PROVIDING A CUP OF WATER IN JESUS’ NAME | SPRING 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:

Do Something Different: H2O for Lent| Entering the Story: Christmas Is Still Changing the World |

| Water & Education | Updates: Malawi, Haiti, & Ethiopia | 2008 Review |

Mission: Transformation

Helping Indian churches change the shape of their communities

VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1

Chairman of the BoardExecutive DirectorPresident Senior Vice PresidentVice PresidentVice President Vice President Vice President

Gary Loveless

Gary Evans

Jerry Wiles

Mike Mantel

Lew Hough

Tim Mulville

Brad Saltzman

Bruce Whitmire

Living Water International HeadquartersPO Box 35496Houston, TX 77235-5496877.594.4426www.water.cc

Living Water International Canada45 Sheppard Ave E, Suite 900 Toronto, OntarioCanada M2N 5W9 Phone: 1.877.988.4688www.livingwatercanada.org

Living Water International exists to demonstrate the love of God by helping communities acquire desperately needed clean water, and experience “living water”—the gospel of Jesus Christ—which alone satisfies the deepest thirst.

is published quarterly by Living Water International to raise awareness about the global water crisis and to inspire Christians everywhere to respond with compassion to the needy of the world.

We welcome your stories, comments and/or address changes. Send them to: The Editor, Pipeline, PO Box 35496, Houston, TX 77235-5496 or email the editor: pipeline@water.cc.

Living Water International is a nonprofit Christian organization and tax exempt by the IRS under code section 501(c)(3). Gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law. Contributions are solicited with the understanding that the donee organization has complete discretion and control over the use of all donated funds.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations in this publication are from the Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version™ TNIV Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.

All photos by staff and volunteers of Living Water International unless otherwise noted. COPYRIGHT © 2009 BY LIVING WATER INTERNATIONAL INC.

LIVING WATER INTERNATIONAL

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| A CLOSER LOOK: WATER & EDUCATION

| ENTERING THE STORY: CHRISTMAS ISSTILL CHANGING THE WORLD

| 2008 YEAR IN REVIEW

| MISSION: TRANSFORMATION

| GLOBAL UPDATES

| EDITORIAL: COME THOU FOUNT

O One of the valuable lessons that the Lord continues to reinforce in the

Living Water International family is the importance of developing col-

laborative relationships, networks, and partnerships in order to advance

his Kingdom. The Lord has brought together an amazingly gifted group of

people and some incredible organizations to work together for our common

goal of demonstrating the love of God to the neediest people on the planet.

It is in the heart of God to bless all the

nations (people groups) of the world through

the Body of Christ. Certainly part of being

blessed of God is having access to our most

basic physical need, which is clean, safe

drinking water, as well as the opportunity to

experience the love of God through Christ.

As you read the extraordinary stories of God’s work in the pages of this

, know that he uses each of us in a unique way. It’s encouraging

to know that God honors all of our prayers and contributions, and that col-

lectively we can see transformation beyond what we could ever imagine.

We can stand on his promise that he is able to do exceeding abundantly

above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us (see

Ephesians 3:20).

Our desire and prayer is that God will continue to call those who have

a passion for saving lives and changing destinies, both physically and

spiritually.

VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1

Gary Loveless

Gary Evans

Jerry Wiles

Mike Mantel

Lew Hough

Tim Mulville

Brad Saltzman

Bruce Whitmire

LIVING WATER INTERNATIONAL

BE INFORMED • GET INVOLVED • GIVE

MEET THE NEWEST MEMBER OF OUR TEAM!

Michael Mantel joined the senior leadership of Living Water International in the last quarter of 2008, as Senior Vice President for Development. Mike worked in the corporate world for many years before defecting to the non-profit sector as co-founder of World Vision’s Chicago Metro office and, later, General Manager of the organi-zation’s Central Region.

