. They weren’t there. All of the remote villages we travelled to reach had water wells in their villages. They weren’t suffering from water-borne illnesses. There was joy, and it made all the years to get there worth it.
