A Half Million Baseball Cards

Don Demoss, a high school buddy, and I met at a class reunion. After sharing stories of our play days in sports, he asked, “what are you doing now?” I shared our mission of drilling wells in Africa. After listening intently, don said, “lets talk again, I may have a contribution for your booth. We were selling antiques and collectible items donated for well projects out of a booth at lingering memories antique mall. His phone call turned into an offer of baseball cards. He had been holding on to these treasured cards and now he wanted to give them to help someone else.

What I didn’t know was the size of the collection would be five truck loads of baseball, basketball, football and hockey cards. The sale of this contribution helped place a well in a very desperate village in Togo, West Africa.

The sale of this donation funded the following story:

 

The village chief, suffering from yellow fever made an appeal for someone to come dig a well. The women and children were walking great distances to find water that caused cholera, dysentery, diarrhea and yellow fever. The people were very sick and dying as yellow fever had afflicted most of them, including the chief. The villagers were digging long holes like large shallow graves to catch any possible rain water, though it seldom rained. This area is made up of several small family compounds estimated at about 1,000 people. Wells of hope international partnered with the Africa Oasis Project to drill this much needed well and now clean water is flowing in Agbaliwiki, Togo. The village chief rejoiced “no more drinking death in our water…”

 

…all because a man gave a half million baseball cards.