This past trip, Beauty Beyond Borders partnered with Love Light and Melody during their Dia De Luz festival. Love Light and Melody set up a full stage in the middle of 
the street in Villa Guadalupe, Nicaragua for the whole community to enjoy amazingly talented artists like Brad Corrigan and Rodrigo Y Gabriela. While they were out in the street prepping, we were doing our best to hide behind the fence as we secretly filled up three 5 gallon buckets of water balloons for an epic water balloon battle. Then the only challenge was how to get the water balloons away from all of the electrical equipment for the concert setup and out to a safe balloon battlefield. Luckily Tim Bouldry stepped up and sacrificed himself. The kids already had their eyes on us and were watching intently for the moment they could get their hands on the water balloons. 
We gave Tim a small bucket of balloons and sent him out the back door drawing all the kids over in that direction while we quickly tried to untie the rope holding the gate closed and run out into the streets. Three of us, each carrying a five gallon bucket sprinted down the street to the intersection and away from all the sound equipment. We somehow made it, placed our buckets equidistant from each other, and realized we had really done it. The kids had no idea where we were! But wait, how are we going to have a water balloon fight if the kids don’t know where we are? Well don’t you worry, that didn’t take long! The girls 
standing on the corner had the opportunity to throw the first water balloons at us, but it wasn’t long after that the stampede arrived! The balloons were gone within minutes and all that was left were soaking wet kids with giant smiles on their faces. A few late arrivals came up to us wondering how they had missed all the fun, but that wasn’t the end of it! We told them we were just going back to refill and once the next battle started to find one of us and we would hold one aside to make sure they got to take part.
We refilled each of the buckets wondering the whole time if we were going to be able 
to distract the kids enough again to make it away from the equipment. All the kids now knew there was a battle coming and stared even more excitedly through the fence waiting for the balloons to be filled. When the time came we released our distraction one more time. This time all of us had to start walking back with the buckets and then as soon as the kids saw us all leave we snuck back out again and made a run for it! Luckily our legs were longer because after we made it to the intersection it was only second before we were surrounded by kids and in the middle of the water balloon fight. We were each able to grab and pass off a balloon or two to each of the kids who had approached us last fight and by the end everyone was smiling.
Having heard about a small water balloon fight the community had previously, and how 
much fun they had, when we began planning what we would do for the kids on the day of the festival, we were intent on finding a way to make a water balloon battle happen. However Villa Guadalupe is created right outside La Chureca trash dump, where the majority of the community used to live and work, so the last thing we wanted to do was bring trash into the streets of their new home. We instead came up with an alternative. As it began to get dark and the music from the stage started echoing through the streets, members of the community helped us walk around the intersection and collect all the water balloon pieces into the buckets. We then brought all these pieces back to the United States where we have turned the trash into artful memorabilia of that event.
This is where the contest we have been hinting at comes in! We took a photo from the water ballon fight and fit it to the bottom of a vase, then lined the interior with the pieces of water balloons from the festival in Nicaragua and sealed it with a water resistant polyurethane coating. This handmade, one of a kind piece will be raffled off on Thanksgiving morning AND YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN IT!
Simply post a photo of something in your life that you are thankful for and the story behind the photo. Include #BeautyBeyondBorders at the end of your story and tag our page (Beauty Beyond Borders) in the photo so we are sure to see your post. Then challenge your friends to do the same! You’ll earn one entry into the raffle for every photo/story you post, and an extra two entries for every friend that accepts your challenge!
The challenge begins November 1st at 1:00am EST and ends November 25 at 12:00am EST. A winner will be drawn at random on Thanksgiving morning and announced that day. Good luck and start thinking and posting positively to win!