I hope
spring comes quickly for all of you. We
have great weather year-round here in Santa Cruz, but I miss the changing
seasons back in the U.S. We have had a
great start to 2017, already hosting two teams in January and February, and
preparing for more in March and on through the summer. It is so exciting to see the enthusiasm for
ministry of so many friends and supporters to come down and join us in our work in
Bolivia.
In January, we
hosted a team of eight Bolivian youth from a mission training organization
called CIMA, who worked with Agua Yaku to distribute water filters in several
rural Guarani communities south of Santa Cruz, down around Charagua. We had a great week, providing clean water as
well as sharing the gospel through drama and film. Please be praying for Alcides, a local
missionary from Machipo who works as a pastor and an agricultural consultant for
farmers in this area. During the last month, Charagua has been invaded by
locusts and most farmers will be losing their crops, and all their income, for
the season.
In February
we hosted a team from the Wellspring prayer ministry based in Lexington, Kentucky. This is the second year they have come to
bless people and give them hope through prayer.
It was so exciting to translate for this team and see how God so
intimately loves and cares for everyone we encountered.
In February
we also had two young men from Oregon come volunteer for a month with Agua
Yaku. They worked right alongside our
Bolivian staff who continue to drill water wells week-in and week-out. We are preparing for more teams during March
and April that will help in both our city ministries and in the Agua Yaku water
ministries.
We are still
on target to bring to market, and to our ministry, a new water filter called
AquaSiv. Manufactured by my partner in
China, the AquaSiv filter will work similarly to the Sawyer filter that we have
been using for several years now. It
will remove 100% of bacteria, parasites, and other disease causing pathogens
that cause the epidemic problems with diarrhea and gastrointestinal
diseases. We are manufacturing our own
filter to bring the cost down and to improve ease-of-use so that even the
poorest and least educated families can gain access to clean water and improved
health.
Many people
ask me why we focus on clean water. Did
you know that around the world, over 1,000,000 children under the age of 5 die
each year from diarrheal diseases that are directly related to drinking
contaminated water?
Just the
other day I read in a local paper that in Bolivia alone, 40 children a day die
from lack of access to safe drinking water.
The real tragedy is that most these deaths are easily preventable by
simply improving water quality, hygiene, and sanitation.
Studies
collected by the World Health
Organization show that access to clean drinking water can reduce diarrhea
by 19%, simple hand-washing with soap can reduce diarrhea by 47%, and proper
sanitation (which means using outhouses or toilets rather than defecating out
in the open) can reduce diarrhea by 36%.
These three interventions combined can reduce the incidence of diarrheal
disease by up to 90%.
So, access
to clean water is obviously important, but we also want to emphasize the
importance of good hygiene (through hand washing) and sanitation. But even simple tasks like washing your hands
after you go to the bathroom or before you eat is difficult to teach and
practice in households that do not have running water.
To this end,
we have designed the "Clean Water Station," a simple steel tripod stand
that provides a place for water filtration and hand-washing with a device commonly
known as a "tippy-tap."
The tippy-tap
is a foot-operated hands-free hand-washing station. With this simple solution and bit of training
and encouragement families will see dramatic improvements in their health and
well-being.
For about
$75 you can give a "Clean Water Station" (which includes both a water
filter and a tippy-tap hand washing jug) to a family in Bolivia. Please join us in our efforts to provide
clean water, and bring renewed health and hope, to families in need.
If you would
like to donate to our ministry, please click on the donate button and follow
the instructions in the link. We love
working here in Bolivia and certainly feel God's guidance in all we do, but we
cannot do it without partners like you backing us up with prayers and financial
support. Thank you to everyone who is
already supporting us! We look forward
to see who else will soon be joining us in supporting God's work here in Bolivia.
Blessings,
Danny and Vanessa
Danny and Vanessa