We’re thrilled to have him on board. With a diverse range of experience, broad relational net-works, and a PhD in Organizational Development, Mike is playing a key role in LWI’s growth as the organization enters into a new season of unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Mike and his wife Natalie have been married for 25 years and live near Chicago with their four daughters. The family is looking forward to the warmth of Houston, where they plan to move in the next year.

REMEMBERING DR. OTTO J. HELWEG

The Living Water International fam-ily mourns the loss of Dr. Otto J. Helwig, who passed away unexpect-edly on November 2, 2008. Otto and his wife Virginia spent 2007 in Kigali, Rwanda, setting up LWI’s operation in that country. Otto oversaw the completion of the first 40 water proj-ects in Rwanda, touching thousands of lives with safe water and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Prior to moving to Rwanda, Otto retired as Dean of the Department of Archi-tecture and Engineering at North Dakota State University. Over the course of his long career as a civil engineer, he was awarded the distinguished Hoover Medal, was named Most Outstanding Ground Water Scientist in the United States, and assisted the governments of Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and several South American countries with water studies and management. Otto was a devoted husband and a father of three sons.

DALLAS EVENTThursday, May 7, 2009 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.Tickets available for $500.

RUNNING FOR WATERSunday, January 17, 2010Join Team Living Water International for the Chevron Houston Marathon. Registration opens July 17, 2009 at www.houstonmarathon.com.

LEADERSHIp SUMMIT FEATURING pATRICk LENCIONIWednesday, September 9, 20099:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.InterContinental Hotel • Houston, TexasCorporate sponsorships and individual tickets are available. For more about Patrick, visit www.tablegroup.com.

ANNUAL HOUSTON GALAFriday, September 25, 2009InterContinental Hotel • Houston, TexasSponsorships and individual tickets are available.

ANNUAL OpEN HOUSESaturday, September 26, 2009LWI Headquarters • Stafford, TexasFree of charge.

For event information, or to RSVP, contact Cheryl Thornton at cheryl@water.cc or call 281.207.7856.

TAKE THE H2O CHALLENGE!

Here’s a way to practice Lent that will deepen your experience while trans-forming a thirsty community. Get the details and order your free resource kit at www.water.cc/lent.

Spring 2009

WATER & EDUCATIONBY STAN PATYRAK

A CLOSER LOOK:

It’s 8 a.m. Do you know where your kids are? If your kids are between the ages of 5 and 17, chances are they’re sitting in a classroom—unless your kids go to Lorenzo Gorvie Memorial Secondary School in Sierra Leone. On a good day, 700 kids attend this school, which was built just after the civil war ended in 2002. Gabriel Jonathan Kamara started teaching that first year. Gabriel is not only a teacher—he also runs the health and sanitation program at the school. He and the other teachers here have a problem that is poison to any educational system. They can’t keep the kids in class. It’s not that these kids skip school or that they get sent home for misbehavior. “Since our pump spoiled, we have no water at all,” Gabriel says. “All day the kids look out the win-dow looking on the busy road. When they see a street vendor selling water, the kids run out to buy and beg for water. We can’t get them to stay.” The kids get water from vendors in 100 or 300 ml plastic baggies, each with its own price. Gabriel fears the traffic on the road, but more than that, he fears the water the kids are buying.

DISEASE This water is the other reason that the classrooms at Lorenzo Gorvie are never full. Diarrhea and typhoid take more kids out of school than any other cause. The kids don’t know the source of the water they beg or buy. Based on the sickness he sees in the kids, Gabriel suspects the nearby river. When this school had a working hand pump, every class-room had clean water. Without clean water, the school is losing students. Gabriel’s school is not alone. Children who suffer constant water-related diseases carry the disadvantages for the rest of their lives. Their poor health reduces cognitive potential and indirectly undermines school-ing through attention deficits, absenteeism, and early drop-out. Water-related diseases cost an estimated 443 million school days each year.¹

