Monday, December 5, 2011

Challenge Team Phase 2: "Well...that's a deep subject..."

First of all, Merry/Happy (almost) Christmas, everyone!

I'm definitely in the holiday spirit: watching holiday movies, baking cookies, wrapping gifts and singing/humming Christmas music like it's my job.

And this year for Christmas--as a gift to people in developing nations--I'm raising funds to provide clean water, through a campaign called "Jingle Wells Round 2."  As you can see by clicking on the link, we're  just about half way to my goal of $500!

I'm passionate about doing something (however small) about the water crisis in our world.

So I was excited when I learned that as my second challenge team in northern Sri Lanka, I'd be part of team working to clean wells in order to provide clean water to the people there.

Honestly, I didn't know exactly what "cleaning a well" would entail.  As it turned out, it involved hopping into the bed of a pick-up truck...


...taking a long scenic drive to a well somewhere...
...jumping into the well and swimming in it, plus attempting to scrub down the walls while pumping out the old water...


...and also inevitably having a mud/water fight in the process. :)

At night, we slept on the floor of a church, under mosquito nets...


And on Sunday mornings, we worshiped at the church we camped in...
















Besides cleaning wells, our work also included cleaning and painting a couple of bus stops.

Here's a BEFORE shot of one of the bus stops...























And here's an AFTER shot of a different bus stop...


This post only begins to touch the surface of what my phase two challenge team was like.  In short, it was exciting, unpredictable, exhausting, and an overall blessed time. :)




















For more photos, check out the album titled "Sri Lanka: the north" on the right side, at the top.

[Note: I'm having some technical difficulties while writing this post and apologize for the funky alignments that I'm not sure how to fix!]