Out There with the Beams--December 2012

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! We hope this season finds you with lots of time to spend with your loved ones. We are excited that our family will all be together here in Santa Cruz this year. We want to take this chance to say THANK YOU to everyone who has supported our ministries with prayer and financial gifts over the past year. We could not continue working in Bolivia without your support.

We just finished up with our last volunteer team of the year. We spent a great week with a Crossroads Christian Church team from Kentucky (our home church). Half the team stayed in town with Vanessa and worked at the Ruth and Noemi Transition House. The other half went with me and the Agua Yaku staff out to drill water wells in a Guarani community about eight hours south of Santa Cruz.

Ministry Updates

Ruth and Noemi: The girls and staff from Ruth and Noemi are getting settled into their new home in the El Alfarero ministry building. Vanessa and Dorcas (the director) are preparing to receive several new girls in December and January. It is a tight fit, but the new apartment has a capacity for up to eleven women and five babies. Ruth and Noemi has been fortunate enough to be supported by several large donations over the past couple of years, but now they need to grow their monthly support base so they are always sure of steady support for their monthly budget. The girls continue to make jewelry and tee-shirts to help pay for their room and board. Soon they will be volunteering in the El Alfarero cafeteria, which will be serving between 500 and 1000 students each day.

Agua Yaku: We are changing things up a bit in Agua Yaku. While we will continue to drill water wells, we will begin to focus more specifically on providing access to clean water and improving health through HWTS (household water treatment and safe storage) and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) programs. Because of a number of limitations (financial and technological) we have not been able to drill wells in every community where clean water is needed. In many communities where it is not possible to drill wells, the residents have to drink water collected from rain water or other surface sources that are unsanitary. The World Health Organization has determined that clean water can reduce water-related deaths by 21%, sanitation (latrines) can reduced water-related deaths by 37.5%, and hygiene (hand washing) can reduce water-related deaths by 35%. Improvements in all three areas could practically eliminate water-related deaths!

Through a new filter technology we hope to place a water filter system in each home that does not have access to a clean water source. Sawyer (http://www.sawyer.com/sawyersaves/default.html) has developed a hollow-fiber membrane filter that can filter up to 500 gallons of potable water a day (cleaner than U.S. bottled water) and is guaranteed for 1,000,000 gallons. This is a huge leap in filter technology. Would you like to help Agua Yaku provide a family with clean water for life. For $100 we can provide a family with a Sawyer filter and training on how to use and maintain the filter, and training on how to improve their family's health through sanitation and hygiene. We have a big goal: we would like to place 100,000 filters in Bolivia in the next five years, which would provide clean water for around 1,000,000 people! How many families would you like to give clean water to for life? As we implement this program we will continue to work through local churches, pastors, and missionaries to make sure the poor are ministered to and that everyone hears about the love and truth in Christ.  

Beams Family Support: While Vanessa and I would much rather raise support for our projects, we also have to raise support for our own salary. We are a bit low on our monthly pledges and for 2013 we need an additional $1000 in monthly support to help cover our salary, insurance, travel, etc. It would mean so much to us if you could give $25, $50, or $100 or more a month to help support our work here in Bolivia.

If you would like to donate to Agua Yaku, Ruth & Noemi, or to our support account, please follow the links in this email. If that is too confusing, give us a call at: 011-591-3351-1087 or contact us by email at: beamsclan@gmail.com and we will walk you through it. We wish each and everyone of you the best during the Christmas season and the coming new year.

Blessings,
Danny and Vanessa

“Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” Psalms 25:5