SMALL change in the pockets and purses of Bracken Ridge parishioners is changing lives half a world away.
The Brisbane northside parish recently sent $8500 to Daughter of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sister Rita Grunke for a second water well in South Sudan.
The ongoing parish support was initiated late last year when parish-ioner Terry Tolhurst raised the need to join parish priest Fr Gerry Hefferan in supporting the newly-independent South Sudan.
Following a meeting with Sr Grunke, who had missioned in South Sudan for many years and was returning in January, a decision was made to raise enough money to provide a village with a well.
Mr Tolhurst said women in the community where Sr Grunke was a missionary, rose at dawn and walked for more than an hour to collect water.
“They are often pregnant and also carrying a child on their hip and then they walk back again with a 20-litre container on their heads, having had no breakfast first,” he said.
“We just thought this was the best way we could help.”
The campaign was so well received that the $10,000 needed was raised in months and that first well has already been built in Amatnhom.
Now a second well will be built in the village of Piny Path.
In a recent message to the Bracken Ridge community Sr Grunke said the people of Amatnhom were delighted with the borehole and pump installation.
“There are just so many really touching stories about people’s appreciation for what has been done for them,” she said.
“John (school headmaster) was relating how an old blind man went to him asking how as a blind man he could express his appreciation to those faraway people when he can neither see nor write.
“John assured him that he personally would write down his words which would then be posted.”
Sr Grunke said students in Amatnhom were also expected to write to Bracken Ridge parishioners expressing their gratitude and appreciation.
Mr Tolhurst said parishioners were amazed at how easy it was to drop a dollar in the bucket and gather together what was considered a small fortune in South Sudan.
“Everyone is excited here about the fact that in less than 12 months we have raised the funds for two wells,” he said.
He said collections were about to start for a third well.
