Living Water

SIERRA LEONE – Mahera, #4 Aku Town Road
GPS: 08 36.220 N, 013 11.840 W

Almost everyone who celebrates Christmas has at least one: a memory of that extra-special Christmas gift that stands out among the forgotten piles of torn wrapping paper. Maybe you especially remember the time you got that shiny new bike you always wanted, or the puppy under the tree with a big red bow for a collar. Maybe you remember the first Christmas present you got from your spouse, or the first gift you got from your child. Maybe your extra-special gift was something less tangible, like spending Christmas Eve making dinner with your mother, or waking up to see a fresh blanket of snow covering the ground one Christmas morning. Whatever your extra-special gift was, can you remember if it changed your life? I mean really, truly, literally changed it? Wouldn’t it be amazing to get a present like that?

Here in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest nations in the world, the 600 people who live in the Aku Town Road community received a gift just like that on Christmas morning. When they awoke on December 25, 2008, they experienced the gift of clean, safe water for the very first time. An LWI crew worked into the night on Christmas Eve, knowing that Christmas Day would literally change the lives of the people of Aku Town Road. For a community that lost 20 people to preventable water-borne illnesses last year, this is truly the greatest gift. The people in this community will never forget this Christmas; their lives will never be the same. And, after all, isn’t that what Christmas was intended to do – change lives?