SANITATION AND HyGIENE Lorenzo Gorvie School’s latrines were once adequate, although there are only five of them for 700 kids. “They stink,” Gabriel says. He knows that simple maintenance would have kept them in much better shape, but explains, “We don’t have water to wash the latrines.” He’s right. It turns out that the latrines began the decline into disrepair when the hand pump broke. The deteriorating sanitation situation, caused by the absence of water, has had a devastating effect on the students—partic-ularly the girls. Without proper sanitation facilities, the teachers of Lorenzo Gorvie have to send girls home when they men-struate. Gabriel shares that the girls are too shy to talk openly about their needs; when they complain about their stomachs, the teachers know to excuse them from class. Lack of water and sanitation facilities also makes the recruit-ment of well-trained teachers difficult, which sometimes results in schools being closed for days or weeks at a time. The teachers who do accept posts in communities without water and sanitation face the same problems of water collection and disease as the pupils, and this affects the quality of their teach-ing and the amount of time they are able to dedicate to it. Teachers know what they’re up against. Gabriel, as the leader of Lorenzo Gorvie’s health and sanitation program, understands more than most. UNICEF was recently in town to promote “Global Handwashing Day.” What on earth does a school without water do to promote hand-washing? Gabriel explains: “We taught hand-washing—without water. The idea of hand-washing is… how do you say… an abstract thing without clean water.”

WALkING FOR WATER It’s not just illness that keeps kids out of school in the devel-oping world. When households rely on water sources far from

ABOUT HALF OF AMERICAN SCHOOL KIDS WILL MISS 1-5 DAYS OF SCHOOL A YEAR.

IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD, WATER-RELATED DISEASES REDUCE SCHOOL ATTENDANCE OVERALL BY NEARLY 20 PERCENT.

home, someone has to walk to collect it—a task that usually by necessity falls on the women and children of the family. Sometimes a water source is a hole in the ground, and that hole in the ground is half a day’s walk away. This means that kids who could be in school spend their days collecting water. Carrying heavy containers of water over long distances is not only physically stressful, but extremely time consuming. One of the most serious effects is that children do not have the time to attend school— they may not enroll at all, or they may be frequently absent. In Tanzania, school attendance levels are 12 percent higher for girls in homes 15 minutes or less from a water source than for girls in homes an hour or more away. Attendance rates for boys are affected, too—but not as dramatically.²

WATER ≥ EDUCATION It’s not that water is more important than education—it’s foundational. Try to convince teachers in the developing world otherwise. Educational opportunities linked to water have lifelong impacts across generations. Education empowers women to

participate in decision-making in their communities. Educated adults are more likely to have smaller, healthier families; their own children are less likely to die and more likely to receive education. Just one additional year of schooling can earn individuals at least 10 percent higher wages. These earnings contribute to national economic growth. No country has ever achieved continuous and rapid growth without reaching an adult literacy rate of at least 40 percent. With education, people are far better able to prevent disease and to use health services effectively. For instance, Africans who have completed primary education are half as likely to contract HIV as those who have little or no schooling.³ This alone is a staggering fact, considering that almost two-thirds of individuals with AIDS live in Africa. Gabriel Kamara might say, “Without clean water, education is how do you say… an abstract thing.”

1. UNDP Human Development Report 2006 – Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis, p. 45. 2. Ibid., p. 47. 3. “Education and the Devel-oping World” – 2006, Center for Global Development, p. 1.

