It was 1962 when I began to collect and study the extraterrestrial channelings from a source called The Confederation of Planets in the Service of the One Infinite Creator, or simply The Confederation. In 1974, I became a channel for this source and have continued to perform this service to this day.

Our group, L/L Research, began publishing books on ETs and the ET philosophy found in these channelings in 1976. Through the years since then we have published our written and channeled materials in 10 other books.

Naturally, we get lots of mail from readers. When people resonate with our material, they often write to ask questions to which they hope we may have an answer. One of the questions most frequently asked is, "How can one person such as I make any difference in this world?" This new series of articles is an attempt to demonstrate how that works.

I have always told people that The Confederation insists that our first mission is inner: We are here to learn to love and to be loved. That is our basic mission. As we learn the lessons of love, we are performing the heart and soul of our work on this earth. We are making a difference!

However, people can also make a difference at the level of manifestation; at the "doing" level. Such manifestations are generally accompanied by sacrifice and unconditional love, working itself out in very practical and down-to-earth terms.

There is a great deal of life as you experience it that seems to be intransigent and unable to be dealt with in any way except to accept what is. However, there is always a creative way to find the love, the thanksgiving and the joy that are inherent in that pattern, however difficult it is. (All Q'uo q'uotes in this article are from sessions on Sept. 17 and Nov. 12, 2006.)

"Intransigent" is a good word to express the conditions that Ariane Alzhara Kirtley found when she chose to spend 2005 in Niger. Ariane, 28, had won a Fulbright Scholarship and was drawn to work in that area because she had spent her early childhood there.

She crossed the Sahara Desert on camelback at the age of 6 months and spent most of her first 10 years in Algeria, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, the Ivory Coast and Niger, where her parents were photographers for National Geographic and Geo magazines. The Tuareg people who dwell in that large area held a special place in her heart, as she recalled her childhood there and the people's kindness to her and her family.

And so Ariane returned to Niger in 2005, having completed a degree in anthropology in 2001 and public health in 2003 at Yale University and then completing an internship for CARE in 2004. During that Fulbright study, her research assistant, who came from the province of Azawak, told her of his home area's desperate struggle for water. Ariane decided, after completing her Fulbright study on women's and minorities' health needs in Niger, to visit his home province and see the conditions there for herself.

What she found "blew her away," she told the Yale Alumni Magazine in its September/October 2006 issue. She found that 50,000 people depended upon two, count them, two wells. Only one of these wells was a steady source of water. The other frequently ran dry. During the three months of rain annually, people dug holes in the dry ground and scooped up water before it could sink into the dirt. For the other nine months, they walked to the wells every day just to bring home enough water for each family member to have a single drink. Some traveled as far as 35 miles round-trip, so their lives revolved around bringing home the precious, rare, muddy water so necessary for survival.