This past week I was in Honduras with Living Water Int’l drilling a well to provide clean drinking water to a village that was previously without. I posted only a few of the several thousand that I took!
For all of you who know me personally know that traveling, mission work and photography are a huge part of my heart and anytime you can combine all three, man my heart just explodes! This was the kick off to our new philanthropic campaign and I just wanted to say thank you to all of our couples who chose Living Water as the charity they wanted to support. These pictures are for you to enjoy as well as see what your contribution has done and how you have made an impact on the little village of La Hilaria, Honduras. I also bring back many thank you’s from both young and old and they give you all their blessings. Thank you for your help to make this happen.
A little background information that I didnt know before I left was that Honduras is the second most impoverished country next to Haiti in all of South and Latin America. This poverty reached a new level after Hurricane Mitch struck in 1999 and caused severe destruction to infrastructure and agriculture. The country still hasn’t fully recovered from all the devastation.
I was also really excited to go to Honduras because this was my first time down in Latin America. I always love an opportunity to tune up my spanish.
La Iglesia (Church)
The main source of revenue is agriculture including predominately bananas, oranges, and pineapple. The little village of La Hilaria is completely supported off of their 10 km orange grove. Everybody in the town works in the orange grove. There is actually no specific ownership. Everyone in the village shares in it equally and works the land equally as well. School is split in two shifts, 8-1 and 1-6. My buddy christian below works from 5:30 -12:30 pm, then goes to school from 1-6 pm, then works on homework until bedtime at 8:30 and does the same thing the next day. Id say a solid days work for a 11 year old. Typical with almost every kid in this village.
El Caballero (Gentleman)
The universal sport! Man these kids can play! We brought down several new balls.
There are 8 tribes in Honduras. Not saying that each of these kids represents one tribe but just a look at the diversity of people.
The school was centrally located in the community so Living Water saw it best fit to drill right in the school so it would not only service these 200+ kids but could lend water the entire community.
Now its go time! Drillings on! Living Water is based out of Houston so I got my fair share of cultural enlightenment from both the Hondurans as well as the Texans
Yup thats right! Yours truly getting my rough neck on!
The bottle Emillio (the guy in the hat as well as drilling guru) is holding is the water that these kids were washing dishes, clothes and drinking with. You can see after we drilled and taped into a local aquifer you can see the progression of how much cleaner the water got. By the time we were done drilling, pumping and purifying, you could pretty much bottle up the water and sell it on the shelves.
We dug 70 feet down and ended up with this….
A lifetime of clean and pure drinking water. Right now is dry season so anything that is producing water will definitely still produce water during wet season!
SOOO AWESOME!!
A shot from the plane ride back into LAX, a beautiful way to end such a beautiful trip!
9 Comments
it’s exciting to see the work that God did while you were there! i know that each person…and especially the little kiddos were so blessed by you! proud of all the hard work you did in such a short amount of time…and so awesome to know that so many are receiving the benefits of it!
Brah! these pics are awesome! Oh how it takes me back. I can hear the kids laughing. Man how I want to b back. Miss you brah (I guess thats how y’all would spell it).
AMAZING shots Brandon!
stunning. . . . . only word that comes to mind. . . . great work Brandon.
The photos of the kids in the water brought me to tears. These are phenomenal. What a beautiful mission to be a part of. Great work.
That is totally awesome. Those people are going to be so blessed with clean drinking water that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. I so want to go and do something like that, it would be awesome.
Hi Brandon,
I think it’s amazing that you’re volunteering for such a great cause. If I can do anything to help, please let me know!!
It was such a pleasure working with you and your work is breathtaking!! =)
Eva
Hey Brandon,
Awesome photos. Out of all the photos from Honduras, the one that really told the whole story of what you were doing and why, and this is going to sound weird because I most of the time I feel that to tell the story, you have to show people, is the photo of the water bottles, progressing from what it was to what it is now that you guys have drilled new wells. What a great example of what was done.
Oh, and just for the record, this wasn’t your first time in Latin America. I know that you have gone to Mexico at least 11 times to build houses there. And, yes, I checked to make sure I was right, Mexico is part of Latin America!
Thanks for sharing the photos…and your talents.
I am absolutely in love with these photos! I am half Honduran and my mom’s whole side of the family still lives there. I was so happy to see these beautiful photos and they brought memories back from my travels there as well. Thank you so much for sharing and brightening my day.
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