WATER ≥ EDUCATIONBAD WATER= SICK KIDS

SICK ≠ KIDS IN SCHOOL

INVESTMENT IN WATER = IMPROVED HEALTH, SANITATION, EDUCATION, OPPORTUNITY

KIDS TRAVELING LONG DISTANCES TO FETCH WATER≠ KIDS IN

SCHOOL

LACK OF WATER = ≠

INADEQUATE HEALTH &

SANITATION

KIDS INSCHOOL

Left: In India, an average of $64 per year is spent per primary student in public education. In the U.S., it’s about $6,800. Middle: More than 150 million children in the developing world start school but do not complete four years; in Sub-Saharan Africa, only one in three who attend school complete a primary education. Right: Gabriel Kamara stands proudly in front of the new handpump at Lorenzo Gorvie Memorial Secondary School.

www.water.cc

i t was late in the fall of 2007 and our congregation had been study-ing the New Testament letter of James since September. If you know James at all, you know that it can be devastating to the religious status quo—much like Jesus himself. James tells us we are not to show favoritism to the wealthy among us. He tells us that God cares for widows and orphans in the midst of their suffering. He goes so far as to proclaim God’s judgment upon the rich who oppress their poor workers. He states that the very wages that they withheld will testify against them. But James doesn’t give us the luxury of sitting back and nodding our heads in agreement. He declares that we are not to be mere hearers of these words (which is the Word), but to do what he says. As our time in James drew to a close, I asked myself why I had chosen to preach through such a demanding text. Nevertheless, I knew that we were there for important reasons. It was not significant to me at first that the end of our sojourn in this letter was the begin-ning of the season of Advent. As our worship planning team began to meet and discuss how we would observe the Advent and Christmas seasons following James, the connection became clear. For years, our church has tried to celebrate the seasons of the Church’s year in meaningful and intentional ways. The season of Eas-ter, for instance, with its forty days of Lent, provides many opportuni-ties to reflect on the narrative of God that is manifested in Jesus and his journey to the cross. Christmas, however, was always a hard place to connect with God and his purposes in Christ in any kind of meaning-

ful way. The commercial realities of how this holiday is celebrated in America overwhelm and eclipse what-ever message the birth of Christ is meant to convey. Most of the people I know in our church—people of deep and sincere devotion to God—just try to survive Christmas. In 2007, we were all hungering to find a truer, more biblically resonant way to participate in the story of Christ during Advent and Christmas. The Advent Conspiracy gave us a way to do just that. We invited the people in our congregation to respond in a tangible way to the message of James that we had been struggling through: how do we take our faith in Christ and manifest it in tangible ways to the neediest among us? Even beyond that, how do we connect such an opportunity with what God was (and is) doing in Christ at Christmas? When I read the Advent Conspiracy’s tag-line, “Christmas was meant to change the world; it still can,” I had a vision for how we could have a meaning-ful experience of Christmas by joining with Christ in his work in the world. It was a revelation—that we would give gifts of time and presence to one another in the same way that Christ gave himself to us; that instead of spending money on things for people who already had so much, we would use it to drill wells in

Entering the StoryBY TIM KEELC H R I S T M A S I S S T I L L C H A N G I N G T H E W O R L D

Kissitown Refugee Camp, Sierra Leone

Sumbachi Coacha, peru Mahera, Sierra Leone

Spring 2009

Kissitown Refugee Camp, Sierra Leone

regions around the world where people do not have even the basic needs of life. Our people were more than ready for the challenge. When everyone’s contributions came in, we were stunned to discover that the congregation had given $65,000. But it wasn’t just about the money. It was about people giving to one another in love and not out of convenience or obligation. It was about parents inviting their children to sacrifice their own desires so they could give to those who have nothing. It was about Christmas becoming less about us and more about joining Christ in his work in the world—not be-ing just hearers of the Word, but people who do what it says. We have a sister church in Nairobi, Kenya. When we shared with the leaders of that community our desire to provide funds for boreholes, and asked them if they knew of any places that had such needs, tears began to flow. Their church is working in a remote and drought-stricken region of Kenya called Pokot. The community where they were at work only had one well, a 1950s, colonial-era borehole with a pump that was broken most of the time. Six months later, through the work of a team from Living Water International, Pokot had four new wells, serving 6,500 people. A team from our church visited Pokot last May and witnessed firsthand the importance of water in places like this. We were completely humbled to be a part of bringing God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. In 2008, we completed our second Advent Con-spiracy campaign. Once again, by the grace of God, our community was able to raise $65,000. The result? Four more wells will be drilled in Pokot this year, and none too soon. When I wrote Pastor Edward Simiyu of City Harvest Church to share the good news with him, he was thrilled, and shared the way in which this community has been blessed by and yet continues to struggle for water:

