Today we had an action packed day. We left the hotel to drive to the church for our first round of filter distribution. Our driver Sebastian is very talented, the roads we must travel on are dirt and very rocky, they are almost always uphill. The people who live in the shanty towns at the top of the hill have water delivered by trucks. We weaved around one water truck, but were unable to pass the second. We waited for this water truck to unload, meanwhile John and Ana forged ahead in their truck. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room and the rear quarter panel of Johns truck was damaged by scraping the water truck. While waiting for this truck to move on we saw a constant stream of motor cycles and three-wheel taxi cabs passing us.Finally we arrived at the church and because we were late the first group of 25 women were already waiting. We had to remove the stickers from each bucket before they could be passed out to the women. While the women were being educated on how to use the filter and maintain them by Ana the rest of us got to work on sticker removal. The church does not have a roof on it and there is some shade, but most of it is exposed to the sun.We were thankful for the breeze. The stickers were exceptionally hard to remove and slowed down our progress quite a bit, but through perseverance and team work we were able to remove them so each woman could decorate their bucket to making it personal. Charles demonstrated to the ladies how clear the water becomes after being filtered and drank it to show them it was safe. Tracy, Rachel, and BJ played with the children outside. These kids were so happy and full of joy to color with crayons and pass a ball back and forth. It was very emotional to see how simple tasks brought so much gratitude to both the mothers for the filters and the children for a chance to play. As each woman left the church we were all given warm hugs and thanked many times over.
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