King´s Water Project 2012 - Gracias A Dios! (Thanks be to God!)

So you might say that the King´s Honduras Water Project is all wrapped up for this year but the project won´t be totally complete until the people of Gracias a Dios have water in their homes.  After three weeks of hard labour by 14 King´s students mixing cement and digging trenches, I can definitely say that the water project is well on its way.   According to the team of masons in charge of the project, they estimate another month and a half to complete the tank, dam and lay the rest of the piping.  It looks like smooth sailing from here on out but we´re all praying that no complications pop up along the way. 

So, May 2^nd I met up with the team as they arrived at the Tegucigalpa airport.  The next day we head out to Olanchito (10 hours away by bus) to meet up with the Alfalit staff for orientation.  After a day of intense preparation and a lot of good questions about the social, political and environmental issues in Honduras, the team finally made their way up the mountain range to the isolated community of Gracias a Dios. 

This little village of 35 homes and about 150 inhabitants was formed about 4 years ago when the government endowed the land to a cooperative of poor landless farmers from around the country.  While it will be years before the community pays back the 4,000,000 lempira loan but they are so grateful to have their own land on which to cultivate and raise their families.   It´s no wonder they named the community Gracias a Dios – Thanks be to God!  This community was blessed last year with a team from the United States to build a new school and they were overwhelmed with gratitude when they found out earlier this year that CRWRC and King´s were interested in doing a water project with them. 

The Gracias a Dios water system consists of a dam at the top of the mountain stream, about 1.5kms of tubing to the distribution tank and then various branches of tubing to each of the 35 homes.  The 14 youth from the King´s University worked side by side with the locals digging about 1.3kms of the conduction line, prepared the site for the dam and laid the two-foot foundation for the tank.   This made for a lot of hard work – especially when you have to hike for an hour uphill just to get started working at the dam site! 

Besides all that hard work under a hot sun, we did have some good times!  We went for walks around the community to get to know more families and how they live.  We attended church services throughout the week at both the Baptist and Catholic churches.  We played games with the kids, hiked to some amazing caves, learned to make tortillas, took in a tour of a local´s onion field and some of us even learned to play chess and several fun-filled variations on Chinese checkers. 

We had planned an excursion to El Coyolar to check on last year´s King´s water project with Alfalit.  We were all so excited to see what the finished product might look like in Gracias a Dios and also to swim in the nearby waterfall.  However, it turns out this team had terrible luck when it came to transportation and one thing after another led to an inevitable change of plans and we went to a river in Olanchito instead.  Elizabeth and Melissa noted this hilarious series of events with an entry in their Honduras joke book – coming soon to a store near you:

                Q:  Why did 14 Canadian students cram into a tiny van drive 2.5 hrs into rural Honduras in 35°C weather and then turn around before reaching their destination?

                A:  To see a Honduran geyser explode from the van´s engine in the front seat!

All in all, May was an eventful month that may people will never forget.  The 14 students went home with rewarding experiences, amazing friendships and a well-developed understanding of the challenges and triumphs of transformational development in Honduras.  Ana and I were impressed with their valuable comments and insightful concerns during the CRWRC debriefing at the end of the trip.  They are all now equipped to be ambassadors for Honduras and the work of CRWRC around the world. 

And although these students might feel that they received much more they gave but I know that the people of Gracias a Dios will be remembering them fondly for the next 10, 15 and even 20 years from now.  It means so much to them to know that students from so far away sacrificed their time and energy to fundraise for materials, travel to Honduras and work alongside them in their all but forgotten little village.  I hope everyone on the team will go home and tell all of their sponsors and prayer partners of the profound love, gratitude and hard work of the people of Gracias a Dios.  The 2012 King´s Honduras Water Project is just another example of how King´s students are blessed richly to be a blessing to others.