Jesus Rescues with Living Water

Often I discover how tightly connected the Kingdom of God is, and especially how small it gets with Presbyterian Missions. I see the entwining connections as one way God shows His involvement our lives, or rather how he includes us in His life.

In 2014 when I started this blog, I was a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in Little Rock, AR doing Eco-minsitry projects and was trained with Solar Under the Sun (SUS) and Living Waters for the World (LWW).  Both train mission teams how to teach local in- country partners how to operate a solar power system or drinking water system (or both) in places that need these things.

Technically this journey started back when I was 16 and Mac Sterret lead a group from Shenandoah Presbytery to Mexico to build houses for migrant farm workers and I went with him.  That landmark event in my teenage years put me on the path to becoming a YAV and was big in setting me up for the paths I have taken.  I was lucky enough during my YAV year to recconect with Mac at a LWW conference in Little Rock which lead to my LWW training and trip to Guatemala with Mac in 2015.  More notes on those past experiences are linked below:

Mac Water and Cuba
Yo Voy Guatemala
¿Cómo cantaremos cántico de Jehová en tierra de extraños?


For now I will get to the 2018 story:

After YAV I got a solar panel installer job in Lynchburg, VA and found a new church, Quaker Memorial Presbyterian (QMPC) who has a partnership with Haiti Outreach Ministries (HOM) in Port Au Prince.  I attended a few mission team meetings to learn more resulting in me going to Haiti to help with an electrical project and plan a solar install in 2019.  We plan to put solar panels on a girl’s home called House of Hope partially affiliated with HOM. In planning for this solar mission project I’ve used networks at my work in the solar industry and some from Arkansas to find Hatian supplies and local installer help.  SUS put me in contact with Ancy and Lucson, the Haiti SUS suppliers and trip leaders. Both have been very helpful advising me on Hatian supply chains.

At the same time as I’m trying to find solar equipment for next year’s HOM trip, QMPC Bible School needed help with a clean water fundraising project. The theme was “Shipwrecked” and “Jesus Rescues” so they wanted to support clean water because that’s one thing you’ll need if you become shipwrecked somewhere, and they wanted to combine that with the recurring Haiti mission.  

When I was in Haiti, I discovered that the drinking water system at Terre Noire, where we spent the night and ate meals was a LWW system installed by First Presbyterian Church of Pascagoula Mississippi.  That was a small world moment for me to recognize that a small organization in Mississippi I knew had already been on the Hatian soil I was walking on.

Despite a five year partnership with HOM, my new church was not familiar with LWW. So that became a very well-recieved teachable moment for the congregation and for bible school.  With this knowledge the bible school team decided to do a fundraiser for LWW with the kids. 

They gathered some pictures of our mission team carrying the blue jugs in Haiti, and we collected money in an empty 5 gallon jug to fund LWW’s Haiti network to support their translators and in-country partners.  Some of the curriculum and activities were slanted to bring clean water into the kid’s lessons and conversations a few times.  One night of crafts we tested some water samples in our own filters with the LWW Whirly-packs bacteria test kits!! We even coordinated several prizes and for kids who gave more than $5 they were entered in a drawing to win a prize like a stuffed jungle animals like Moe the sloth or a LWW T shirt to encourage more donations.  LWW website says $5 provides clean water to a family of 5 for a month so we challenged the kids to raise $300 which would provide 5 families for a year.  They raised $378!! in just 3 days of VBS!!

A few of us from the mission team wanted to make the discussion more personal for the kids about what communities and some names of people we could support with the LWW money.  In gathering general info from Hatian partners about LWW work at our site, some LWW people I knew from my YAV year connected me with Lucson, the LWW In-Country-Technician assigned to the HOM system where our mission team stays. Lucson…. Hmm… Yes… This is the same Lucson I was contacting about our solar mission project. AND he happened to be at our site on his two-month visit the Monday before VBS started and he made a video of our site’s water system that we showed to the kids at VBS! How timely and fortunate.

Here is a link to Lucson's video for us.  https://youtu.be/KHOoyEJJIDY

Of all of Haiti I found Lucson through SUS, and LWW, and he was already connected with HOM, AND he was able to help us with VBS fundraiser at the right time.  God showed up in another amazing connection, when I spoke about it with our HOM partner Pastor Luc, he introduced me to a man named Joseph who was on the LWW team that installed the drinking water system at Terre Noire.  Joseph and the board have plans to install a water system at the girl’s home where we will install the solar array.  These conversations with Lucson and Joseph open the door to a much better planned out solar mission project and better connections for our work and their work in that community.  

God is connecting his people, so we can help one another provide actual and spiritual clean water to all God’s Children.  I’m glad bible school inspired me to start asking around about the LWW connections to HOM because it will probably strengthen our connection to HOM in the future.  Thanks to the 40 VBS kids who raised $378 to the LWW Haiti Network!  Bondye ap Travay!! God is Working!! Especially the 51 weeks of the year we are away from our friends in Haiti.  I look forward to seeing what God is doing with us next.

These connections once again remind me that God is the central character of the story in our lives.  Often we think we are the protagonist.  We are lucky enough to be only supporting characters in the story of God’s kingdom.  Thanks be to God.