Walk for Water

This morning, the kids and I participated in a Walk for Water. The walk raised funds for point-of-use water purifiers and rainwater harvesting systems in Rwanda. This is an issue that is talked about quite a bit at our church, especially in the kids' programs. Dylan had noticed the pictures and signs up at church and we talked about and decided it would be a good thing to do together. He got a few donations from the grandparents, Uncle Chad, and Mommy and Daddy and today we did the actual walk.

For the walk, we started in a park in Zeeland and walked a little over a mile and then filled up jugs and containers we brought with us and then carried them a little over a mile back where we emptied them out, symbolizing the walk a lot of kids in Rwanda take daily. Dylan complained a few times about wanting to stop or go home, but in the end he did walk the entire walk. Matt was working today, but we enjoyed walking with our friends Katie and Ernie and their kiddos and Uncle Chad.

Dylan seems to have a pretty good grasp on the concept - he explains it by saying that the kids in Africa have dirty water and the dirty water makes them sick so they need machines to help clean their water. On the drive to Zeeland this morning, he asked me if we were going to Africa today :), and he was concerned about putting water directly into our backpacks (I had to explain that it would go into a container first). This a fun age to watch him develop empathy and kindness, and I think he's starting to understand that not everyone has it so easy. He has a lot of questions about the world - why some kids have clean water and some kids have dirty water, why some kids can go to church whenever they want and some kids can't, why some kids have a lot of food and some kids are hungry. It's a big job answering these questions as a parent, and I know this is just the beginning.