Only three of Maria Chan Tun’s five children lived past the age of five. In her Mexican village, Lerma, as in all of the developing world, water-borne disease is the primary killer of children.
But for Maria’s seven grandchildren, the future is brighter.
In 2004, a Living Waters for the World ministry’s purification system was installed at the Filadelfia Church that she attends. When she was told that her grandchildren would now have clean, healthy drinking water, Maria was moved to tears. She and her whole congregation celebrated this new privilege, and Pastor Carlos Arias explained that the water system could become a new ministry for the church, offering clean water not only to church members but also to others in the community.
The ministry of clean water, the mission focus of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Synod of Living Waters, is now becoming a ministry of the Synod of the Yucatán Peninsula of the Mexican National Presbyterian Church as well. How’s that for teaching someone to fish?
Living Waters for the World, which began a decade ago with installations at Mexican border ministries, now has more than a hundred water purification systems in operation in 14 countries — in the developing world and in Appalachia.
What began as the work of a handful of volunteers has blossomed into a ministry with worldwide reach. The turning point was the establishment in 2004 of a training school, called Clean Water U, at St. Andrew Presbytery’s Hopewell Camp and Conference Center in north Mississippi.
(Churches and individuals interested in further information about Living Waters for the World, including a Clean Water U application form, can find it on the group’s Web site, www.livingwatersfortheworld.org .)
Mission team volunteers come from across the nation and from a wide variety of faith backgrounds — Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, non-denominational Christians (“even Rotarians,” is the in-house joke). They are trained in developing partnerships, leading mission teams, installing water systems, and educating the water system users about the reasons and proper uses for clean water.
“We found out pretty quickly that it doesn’t help much to enable people to get clean water if they don’t understand in the first place why they need it,” said Wil Howie, the founder of Living Waters for the World and now its full-time director. “That’s why we stress the health, hygiene, and spiritual educational components as much as we do the how-to of assembling a system.”
In nine five-day sessions during the first three years of CWU operation, Living Waters for the World trained almost 400 volunteers from 26 states and seven countries, making it one of the largest mission efforts within the PC(USA). And it appears that this is just the beginning, for the program is growing rapidly. Systems are installed in churches, clinics, schools, orphanages, and community centers, as well as on a hospital boat in the Amazon River basin and in an emergency mobile hospital based in North Carolina.
For 2007, Living Waters for the World plans five sessions of its school, enough to train more than 200 additional workers.
“That growth is a blessing, but it also strains our capacity to deliver,” Howie said. “More sessions mean more teachers, more staff time, more blessings.”
Just as the crunch was becoming critical, the national organization of Presbyterian Women notified LWW that it had been selected as one of five mission projects in the denomination to share in PW’s 2007 Birthday Offering. That designation will provide up to $250,000 in mission funding for the training school and give LWW its widest promotion yet within the PC(USA).
The need is overwhelming, and not only for water. Jesus Christ, the group declares, is living water for our bodies and our souls. Maria Chan Tun’s seven smiling, healthy grandchildren are all the reminder — and the reward — LWW staff and partners need.
Bill Williams, an elder in First Church of Paris, Tennessee, is moderator of the Living Waters for the World Committee of the Synod of Living Waters.
