Hoosier builds water pumps for South American villages

About 15 years ago, one of his missionary friends called him saying he wanted him to go to Guyana.

"Where's that?" Yantis recalled, thinking with a laugh.

The country on South America's northern coast is filled with villages of about 100 to 300 people, Yantis said he soon learned.

Ruth Ann, Yantis' wife who has joined him on many mission trips, said people mainly travel by boat in Guyana and many houses are built on stilts with walls made out of sticks.

Houses often have thatched roofs, Ben Yantis added.

"Very rugged, nothing fancy at all," his wife said. "But they're happy people. They're easy to work with. They just don't have resources."

Yantis admires them as well. He recalled one Guyanese pastor who traveled five days by canoe with his wife and 18-month-old child to attend a seminar to be a better pastor before making the five-day return trip.

"He's a worker and a half," Yantis said.

The mission trips started out by installing cast-iron pumps with interior leathers that would wear out quickly.

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