Toilets come up trumps

Student mission team brings health to Amazon villages

Dr John Cox
Editor, Reflections
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

Mayors of two districts in Brazil have offered to financially support a humanitarian organisation with which Avondale students worked to build toilets in remote villages.

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) project has improved health and sanitation in some of the most remote villages in northern Brazil, where water-borne diseases are a major cause of illness and death. Teams from the Avondale College of Higher Education student club One Mission have worked with ADRA over the past three years to build 49 toilets, a classroom and a health clinic. Villages in surrounding districts have appealed to ADRA to do the same for them.

The 27 students on this year’s team raised $35,000 for building supplies, as well as $5000 each for airfares and other expenses. They were away from home for seven weeks. Preceding their work on the health and sanitation project, the students visited Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Peru. From Peru, they travelled for several days down almost the full length of the Amazon River, first in a small boat, then in a larger boat they shared with 500 passengers, sleeping each night in hammocks on the open decks. At a port on the lower Amazon, they met ADRA staff members, then boarded a mission boat for a seven-hour trip back up the river to the area where they were to work for the next three weeks.

During their stay in Brazil, the students also visited the Adventist University of Sao Paulo and also shared their experiences with Adventist churches in Rio de Janeiro.

Mission trips such as these have real challenges. The Amazon is infested with alligators and piranha. There are dangers from snakes, ants and malaria-bearing mosquitoes. There are the challenges of living in primitive conditions, coping with an unfamiliar diet and managing tiredness. And there are dangers from the tools the group uses, such as chainsaws and machetes. But no student has suffered a serious illness or injury during any of the three One Mission trips.

Team leader Odailson (Dada) Fialho describes the trips as bringing positive changes to the lives of many of the students. “The trips also motivate significant numbers of students for future leadership roles,” he says. Three students from the Brazil team have already volunteered to lead future mission trips.

Dada, a Brazilian who received Avondale Alumni Association’s Community Service Prize this past year, came to Avondale to learn English but stayed on to complete a degree in theology and ministry. “I am grateful to Avondale for the opportunities it has given for mission service, especially to my home country.” Being involved in One Mission “is one of the best things that has ever happened to me,” he adds. “I want to thank everyone who has prayed for us. And I want to thank Avondale for encouraging and supporting One Mission.”