A Great Lady

This is Tracy, she works with Shane, and she is indeed a great lady. Tracy always has Cheetos and the kids love her for it! Now they have even more to love. When she heard about the well box and Shane's can collecting she brought in several bags of cans and told him to make sure and tell Damaris to keep track of her total and she will match that amount with a donation also. So last night Shane returned Tracy's cans for a total of $30.50 and today she wrote the well box a check for $40...so thanks Tracy we are up to $3521.50.

Why The Well Box?

I’ve started this blog to share with you about “THE WELL BOX” - the newest adventure that God is leading our family on. We have been world vision sponsors for 6 years and this year I let my 6 year old daughter look through the Christmas gift catalog with me and choose what she wanted to buy for Christmas. If you are not familiar with the catalog, it is filled with gifts that you can buy for those in need in the countries in which World Vision serves. So Damaris is looking through the pictures and I see her little mind working through all that she is seeing and she begins to ask questions about why children are running through water. I explain to her that it is a well and that not all children in the world have running water. "How do they go to the bathroom? Where do they brush their teeth? What do they drink?" she asks. Well needless to say, after our conversation she wanted to build a well! With my motherly voice I explain that a well costs $5,390 which is a lot of money and look at this goat, why don’t we get a goat? So we end up getting a goat and two soccer balls and post them on our world map in Haiti and Africa.

A few days later I hear a still small voice ask, “since when do you not believe that I still do miracles?” He reminded me of the miracle of Hope’s adoption funds and how He led me to the story of Gideon where God provided against all odds for His glory and where He promised to provide for Hope’s adoption. And just in case that wasn’t convincing enough I was reminded that we are to have the faith of a child. So Maris and I made what we now refer to as “the well box”. Our family has committed that we will raise enough money to build a well in a third world country.


THE FACTS:

Every year…
-1 million children will die at the hands of malaria each year from being bitten by insects that breed in water

-1.6 million will die of diarrhea from drinking contaminated water

-6 million will go blind from trachoma caused by washing with contaminated water

-12 million will be affected by typhoid fever

-400 million school age children will be infected with parasitic worms due to contaminated water. (Source World Vision)

Sometimes reading statistics like those above go in one ear and out the other. Stop a moment, let those numbers sink in, read them again and again if you need to. Absorb the magnitude of this reality. Diseases linked to contaminated water kill a child every 15 seconds! In the time it has taken you to read this paragraph 2 children have died!
It is almost unfathomable to those of us in the US, where water runs clean and clear out of multiple faucets within our homes, to understand life without this precious natural resource. When we were in Haiti we were shown water stations as we drove through the country side and told that they will go days with no water, it is hit and miss whether or not water is even available, often forcing Haitians to take water from polluted rivers, streams, or even rain gutters. The reality is that people walk miles to retrieve water which is full of deadly bacteria, parasites and water-borne diseases.
Not only is water killing a vast number of the world’s children, it is also robbing them of an education. Young girls will haul this unclean water all day instead of going to school. There is a saying in Ghana: “If you educate a man, you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation”. Yet our girls will spend their days hauling the very water that may eventually kill them instead of being given the opportunity to better their own lives and the lives around them.
Water is life. It is no coincidence that Jesus tells the woman at the well that the water that he offers will cause her to never thirst again. He knew the importance of water and that it is a metaphor that we can all understand…especially in Samaria at that time. We will build a well and provide water to nourish the body and pray for the recipients that they will also receive water that nourishes the soul.


OUR FIRST $50

So far the well box is full of change. As the children receive their allowance I notice the box gets a little heavier but now we have officially received our first large donation. We have sold our washer and dryer that we have had since our wedding 10 plus years ago and which some precious grandma owned the decade before that. The pair sold for $50 and it was jammed into the slit cut in the top of the box by three very excited little people!