“This is so exciting! I have been receiving news from Pokot for the last few weeks and drought is really bad in the area. The four boreholes are now the only lifeline for both humans and livestock, but people are still traveling far to fetch water… Famine has been declared a national disaster here with news of people dying of hunger in different parts of the country. I will be back in Pokot next month and will share the great news of additional boreholes.”

The story continues. And we get to be part of it.

Tim Keel is the founding pastor of Jacob's Well, a Christian com-munity in Kansas City, Missouri. He and his wife, Mimi, have three kids. Tim is an avid reader and loves to learn, write, and teach. He is passionate about creating spaces for people to connect to God, themselves, and others.

t he first year our family celebrated Christmas and Advent Conspiracy, it was about Jesus, about worship, about relational gifts to each other and about giving a gift to Jesus through an offering for clean water. That alone was an exciting thing for us. And then the stories started to come in—beautiful stories of the lives that had been impacted by the gift of clean water. We saw pictures of men, women and children who were alive—and healthy—because of their new water well. Only then did I fully understand the impact that spending less at Christmas had made. I truly appreciate LWI for the way they partner with com-munities—the ones where they are providing clean water, and also the churches and communities of individuals that are giving so that the work can be done. This is about so much more than giving money. It’s a picture of redemption for those receiving the gift of clean water… and for those who get to give to these projects, too.

Jeanne McKinleyImago Dei Community, Portland, OregonDirector, Advent Conspiracy

n 2006, a handful of pastors from around the country met to talk about Christmas. Christmas has changed into something that they didn’t recognize anymore. These pastors shared their own stories of the burden they felt to redeem the story of Christ’s birth...and the idea of Advent Conspiracy began to take shape. The heroes of AC are not the pastors. During our Christmas service, I watched as a young boy put a wad of cash into our offering basket for LWI—the money from grandma that he had been saving for a new video game; when he heard about LWI’s work, he said, “It just made sense to give water to kids like me.” In our church alone, people like this donated more than $380,000 so the thirsty could have water. Now that’s Christmas. If you made AC a part of your Christmas in 2008, thank you for making this thing personal. You aren’t just changing the lives of people you may never meet. You’re making a huge difference in how we celebrate the God that has changed each of us.

Tony BiaggneWindsor Crossing Community Church, St. Louis, Missouri, Creative Director, Advent Conspiracy.

Sharing the StoryV O I C E S O F C O N S P I R A C Y

i

www.water.cc

When things are smooth, it’s easy to forget that God is our provider and sustainer every single day. In times of uncertainty, our faith is stretched, but God remains faithful—and watching him at work is a beautiful thing. Last year brought many challenges, not the least of them financial. As the year drew to a close, we tightened our belts and watched, wonder-ing how God would provide for the work to continue. When economies drop off, we all experience difficulties; but the poorest of the poor in our world really hit bottom. Many of our supporters—people like you—understood this; they gave generously and unexpectedly. Not only did the work continue—it was able to grow. A new operation was launched in southern India; drilling began in Malawi. Mission trip opportunities ex-panded; in 2008, a record 80 trips were led to Central America, Haiti, and Mexico, enabling more than 700 people to see firsthand the reality of life without clean water, and to do something about it. In 2000, the World Health Organization and UNICEF announced that 1.1 billion people were without access to safe water, and we’ve been using the number ever since to understand the scope of the problem. In 2008, the same researchers revealed that the number is now 884 million—accounting for population growth, this means that 852 million people have been provided with safe, clean water over the past eight years. The problem is still massive, but great work is being done, and LWI remains committed to serving these poorest of the poor in Jesus’ name.

