I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. -Mother Teresa

This is a post that is long overdue. Ever since I left my boys in Udaipur, I wanted to give back to them in some substantial way. Here is what has happened this past year:

The M100 generator can
create 10,000 gallons of clean
water a day!

One of my best friends, Natalie Hymer, is going to save the world someday. She works for an organization called Waterstep (formerly Edge Outreach) in Louisville KY. They are a Non-profit that installs water purification pumps and treatment systems ALL over the
world. Not only do they enable these communities to have access to clean water, but they also empower them by training local people how to fix the filtration systems/pumps if they break. Therefore, individuals who use the pumps and filtration systems don't have to rely on any outsider to obtain clean drinking water.

I was talking to Natalie about my trip to Udaipur and I realized that the boys didn't really have a constant source of clean water. It's not really something I thought about, but I now realize that they ran to get me water before and even though I thanked them, I couldn't drink it because I knew it was city water from the sink. I also remembered taking one of the boys to the hospital because he was vomiting. I am not saying that it was due to water-born sickness, but I wouldn't rule it out. So, when I mentioned it to Natalie, she said that Waterstep would be onboard.

Full system

The first step was to get my story out. I had a basic idea of how to do this, but I needed lots of help. I sat down with President Crouch at Georgetown College and explained what I wanted to do. On November 15th I gave the only Deborah Lecture every given by a student at the college. This is special at Georgetown because the speakers in those lectures are supposed to exhibit "great courage" or experienced something significantly special in life. However, it was not me that had such courage, but my boys Udaipur. This lecture was also important because it put me in touch with the Mukherjee family, who were invited by President Crouch.

Dr. Mukherjee and his wife welcomed me into their home and for the last semester of college I would go over and learn Hindi and eat Indian food. Not only that, but they took a

Learning how to build the system

special interest in the water project and donated enough to finalize my plans. Words can't describe how much I love that family and how grateful I am for everything they have done for me. With the money donated by both the Mukherjee family and the Deborah Lecture fund, I was able to train at Waterstep on water health and hygiene as well as purchase the M100 Chlorine generator.

The big issue was to figure out how to teach the M-100 and health and hygiene to blind

Gary Mudd and I after my tour of APH!

students. Waterstep had never taught their system to any community with disabilities before so they went above and beyond to help me with this desire for the blind school. They put me in contact with Gary Mudd and the folks at the Kentucky school for the blind and the blind printing house in Louisville. This is the largest community of blind individuals in the country. I got to train Gary Mudd (VP at the American Printing House) how to build
an M-100! Mr. Mudd is now a dear friend and his input in my water training was essential to its success because we discovered some challenges. The main problem for adapting the M100 to blind students was how to do the sight-based color chlorine test with boys who couldn't see it.

Blindfolding the Waterstep staff

It essentially is a color pool chlorine test, where the water has to turn a certain shade of yellow to show how much chlorine is in the water. Currently, we are exploring ways to allow the boys to become self sufficient in this chlorine test, and we hope it will be through the existence of talking lab technology. This technology will hopefully come over to India with my dad when I visit him in Delhi at the end of this month.

I plan on going to Udaipur at the end of the month and I am both extremely excited to see my boys and extremely nervous about how this project will go. However, I have had so much help along the way that I know I cannot fail now. As soon as I have more information on dates and the solution to the color test, I will post details. Until then <3