Stan, our very mission-minded friend from Colorado, came to visit, help and work for two weeks at end of April, first week of May. The rainy season starts May 1, and it lived up to its reputation by starting to rain the night of April 30th.
Stan has been on dozens of mission trips to at least eight countries and has seen all sorts of missions and living situations. He’s an innovator and visionary and brought a solar cooker that he designed, with the idea to see if it would be something to use in the villages. The villagers were very intrigued, as they had never seen anything so ‘space age’ as a large silver solar dish!
We then showed Stan the living conditions and how the children’s health is made worse because they have to sleep on the floor. We shared with Stan how we wanted to start some sort of “Bed Project”, and he came up with a workable design for a wooden bed. We call it a ‘sleeping platform’ because we don’t include a mattress. With the dirt, filth, chickens, dogs, and children who aren’t 100% “bathroom-oriented”, a mattress would become a dirty mess in no time.
Paco & Stan unload first bed.
With these wonderful wooden sleeping platforms, the children can now sleep off the ground and they stay dry and much warmer because the wood doesn’t pull out the warmth from their bodies like the damp dirt floor does. The children LOVE the wooden beds, and we are getting dozens of heart-tugging requests from other mothers who also have children who sleep on the dirt floor. (most do)
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