TRENDY TOTS


Being that my children are sooo “trendy” I have decided to sell their clothes and toys at the annual trendy tots sale at First Baptist. For those of you who do not know my compulsive shopping ways I began shopping for clothes for Damaris two years before she was even conceived. A little extreme, maybe, but alas we are seeing the fruits of my addiction! My good friend Syd, who praise God, is carrying her miracle baby after 8 years of praying and yearning had come for first dibs and has left with an arm full and a friend from school, Sarah, came by to dress her precious one also. I have sent the kids to their rooms to choose toys for the well box sale and I am overwhelmed by stuff. As I have lent some of Maris’s clothes out to Becca and little Miss Phoebe I called to see if they were items that she no longer fits and when hearing the mission Becca generously donates a ton of adorable “trendy” clothes from the twins. So I am well stocked and gather the troops (Mom, Maris, Cherrie, and Emmy) and we set out for a day of money making!!
I had such great expectations…I mean seriously have you seen Jabe’s sweater vest collection? Phoebe is one classy little girl. Obviously my son is the coolest kid ever and Maris was a child of the Baby Gap (Not to leave Hope out but she is a hand me down third child). Well, in all we made $600 and my crew keeps reminding me that that is better than nothing.
(As I am writing this 4 months after the fact I can see that God had a divine appointment with my friend Cherrie of Tucker Bleu Photography and an expectant mother she met at Trendy Tots, who days after giving birth had Cherrie do her birth announcements, which has led to the incredible photos of her entire family and extended family and a dental office in Monmouth.)
So we now have $650 and some change and will have a garage sale in the summer with all the left over “trendy” stuff.


MISS EMERSON


When Syd was here the last time we did not yet know the gender of her miracle and now we do. It is hard for me to sell clothes to the mother of a child that I have prayed and prayed and prayed for, so I tell her to come and bring the Tahoe because I have 3 years worth of clothes for her. Being the generous couple that they are Syd wrote me a check, folded it and drove down the drive way. Minutes later I opened it and called her scolding their generosity…we are almost to $1,000!


THE GARAGE SALE


Without Jennyth around garage sales are not quite the same… but as she is away I have taken on this task armed with my pre-priced stickers and yellow fanny pack. We all know the work involved so I will not lament long, lets just say my husband used the word “rummage” for some of our more lovely items. But we did have all that left over “trendy” baby stuff that I just knew would fly off my perfectly folded tables. After a late night of giggling and pricing Emmy spent the night to help out with the kids for the “morning rush”. All in all we made a solid $600 with Emmy now in possession of the sweetest love seat ever for her dorm! And Shane has added a “Toucan” to his scooter fleet. We are at $1600!

































727 FROM HEAVEN


My sister's fam, Shane's sister's fam, abd our dear friends visiting from South Carolina all gave some cold hard cash donations (actually checks)to the well box. We are up tp $2327!


U CAN ¢HANGE THE WORLD!


Shane began using his can collecting skills when we were raising money for our adoption and he has decided to bust it out once again. He has recruited his fellow employees and the cans are rolling in and being stored in the barn(see pic)…now all we have to do is battle the icky sticky, jamming, “Can-Do” machines at Fred Meyers….total to come.






OUR WONDERFUL EMMY


We have known Em since she was 11 and watched her grow into a caring, beautiful, and strong young woman of God who our children adore (she even calls them from college) and we are so proud of her. She has traveled with us from Haiti to Hawaii and we consider her a part of our family. And Shane is so thankful for our movie nights and that she watches She’s the Man, Music & Lyrics, and 27 Dresses with me so he doesn’t have to!
Emmy decided to email her neighborhood about “the well box” asking for cans or donations, we made $50 in donations and brought back bags of cans which she and Rick returned bringing in another $74…We are at $2451!


THE BEAUTY OF A RENTER


We deposit the rent check into the well box…$3451 baby!!


DINNER AND AN OUTDOOR MOVIE


This is the next event in my grand fundraising scheme… We will serve dinner in our back yard, make some smores around the newly built ring of fire (Shane even strategically placed flat rocks near the flame for me to melt my chocolate on) and end the night with an outdoor movie under the stars with the flicker of tiki torches and the cool river breeze around us. Fellowship, food, and fun…all for a good cause. I have three scheduled but if anyone would like to have their own fundraising dinner with their sphere of life just let me know. The cost will be $10 for adults and $5 for kids and the menu will be, of course, Hawaiian.