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Two weeks ago today, I set out on a trip to El Salvador. Myself and four other members from our church were on a mission to help the poor by drilling a clean water well for a school. I will tell you more about it, but first let me go back.

We try to help our children see that there are many people in this world who have much less that we do. Many who do not have even some of the basic necessities of life. One thing we like to do around Christmas time is to go through the catalogue we get from World Vision. If you haven’t seen their holiday catalogue, you should check it out. It’s especially great for children. It’s not a catalogue of stuff you can buy for yourself, but rather items you can buy for others. You can buy animals (chickens, goats, cows, camels). You can buy fishing nets and equipment. You can buy school supplies, medical supplies, or clothing. Each item has pictures of children or families which are representative of the people that will receive your gifts. There are some pages with many items for smaller dollar amounts which makes it affordable for the kids. It’s really helped our children to feel closer to the people they are giving their money to. They know that the vegetable seeds or blankets they’re buying are not going to the girl in the picture, but it still is much more personal than just giving money to a large organization. And of course you can buy a water well or part of one. It’s also been a great reminder to us as we desire to buy things for ourselves which we often don’t really need. My wife will sometimes lovingly remind me where our priorities should be by asking, “How many camels can you buy for the cost of this ____?”.

We started to dream about being able to pay for a well, which in some areas can be over $20,000. In El Salvador it only cost about $5,000. An even bigger dream was to be able to go as a family and let our children see first hand that unless we give and go to help, there are many people who will not even have clean water to drink. So we were excited when our community of faith decided to participate in the Advent Conspiracy. The basic idea is that we would spend less money on ourselves, our friends, and family for Christmas so that we could spend more money helping to provide clean water to people around the world. At the beginning of this year, our elders thought it would be a good idea to also send a team to help with a well in addition to sending the money we had raised. As soon as Shannon and I heard of the opportunity, we were very excited. We both wanted to go. However, we felt it may be a little too soon to leave our youngest away from her Momma for a week. So we decided that I should go on my own; this would be a fact-finding mission for me as well as a well drilling mission.

Filed under: El Salvador, Faith on May 24th, 2008