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Cross Catholic Outreach
- December 13, 2011
Black Friday in Nicaragua
I don’t need to tell you about the Black Friday mayhem of crazed shoppers, big bargains, long check-out lines, and subsequent buyer’s remorse (or in my case, a quiet day at home putting up Christmas decorations).
But there’s another Black Friday story you may not know. A story of Nicaraguan villagers turning on their water faucets for the first time and celebrating the gift of clean water.
This fall, Cross Catholic launched a campaign to help Amigos for Christ provide clean water and sanitation for 14 remote Nicaraguan villages, where children have been suffering from parasites, diarrhea and chronic dehydration because of their dependence on contaminated, unreliable water sources.
“When we turned that on, the water was just gushing. It was beautiful… We couldn’t get the kids out of there!”
The project has been labor-intensive, due to the challenges posed by the mountains, forests, a scorching dry season, and a mud-soaked rainy season. But on Black Friday, two of the 14 villages at last achieved their dream of clean water.
Amigos director John Bland told me what an inspiration it was to be in El Chonco and La Nuevo Hoya for the inauguration of the new water systems. The villagers gathered at a local school to watch him turn on the first shower, then the children went wild, playing in the shower as if it were an open fire hydrant on a hot city street.
John said, “When we turned that on, the water was just gushing. It was beautiful… We couldn’t get the kids out of there!”
The most moving part for John was when a young pregnant woman stepped into the shower stream, fully clothed, laughing as she lifted her shirt to let the water pour on her belly and unborn child. John told me, “Everything was worth it in that moment… That baby is going to grow up never knowing what it was like to not have water.”
What a fantastic Christmas gift – and more proof positive that the support from our donors really does make a difference!
Please keep John and the Amigos team in your prayers as they continue their hard work of installing the water systems for the Nicaraguan villages.
-Tony M.