Financial figures for 2008 are unaudited. Audited financials will be available upon request after June 1, 2009. Look for a complete financial report in our 2008 annual report on our website (www.water.cc).

y E A R I N R E V I E W

SERVED THIS yEAR IN 24 COUNTRIES

0

2

4

6

8

10

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

MIL

LION

S

CUMULATIVE TOTALSNEW WELLS

REHABS

MISSIONTRIpS WITH

pARTICIpANTS

BIBLES DISTRIBUTED

pROCLAIMERS DISTRIBUTED

NUMBER OF pEOpLE TRAINED IN:

SHALLOW WELL DRILLING

HEALTH & HyGIENE pUMp

REpAIR

Spring 2009

2008 EXpENSES: $13,220,000

85% Programs

10% Development

5% Administration

2008 REVENUE: $15,370,000

31% Foundations

30% Individuals

24% Organizations

13% Churches & Schools

2% Other

COUNTRY NEW WELLS REHABS

Angola 17 2Brazil 13 Central African Republic 46 132 El Salvador 34 8 Ethiopia 22 Ghana Tema 6 Sunyani 4 61 Guatemala 14 15 Haiti North 169 Leogane 1 41 Honduras 28 26 India North 42 2 South 28 5 Southwest 9 Kenya Nairobi 7 Kisumu 9 Liberia 51 321Malawi 17 Mexico North 29 3 Central 21 South 5 Southeast 17 3 Namibia 28 8 Nicaragua 10 36 Nigeria 35 Peru 45 11 Rwanda 36 3 Sierra Leone 82 Sudan 85 Tanzania 16 Uganda Lira 12 Southwest 19 Zambia 1 11

www.water.cc

SARNApUR, NORTHERN INDIA It is the same spot where I had stood three years ago, when the well was brand new, but I don't recognize it. Sarnapur* has changed. A lot. The community has grown up around the well; new buildings form a square around it, in what was once an open field. The people are healthier, I learn, and happier as a result. I talk to a family that has been able to start a small weaving business. Women tell me about how well their children are doing, with wide smiles across their faces and motherly gleams in their eyes. They tell me that having clean water near their homes has a lot to do with it. I talk to the kids that play in the street and are getting water from the hand pump. Anand, 12, is one of the older kids, and can remember life before the well. “When I was little, we had to walk from there,” he says, pointing down the road. I had passed the well he is talking about; it is in the next community—about a kilometer away. Anand remembers the day, four years ago, that the LWI team arrived to drill the Sarnapur well—he remembers jostling with the other kids to get a look as the drillers set up their rig and started working. He remembers his parents being excited about it too, but not because of the strange, noisy equip-ment. “Before this,” Anand says, putting his hand on the pump, “we had to wait a long time for water.” I understand what he's talking about; I had put the

Mission: Transforma

tionHelping Indian churches change

the shape of their communities

BY JONATHAN WILES

Anand, 12, remembers

when LWI drilled this well in his

community four years ago.

Spring 2009

Transformation

the shape of their communities

www.water.cc

Above: The children of Sarnapur gather around the village well. Right: In many parts of rural India,

water has to be carried for miles—mostly by women and little girls. Below: A family

gathers in front of a typical semi-rural home. Safe water nearby means time for families to spend

together, for children to go to school, and for adults to earn a living.

Spring 2009

helping their neighbors be healthy—and not just physically. They have ended a cycle of poverty and oppression for dozens of families, for genera-tions to come.

