Digging Deeper

Today at Calvary Baptist Church our Children's Ministry revealed a huge project they will be undertaking in 2011. We will be partnering with Living Water International to dig a well in Honduras. The kids will be doing a number of projects to raise $5,000 to pull this off, and we're really excited for this opportunity to provide clean drinking water for a village that right now is suffering greatly from the lack of any clean water supply. We're calling this "Dig Deeper in 2011", doing both this well project in combination with a focus on the kids (in partnership with parents) digging deeper in their faith and relationship with Jesus Christ. We've launched a Dig Deeper page on our website and even a new blog by our Families Ministries Director, Amy Anthony.

As cool as this is, it got a bit personal this morning when the family got home from church today after the Dig Deeper project was revealed, and after each kid got a water bottle filled with mud and junk as an object lesson. I asked my three boys what they learned in class today and they mentioned their bottles. I explained that many kids in Honduras have to drink water just like that, and they asked how we could help them. Oh my goodness... for the next full hour they had non-stop questions about wells, water, sickness, Honduras, and how they could make a difference. As we sat at the lunch table we learned all about what the kids there eat (beans, tortillas, bananas, eggs, meat and cheese), how they had to walk two hours just to get their water. We pulled out the globe and hunted down Honduras on the map. We saw that it was almost identical in size to Indiana (both 100,000 sq.km), and even similar populations (8 vs 6.5 million). My wife shared it was the third poorest country in the whole Western Hemisphere (after Haiti and Nicaragua). Each of my sons in turn took their hand and placed it on the globe over Honduras and prayed for the country. One prayed they would be healthy and safe. My oldest prayed they would find a great place to dig a well and that we could raise enough money to help them. My youngest boy prayed that the kids there would stay healthy long enough for us to get the well built and not die first (gasp, that one shocked me). Our boys are very excited that they and other Calvary kids will actually be working this year to save lives of these families in Honduras. I'm definitely excited, and hope you are too!