Thank You! June 5, 2007

So that’s a quick story of our trip. We had a great time and we sincerely appreciate all of your support! Your support helped to provided much needed hygeine kits for the people of La Acequia, to send some students to school who could not afford it, to give some people in the town jobs who have not had jobs for a long time, to send injured people to the doctors who could not otherwise afford to go, and to help get some school supplies for the small school in the center of town.

Thank you all for your generous support!

God Bless!
Meg

Some Great pictures June 5, 2007

Spinning Taz around

Their Water Supply June 5, 2007

Eric and I had an opportunity to go up and see La Acequia’s water supply. From what Johnny had told us before, the water system was really bad and did not work adequately enough to supply water to the entire town.

Johnny’s work with the town for the past five years has been focused on getting their water system up and running. Johnny was instrumental in helping to get a Korean company down river to donate all of the supplies needed to create a better water system.

This is the water system that the men of the town have built from the resources from the Korean company. It is 1000 times better than what they had (unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the old).

Five miles of pipes were placed from this point all the way down the river to the town and the men of the town placed all of them.

Actually this is the water system that the town had before the huge hurricane came and completely distroyed it.

This is us walking up stream to see other town’s water sources.

What we did June 4, 2007

During the week we first focused on passing out hygiene kits. If you noticed some of the pictures, the children’s teeth are already rotting and if you can’t tell, they are typcially always dirty. So our hygiene kits consisted of toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap.

We passed these out amoung the homes and while we did that we did a survey to find out some basic characteristics about the people’s lives in La Acequia.

53% of the people have water 0-3 times per week
48% of the people have water 4-7 times per week
(i’ll post more stats later once I complete them)

We also conducted seminars to help educate the people. We did a hygiene/first aid seminar. We had the students line up in the shape of a mouth and we taught them how to properly brush thier teeth. We also did some basic first aid on kids and handed out medicine for some that were sick. We had a huge line out the door of the church!

We also did a seminar on composting. I thought this seminar was really important because not only can we help the people learn how to create good soil to use to grow food, but we can help them to make better use of their trash, instead of throwing it on the ground.

We also did a finance seminar to help people gain knowledge on managing their money as well as training for starting a business.

Now the sour part… June 2, 2007

It amazed me the joy these people had, especially after seeing some of the places where they lived…

The following family lived in a small two bedroom shack on the edge of town. They had about 6 kids running around, most with no clothes or shoes.

During the week we also encountered a lot of injuries during the trip. We spent alot of time cleaning wounds, which were typically caked in dirt. It was sad to see the lack of education in simple first aid. What amazed me though was the kids still had a smile on their face even though their wounds were infected with dirt! If you don’t like to see blood..you may want to not look at the next couple of pictures….

This kid had trench foot. We cleaned it two days in a row..and each day we asked him to make sure to stay off of his foot, and each day, he would be out playing in his barefeet in the dirt.

Sweet and Sour June 2, 2007

Eric describes this trip as sweet and sour. Some of the sweetness you have already seen in the pictures of the kids. The following show the friendships we made with the adults of the town as well.

This is Ignasio (spelling?). Ignasio lives with his family in a small wood shack. He has some block that New Life purchased in the past for his house and when asked why he has not built a new home for his family, we were told that he didn’t have enough blocks because he had used some of them to help his neighbor construct his home. Ignasio is a father to many kids, much of whom are not even his own. He and his wife have the group over every year for some fantastic Pan Dulce. It was fantastic!

This is Carlos Ramon. He and his wife have been unable to find work for over a year. Some of your support has gone to help get Carlos Ramon some carpentry tools so that he may be able to start some sort of business by building furniture and other items.

This is Pastor Alex who faithfully leads his church in this small town. Pastor has a great smile and he graciously serves the people of La Acequia.

These three women took great care of us! They cooked for us and washed clothes! The food was delicious…with homemade flour tortillas and beans that didn’t give you gas!

Kids, Kids, and more Kids! June 2, 2007

Here are some of our favorite picks…these kids never stopped being joyful!

Me and Andrea. This girl was part of a family that was one of the poorest in La Acequia. She and her 9 other brothers and sisters live with their mom and grandmother in basically a one room shack. Her smiles never ceased.

Our favorite kid was named Jorgito. He had a broken finger which we try to care for during the week. We nicknamed Jorgito, Taz, because he was like a little tazmanian devil running around. He never stopped and was hilarious. Despite his broken finger, which he held up in the air as he ran around, he never stopped smiling!

Miguel stood out above the rest! He was a caring, thoughtful young boy who never stopped smiling. He nicked named eric Zidane because he looked like the French Soccer player Zinedine Zindane! He was excited to score on Eric when we played soccer!

Heide was another great little girl. She always sat with me at church and wrapped her arms around me and just say their. She was the sweetest thing with the sweetest spirit!

La Acequia June 2, 2007

We pulled into the town square and were welcomed not only by a ton of people, but by fireworks!

The people and the kids were all smiling and so happy that we had come. I couldn’t help but feel awkward as I stepped off the bus and everyone of the kids stared at me…because I had bloned hair…something they rarely see!

The kids from the start were a blast. I jumped in and started trying to communicating with them, learning quickly that spainish wasn’t coming back to me as easily as I had thought. We played games and soon the kids wouldn’t leave our side.

Eric was bombarded with kids shouting, “Photo, Photo” and screeched with joy as they actually saw themseleves in the digital camera screen. That first night we played with the kids until dinner.

The road June 2, 2007

We arrived at the airport to a host of people welcoming us from La Acequia. They had all journied from the town on a school bus. All were filled with smiles and hugs, even to us who they did not know. I found myself getting a bit teary eyed as I watched our new friends greet each other, so happy to see their faces again.

The bus was an old american school bus and we all packed in and started our bumpy journey to La Acequia.

A small sign which read, Detour La Acequia, was the only clue that there was even a town
tucked away off of the main road.

The road, dusty, unkept, and bumpy was lined with burned trees and we quickly learned that someone burnt down the jungle forest for revenge.

Detour? Barren, burnt lands? It seemed to me we were headed for a place no one knew or cared about….

2 hours and 8 minutes later May 8, 2007

So I finished. I didn’t feel very good actually. Well the finish did…but for some reason, I just wasn’t having a good running day! I just didn’t feel good the entire race. That being said, I was proud to finish in under 10 minutes per mile.

The race was beautiful and it was great to run with my friends. We all finished at about the same time. We were all exhausted, but it was a great time.

Thank you all for your support and love through this race.

The next journey….Honduras….11 days. Wow!