SERVING CHURCHES AS THEy SERVE COMMUNITIES Jesus spoke powerfully about the Kingdom of God, describing a beautiful scenario in which poverty, oppression, and injustice have come to an end—when human brokenness has been healed. He also said that while this kingdom is yet to come, it is also already among us. It is being made real as God’s people—the Church—love and serve others. This is the reason that we do what we do. We know we cannot make the world perfect. We can-not mend human brokenness. But we can serve as a sign—a small, imperfect preview—of the kingdom that Jesus will establish in completeness when he returns to make all things right. That is what each local church is for its com-munity—a sign of the kingdom to come. As we work in communities across the globe, we see churches made up of imperfect people seeking to serve and encourage their communities. At their best, they help form the community’s values and contribute to the community’s well-being; they read the biblical story and apply it to the specific time, place, and culture of their community in ways that we as outsiders never can. As we enter each new community, it is our greatest hope to empower the people of God that we encounter there to do just that.

*Some names have been altered due to security concerns.

pieces together through conversations with community mem-bers. With several communities sharing a well, lines had been long, and each family could only get a very limited amount of wa-ter. This ongoing struggle had hurt the children's education and their mothers' ability to have family time or earn money. Today those problems are a dim memory. The pastor of the church in Sarnapur is the one who brought us here. The provision of a well in Jesus' name showed the people of the community that the church cares about them, and sees them as neighbors, not just Hindus or Muslims. The church has grown dramatically over the last three years, and the pastor has an open invitation to visit families in the community—a rarity in areas of such religious tension.

CHENNUR, ANDRHA pRADESH, CENTRAL INDIA When we talk about changing the shape of communities, we are usually speaking figuratively. In Chennur, it is happening liter-ally. Chennur is a desperately poor community, in an area known for its corruption. I am talking to Brother Rufus, a leader of the church in Chennur. I ask him about the living situation in his com-munity. “The people are so poor that they cannot afford to buy land for a home,” he says, explaining that this puts them at the mercy of oppressive landlords, who make sure that the people stay in poverty and under their control. “The landlords are cruel,” Rufus tells me. “When a fam-ily's young women come of age, some landlords have the girls brought so that they can have their way with them.” It is barbar-ic—like something out of medieval feudalism. In 2007, the state government granted land to the people of Chennur—enough for each family to have a plot of land—along with money to build homes. But there was one hitch; the new land had no source of water. No family was willing to build a house several kilometers away from the nearest clean water. For months, nothing happened. The church of Chennur—a handful of people who had always been marginalized in the predominantly Hindu community—worked up the courage to ask the community for a plot of land on the new government grant. The community leaders, knowing that nobody else wanted to move there, granted their request. “We started gathering material for a building, and we called Living Water International to find out if they would help us with a water well,” Rufus says. I pick up the story with David, LWI's director in central India. "When I visited the church site, I thought the people were crazy,” he says. LWI works to situate wells in the center of communities, where they will serve the most people. The Chennur church was being built in the middle of a field, with no homes anywhere to be seen. “They explained to me what was going on, and I began to get excited about what this well could mean,” David tells me. In the spring of 2008, the well was dedicated. Within months, the entire village of Chennur had moved. Houses are being built all across the new village land, preferably near the well—and con-sequently, near the church. This church, once on the margins of its community, is now at the very heart of it. Through the simple provision of clean water, the followers of Jesus in this village are

www.water.cc

HAITI

In the winter issue of , we featured a story on Gonaives, the fourth-largest city in Haiti and one of the hardest-hit by last year’s devastating hurricanes. At that time, LWI crews had just made it into the city and repaired six hand pumps on the outskirts of the city, where most of the survivors took refuge. Since then, more than 18 water projects have been completed in Gonaives, and comprehensive relief efforts continue throughout the city. Today, clean water has been restored to thousands of Haitians.

After a pump was repaired in one area, a resident said, “We thought we would not have any clean water to drink again. We stood in line to get water from the trucks that bring in drinking water, but by the time we got to the front of the line the water was gone. We have been very thirsty but now we do not have to be thirsty anymore.”

