Water project fundraiser
Hey folks, I wanted to write to share a little more about the water project for a refugee community that I mentioned in my update a few weeks ago, and to ask you each to consider donating financially towards the cause. Villa Clemen is a shanty-town of about 5,000 people, built of tarps and sticks and cinderblock, with no clean water, no waste or sewage system, and sporadic electricity. The number two killer for children worldwide is unsafe drinking water, and the current conditions in Villa Clemen are a slow pitch for bacteria and parasites, putting these children at great risk for serious illnesses and even death. A clean water solution is crucial, and we’re nearly there. We have the first and most expensive phase finished, a deep bore-hole with a 6-7 liter per second flow. But we need to make that flow accessible by purchasing a pump, building a tank, and putting a distribution system in place, which we’re hoping to do for around $10,000, although we don’t have a professional engineer’s estimate yet.
As Christmas is coming up in a couple of months, we’ve started talking now about how we’d like to have pure, clean drinking water for these families as a sort of Christmas gift, and maybe to help them keep that New Years resolution not to ingest life-threatening parasites this year. In the US our Christmas giving is often centered around the rather materialistic reference point offered to us by a consumer society. And while it’s exciting and fun to receive crisply wrapped presents, I’d like to invite you this year to consider another outlet for your goodwill. (I would recommend asking others to give you this gift, rather than presuming that your loved ones’ faces will beam with philanthropic joy at receiving a pretty new note on Christmas morn.) Perhaps you could make a simple Christmas wish list that looked a little something like this:
1. Give clean water to the sick and needy in my name
2. Wooly reindeer house-slippers
3. A Slinky
Pretty simple, and yet significant, right? Who really needs more? I would seriously love to receive this gift (hint, hint, nudge, nudge). And it’s a great way to “shop early” and avoid those awful lines at the check-out. But seriously, if we want to meet the deadline for having the water project completed by early December, we would need for you to do the Christmas giving a little ahead of time–say, by the end of October or early November. The information for making a tax-deductible donation is as follows:
YWAM
PO Box 3000
Garden Valley, TX
75771-3000
The check itself should be made out to YWAM, but please be sure to mention on a separate note in the same envelope that it is a donation for YWAM Medellin, Colombia. Then if you could please email me to let me know the amount, I can be sure that it gets put towards the well-project. I will also be drafting a nice little donation certificate that could be put in a stocking or under the tree. Thanks so much for your consideration and generosity.
Matthew 25:35, 40 “For I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…. Truly, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Shalom, Jon
P.S. Please share this at your work-places, schools, churches, etc. And please do it SOON! Thanks!
