Water Mage

Dear Dave,
I wish you could have seen the reaction here in Haiti to your filters. We had some time while we were waiting for a family that wasn't on our flights to get checked in and we were all hanging out on the parking lot of the hotel. Nadia, the orphanage owner was sitting in the open back of a little pickup truck (on a chair... there were a couple of them propped in the back there. I do imagine it would be more comfortable than sitting on the floor while traversing the bumpy, potholed roads, but it's definitely not safer!) Harry and his wife, Pascal were there as well and they were translating what I was saying into Kreyol for Nadia.

I pulled out one of the sport-sized water filter bottles you sent and told Harry that you could put "any" water in it and it would come out clean. He looked at me skeptically and so I took the lid off and motioned dipping water up from the street, and then putting the lid back on and drinking it. (we were in a parking lot - no water around). Nadia obviously could see where I was going and she started laughing like that was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever seen me do. (and she's seen me do some ridiculous things!)

I explained to them that the Church sends these out with missionaries now and that they sell them at the Missionary Training Center as well. That convinced Harry. He translated to Nadia. While I was explaining to Harry that he can order them for the missionaries in Haiti, Nadia and Pascal were talking rapidly back and forth. Pascal finally interrupted and said, "What about brown water?" Apparently she and Nadia had been discussing the filters and had determined that you still wouldn't use them on just any water, because that obviously just be dumb and Lori obviously doesn't understand what she's saying. :) I said, "Brown, muddy, nasty water from the ditch on the side of the road... YES. You could filter that and it would be CLEAN." Harry translated all my adjectives and their eyes got wider and wider with each. They hooted with delight at this new marvel!

We made it to the orphanage. When I took the filter back into the kitchen to see if it would fit, to my horror I discovered the faucets in both the sinks (I didn't remember there were two sinks in their kitchen, but there are) are different than what we've seen before. They're going to need a female-to-female adapter to connect the filter to the faucet. Harry's working on that (He hasn't actually been able to look yet because we had him booked today and tomorrow he and Chareyl from our agency get to attend an historic meeting on adoption between Haiti and the USA where the State Department from both sides will be signing an agreement on how adoptions will work and what is expected from both countries going forward. Hopefully that will clarify the process a bit for future adoptions. But I digress...)

A bit later I finally had Harry and Brent together and Brent could demonstrate the black bag water filter. (For those of you that have no idea what I"m talking about, it's a bag you can take camping and then hose is antibacterial and then there's one of the wonderful Seychelle filters at the bottom so you can get clean water from anywhere again. The bag allows you to get a larger qty cleaned at one time than with the sport water bottle size.) So Brent pulled out the three pieces and he said, 'You take this bag and you attach this and then you attach this second piece" as he was assembling it for Harry. When Harry could see what he was doing, he clapped his hands in joy and he said, "And you can take it WITH you!" He was so excited! The grin on his face was priceless.

We'll get the piece we need to get the filter hooked to the faucet. Harry's very resourceful. I'm sure they'll figure it out. But you've given them something they couldn't do on their own and that is "get clean water from the kitchen sink".

May God bless you and all of our other angels who have given Christmas money and time and energy and sacrificed to make and give things or buy things from the store to help save these children. Haiti is a world where "survival of the fittest" plays out every single day. And you've helped to increase the odds for all of our babies. Thank you so much!