MALAWI

Malawi, the densely populated African nation wedged in the center of Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania, struggles with extreme poverty, poor infrastructure, food inse-curity, and is stricken with a pervasive HIV/AIDS epidemic that causes 80,000 deaths each year. Nearly half of Malawi’s population survives on less than one dollar a day due to inconsistent agricultural productivity, lack of education, widespread disease, and gender inequality. Until sustainable water solutions are implemented, these obstacles perpetuate a relentless cycle.

LWI launched operations in Malawi in October 2008, rehabilitating a number of previ-ously unusable wells. For Malawi, access to clean, safe water is the first step toward breaking the cycle of poverty.

UpDATES

Spring 2009

GLOBAL

ETHIOpIA

A recent census revealed that Ethiopia’s popula-tion has grown to 82 million. The country has been challenged by a serious humanitarian crisis brought on by drought and late rains in many regions during the past year. The crisis has been magnified by the global rise in food prices and an accelerated internal inflation rate, which has greatly impacted the purchasing power of poor families in the local markets.

The vast majority of those affected by this crisis lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. Poor nutrition increases vulnerabil-ity to diarrheal diseases, with children at the greatest risk. In 2008, LWI was able to bring water and sanitation to 74 desperate communities. Most of these projects were imple-mented through a partnership with a nationwide network of indigenous churches. LWI continues to build its capacity to complete more projects in Ethiopia: an LS-200 drilling rig was commissioned in 2008, and investment in a large, truck-mounted rig is planned for 2009.

past year. My favorite part of the hymn is in the second verse: “Here I raise my Ebenezer; Here by Thy great help I’ve come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home.” If you don’t know what an Ebenezer is, you’re in good company. I wasn’t sure I knew before I wrote this.

“Samuel took a stone and set it up between [the towns of] Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, ‘the stone of help,’ for he said, ‘Up to this point the Lord has helped us!’” (1 Samuel 7:12)

In that schoolyard in El Salvador, we raised an Ebenezer. We realized the Lord had helped us up to that point, and we declared it. Every day, as the children and community members come to the well, they will be reminded that it was the Lord who provided for them. That well is an Ebenezer. What a beauti-ful expression of love. I am constantly amazed that we get to enter into his story and be a part of restoration and redemption. This is the church actively participating in the gospel. This is real. This is truly worth singing songs of loudest praise. May we constantly be reminded that because of the work God is doing through LWI, small monuments stand in 26 coun-tries, declaring that God has provided. May the stories that are told here in our offices, in the corner cafe, and in living rooms in your neighborhood, declare his goodness and provision.

T

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There is an old eighteenth century hymn I have sung many times, called “Come Thou Fount.” You may know the words... “Come, Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace. Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.” These words took on a new meaning during a recent trip to El Salvador. Last summer, my wife and I went on our first LWI mission trip. It was the most beautiful experience of our lives; it changed us forever. The well we drilled that week was in honor of a very young boy who had recently drowned in the village stream. His name was Christopher. After the well was finally completed, we held a dedication service, and declared our praise to the Lord. Chris-topher’s mother, Mrs. Flores, joined us in the celebration as we praised the Lord for the clean water that was now flowing. Most of us were in tears. I was asked to pray during the dedication, to ask God’s blessing on the well. I could not help it. I began to weep—and it was one of those nasty, snotty ones. I thought, “Pull your-self together—be a man, and pray!” As I lifted my head, I real-ized that most of us were in tears. God had tuned our hearts to sing his praise. As I prayed through my tears and weak voice I began to have a new understanding of the blessing of clean water. As I write this, stories fill our offices—stories of what God is doing around the world, but also countless testimonies of what he is doing in the hearts and lives of people here in North America. It was such a blessing to see families, churches, companies, school groups, small groups, and other non-profits come together to give the blessing of water at Christmas. We have much to be thankful for—many reasons to “sing songs of loudest praise!” God has been so good to us at LWI over this

COME THOU FOUNTBY BRANDON BACA

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