Angels Among Us

I am surrounded by angels. Angels who bring shoes and formula for our babies. Angels who buy things from our Etsy store. Angels who create the items on our Etsy store.

Today I need to talk about two angels in particular: Bulletin Board Angels and Water Angels.

First, to my Bulletin Board Angel - who single-handledly created all the advertising posters for the women's conference that I'm chairing. She's done amazing things with these. The design is amazing, the letters are perfect, and she even has 3-D effects. Thank you, Rai. You'll never know the weight that took from my shoulders even though we didn't expect you to do that ALL by yourself.

Second, my Water Angels. Last month my friend at work mentioned that his father-in-law does research and development with water filtration and that he works on projects to get state-of-the art water filters into the hands of missionaries going to third world countries. He told me that they've made a water bottle that would allow the missionary to scoop up water from a muddy ditch and it filters it to pure water so they can drink wherever they end up. They've taken water from Utah Lake and put it in these bottles and it's immediately clean enough to drink. You can't eat the fish in Utah Lake, but with these filters you can drink from it. And the price for these wonders is amazingly reasonable.

He gave me Dave's number and I called him to see what his professional opinion was for the type of water filter we would need for our Haitian orphanage. It was obvious from the initial minutes of our discussion that a) Dave knows his water and b) Dave is very passionate about making sure those who need clean water most can have it.

We spoke for about 20 minutes and at the end of the conversation he said that he'd talk to his manufacturer and see "what they could come up with" that would work well for our orphanage. "I'll see that we get you the right thing," he assured me.

I spent a lot of time wondering what the unit would look like, what type of tools we'd have to take with us to get it hooked up at the orphanage, how easy it would be to train the orphanage manager how to maintain it, etc, etc. Would it fit in our suitcases? Would we need to pack it special and use the box as our 4th piece of check-in luggage?

Long story getting shorter, the water filters arrived last night. We drove down to Dave's to pick them up.

My first shock was the size of the boxes. It looked like it would fit a large pillar candle - it's that compact. This filter kills 99.999% of viruses, bacteria, "cysty stuff", heavy metals, pharmaceutical residue, you name it - it catches it. All of that in a tiny little space.

My second shock was the way they've hooked this up so that we don't have to worry about how to connect it to the orphanage's water supply. The unit has "quick connect" technology so that we can just swap out the end of the faucet in the kitchen and attach this unit it to it. It snaps right on! That means they CAN'T mistake whether they're getting water from the clean source or not. Everything from the faucet will be clean!

My third shock was that since they were making one unit for us, they figured it was just as easy to make TWO for us. Two filtration systems!

And by my fourth shock, I was in tears - Dave and his associates donated these state-of-the-art filters to our orphanage. They wouldn't let us pay for them. He said, "People are aware of what you're trying to do and the cost is all covered." Whoever Dave's "people" are; Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!

Turns out that Dave and his partner had just completed another new design for a home filtration system and their manufacturer was working on the prototypes when I called him initially. You can't even buy these yet. And Hope for Little Angels in Haiti is getting some of the first units.

With clean water, the illness at the orphanage will decrease. With clean water, other children will be spared the fate of Ellie and Gracie. With clean water, the orphanage's limited funds can be redirected to other items because they don't have to deal with the complications of unclean water and they don't have to buy water for the children to drink.

Our thanks and gratitude to Dave, the people at Seychelle Environmental Technologies and our unknown angels that paid for all of this. Thank you for helping us save and change lives.