We have BEEN to the mountain top!

It's not the end of the world, but it's the last stop before it! Go an hour and fifty minutes outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras to the rusty bridge, turn right. Go another 45 minutes up a steep gravel road. Dodge (not to mention the bones of the unfortunate steer whose parched bones tell us it succumbed to the harsh environment.) Take the first left, continue 10 minutes. Where are you? In Morocopay, Honduras, at the Iglesia Evangelica Presbiteriana Verbo de Dios. No electricity, no running water. The one spigot for the community is turned on once every two days. when Dionisios Dominguez, Treasuror of the Water Committtee, unlocks the access and turns on the flow. Fillipe Silva is the president of the water committee.

Pastor Rachel Canales flashes her sweet smile, tinged with the slight flash of gold. She is clearly the matriarch of the community. Children have followed us up from their huts below, wanting to know why these gringoes are  here. Two little girls are so excited by our arrival, they go home and come back, freshly washed, sporting their Sunday best. Take a picture of us! they indicate with their smiles.

Elmer Moreno, student pastor under Rachel, helps answer our Water Issues Survey questions. One in 25 children die before their fifth birthday due to water-related illnesses. 5 children per day (in a community of 250 persons!) miss school each day for the same types of illnesses. Adults and children alike suffer from this. Average monthly household income is 1500 Limpira per month. Okay, so that translates to about $75 per household per month. And many spend up to half of that on transportation costs to get down the mountain to their field labor jobs. Literacy rate is about 50%.

The church, manse, and Sunday School building have been built over time by other Presbyterys and NGO's. They come and go. The people stay the same. Devoted, simple, trusting. Yes, we drink this water. No, it is not treated. Sometimes we put the plastic bottles of water out in the sun to purify it. Can we build a building to house a filtration system? Yo creo si!

The lifestyle these people lead is so far removed from ours it almost beyond comprehension. Drinking the water you see in these pictures because you have no other option tells it all. Elmer turned on the water tap so that we could do our water tests on it. It was an extremely hot day. We watched, poignantly, as the children all flocked to the running stream with cupped hands to slake their thirst with the tainted water.