Mount Sinai to Canaan

It is the peak of summer in Panama. Everybody is busy. The dry season allows tractors to cut dirt roads into faraway places. Products come out, like wood and fruits, products go in, like dry goods and anything else you can possibly sell to someone who has just gotten their hands on the most cash they´ll see all year. For certain relatively impoverished communities, this creates a juggernaut challenge of financial stewardship. Compared with their typical monthly income, summer might be something like winning the lottery.

Our most recent excursion took us to Sinaí and Canaan, named after the biblical locations, on the Membrillo River in Darién. The river is beautiful for bathing, but I wouldn´t recommend you drink the water. They wouldn´t drink it either, if they had a choice. Fortunately, they do! These two communities have most of their infrastructure (tanks, tubing, solar panels, etc) from previous projects. Sinaí lacks a water source (you can´t use the river directly because floods will wash anything away) and Canaan lacks a pump (theirs broke due to silting in the well along with inadequate filtration). Through presentations, dialogue, and collaboration, we´ve convinced these communities to raise money through their summer avocado sells to purchase everything needed to get their systems working. This is an awesome achievement for communities that have suffered the repercussions of a paternalistic history of failed projects! It is also an inroad to talk about stewardship, cooperation, and the love that God has for all of us. Have a blessed summer (or winter) wherever you are!!!