Chikola and witnessing the residents' struggle to access water for drinking, washing and irrigation.
The former Rev Ian Stephenson travelled to Chikola for the first time on his 90th birthday last year, to meet some friends and baptise another friend's child.
While there, he watched villagers scoop water from little more than a hole in the ground into cans and carry the cans back to the village.
He learned the water also dried up in summer.
''They were very short of water,'' Mr Stephenson, who was the Milton-Tuapeka vicar from 1988 to 1992, said.
For many years he has sponsored children in Peru and then Tanzania through Christian charity Tear Fund.
When his wife died in 2003, he established the Patricia Stephenson Memorial Trust, which funds up to 80% of the training for evangelical pastors in Tanzania.
His trip to Tanzania this time was mainly to visit the pastor training college, some schools and two people he had sponsored in Arusha, whom he first visited 10 years ago, when they were both 10.
When another man he met through pastor training, Peter Fumbi, who had become the pastor at a church in Chikola, invited Mr Stephenson to baptise his infant daughter Grace, he accepted.
While there he saw that he could do more for those at Chikola, so last year Mr Stephenson's annual Christmas letter to friends and family came with photographs showing villagers in Chikola collecting water, and a request for donations towards a $13,000 well and pump for the town.
He has since raised $5000 and is raising more through a Givealittle page: givealittle.co.nz/cause/waterfortanzania.
Once the money was raised, it would take about a month to install the well. He might return to the village to see its opening, he said.
