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I spent two days last week in San Juan, La Paz.  San Juan is a village of about 60 houses about 2 1/2 hours from Tegucigalpa.  Until last week the town had no running water.  The residents of the village (typically women) had to go down to the river outside of town to wash clothes, bathe, bring water back for cleaning and even for drinking.   

All of that changed last week as the town held a grand celebration to open the spigots for the first time.  With dancing and speeches (lots and lots of speeches) we celebrated a project that is bringing running water to twelve villages for the first time.  A Bi-national project between Honduras and El Salvador (we were about 20 miles from the Salvador border) built the main distribution line to bring water 12 miles from the river to a main distribution point.  From there CRS and our partner Caritas then built the local water distribution system in San Juan. 

Two more villages are on tap for CRS next year and other NGOs have built or are building distribution systems for the remaining villages.  It’s startling to think what a difference it would be to wake up one morning and have running water for the first time in your life. 

Click here for pictures from the trip.  Also up are videos of the traditional dance the school children did and video of what it’s like to ride in a Toyota Hi-Lux in the back roads of Honduras.