By Rosa Prentice
For two years, my husband Brian and I prayed for water on our property. Not casually. Not a “it would be nice to have it” prayer. We needed it! We researched the ground, asked around, listened to others’ advice, and finally chose the spot we believed was right to drill a water well.
Then came six long months of trying to find a drilling company willing to take on the job. Many promised to call back. Many simply disappeared. When someone finally agreed, we still didn’t have the money, so they simply vanished.
We applied for a loan. The answer came back “No!” That rejection hurt more than I expected. But we prayed and tried again in another city, and there a woman somehow found a way to push the loan through with conditions that suited us perfectly. And this was our miracle number one.
Soon after, the Lord led us to someone who recommended a drilling crew with a good reputation. They showed up exactly as they had promised. Miracle number two.
Day One—Thanksgiving
The date the work crew set for drilling turned out to be Thanksgiving Day. For them, it meant nothing. It’s not a holiday here and was just another workday. But for me, it felt like a quiet, personal nod from God, a small token of His favor on the project. It gave me hope.
There was just one problem. They told us clearly, “We won’t work if it rains.” And the forecast predicted rain all week, especially on that day. The forecast was for a 100% chance of rain.
That morning, the company called to check on the weather at our place. It was cloudy but dry, so they decided to proceed on the three-hour drive to our place. When they were about an hour away, it started to rain. Still, they continued, and when they arrived, they set up their equipment and then waited.
I remember watching the rain and feeling my heart sink. Really, Lord?! I phoned a few friends and asked them to pray with me, specifically that God would change the weather and stop the rain.
We prayed. And the rain stopped. The entire day stayed dry while the men worked. The moment the crew packed up and left, the rain started again. Miracle number three.
The work was scheduled to take two days. The drilling itself was finished on day one. But to our dismay, no water appeared in the hole. As the men were leaving, they tried to encourage us and told us not to lose hope as sometimes a borehole simply needs to rest. “Give it 24 hours,” they said. “It may still show signs of life.” We clung to that hope.
The stress of day one—the noise, the waiting, the watching—and then seeing no water at all had left us completely tattered. To make things even worse, that evening I lost my phone somewhere in a field while walking our dogs. Mind you, it was raining again. And my ID was with my phone, so the situation was serious.
It was already getting dark. Finding the phone in the mud felt impossible. Brian did go out to search, but it was hopeless. That night we prayed and committed everything to the Lord: our empty well, my lost phone, and our broken hearts.
Day Two—Rain, Air Lift, and a Question from God
Early the next morning, on day two of the project before the drilling crew returned, Brian and I went out into the fields again to look for my phone and ID. The rain was still falling. It was cold and muddy. We split up to cover more ground.
As I walked in the fields, wet and alone with my thoughts, everything spilled out of me in prayer—the exhaustion, the disappointment, the why of losing the phone now on top of everything else, and the dismal outlook for the drilling project.
And that’s when, like a ray of light, the Lord pierced through the gloom of my mind and reminded me of my very first miracle many years ago when I was a brand-new believer. At the time, a friend had lost a key on the beach. I had gingerly whispered a prayer. I was curious about whether God was real and I was testing to see if He would pay attention to my prayer. I remembered so clearly how the instant I prayed, a wave of the sea rolled back across my feet and revealed the lost key standing upright in the wet sand, glistening just millimeters away from my toes. Impossible. Yet it happened.
I smiled as I remembered the key miracle, and then I heard the Lord’s unmistakable whisper speak very clearly to my heart: “What do you think is easier for Me, Rosa, to help you find your phone in the muddy field or to fill your borehole with water? Which comes easier for Me, in your opinion?”
My eyes filled with tears as I heard His question. How do I answer that? I was struggling. I whispered back to Him: “Both are equally easy for You, Lord. Nothing is impossible for You.”
At that exact moment, Brian shouted from across the distance. He had found the phone! Only then.
Later the same day, the drilling crew returned to finish the second part of the job. Once again, just like the day before, the rain stopped when they arrived. The weather stayed dry the entire time they worked. And when they packed up their gear and left, the rain returned.
The crew finished installing the proper water borehole casings and proceeded to air lift the well to see whether water had started to fill the borehole. It hadn’t. Only dry dust came up. The work itself was done well—proper pipes, everything in place—but still, no water came out of the hole.
It was too much for me to stay and watch them work the dry, dusty hole. My heart felt crushed to dust just like the dust coming from the drilling. I had prayed so desperately for water, and then I had watched the Lord do so many miracles to get us this far. So why nothing now?
As I paced nervously away from the drilling crew, trying to keep it all together and not lose my cool, this one Bible verse that had been looping in my mind all day like a broken record came to me again. “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, … I the Lord will hear them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them” (Isaiah 41:17).
And yet, there was still no water. Even the work crew didn’t know what to say. As they packed up their tools, their encouragement fell quiet. They had done everything they could.
That night, Brian and I went to bed exhausted. We hardly spoke to each other, not because there was nothing to say, but because neither of us wanted to say anything that might undermine the other’s faith. We were guarding our faith carefully, tenderly.
Day Three—Noah
On day three, I woke up in the morning with the story of Noah on my mind—not vaguely, incessantly. As if someone shook me and woke me, I was startled and sat up in bed wide awake with this thought echoing loudly in my mind: After Noah finished the ark, after his family and all the animals entered it, the rain did not come immediately. They waited seven days before the rain came. But I didn’t recall knowing this detail. I had to look up the story in the Bible, half wondering if my mind was just inventing hope. It wasn’t.
There were indeed seven days. Seven days inside the finished ark. Seven days of silence. Seven days of waiting after obedience. Noah hadn’t just spent 120 years building the ark. When everything was done, when there was nothing left to do, he still had to wait. The rain did eventually come, just not according to the timing they might have expected.
Elijah on the Mountain
From that day forward, Brian began his own quiet journey of faith. Each morning, he measured the water level, patiently, faithfully, waiting to prove the Lord true. This was similar to Elijah on the mountain, who sent his servant to look for even the smallest sign of clouds.
On day four, Brian was triumphant! His measuring contraption came up damp—hardly anything, but for him, it was enough. He acted as if he already possessed a full and abundant well, telling me again and again, “See? The Lord did it!” He trusted the Lord’s promise, even while the well was still 97% empty. He measured the water every day and recorded and celebrated even the smallest increase.
Slowly, day by day, the water level grew. Today, it stands at a 100% full column of water in the borehole. God honored his faith that kept showing up even when there was no evidence yet.
Afterward
The water came. Not suddenly. Not triumphantly. It rose quietly, day after day, when no one was watching. And in some ways, that was the hardest part. Because faith was required before there was evidence—when the hole was dry, the tools were packed, and the men had no words of encouragement left to offer, when Scripture looped in my mind while reality refused to change, when silence pressed hard.
Looking back, I now understand something I couldn’t see then: God did not rush to relieve the tension. He stayed in it with us. We learned to trust Him when there was nothing left but His Word and our decision to keep believing it one more day.
The waiting was agonizing. The silence was real. But God was never absent.
It was never just about the well.
