A big shout-out to children attending Vacation Bible Schools (VBS) at Christ Presbyterian Church of New Braunfels and Bay Area Presbyterian Church in Webster, Tx. for their donations to the Lifestraw Family project. Together, the VBS contributions helped us get to goal sooner than expencted.

At Bay Area Presbyterian Church, 112 children ages 3-11 learned about the escape of Moses and his people from Egypt. Each day the children learned more about needs (food, water, shelter, clothings, etc.) of Moses’s followers as well as of the needs of the families in the Congo.

NASA engineer Scott Hansen, a members of the church, demonstrated the LifeStraw water filter and explained its importance in providing clean water. In the closing celebration every day, kids announced totals for the amounts raised for mission work. At the parent program marking the end of VBS, the announcement of the Lifestraw project and the amount raised by the VBS prompted donations from the parents, more than doubling the usual VBS missions offering.

At Christ Presbyterian Church, children listened to Linda Johns, founder of FOMH, talk about the need for clean water at Moma and saw her demonstrate how the Lifestraw filter works. Each morning the children threw their donations into a dry pool (“watering hole”) before going to their morning activities. After the donations were tallied, VBS staff would indicate the amount raised for Moma Hospital by wrapping a decorated “pole tree” in brightly colored duct tape. Each day, the children could see the neon colors “creeping” up the tree trunk.