Saving lives, ministering to souls

 

Living Waters for the World

“Clean Water U” addresses both physical and spiritual thirsts.

 

By Errol Castens
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Mississippi, Fall 2004

 

OXFORD - Thirsty people in many parts of the world have no choice but to drink from whatever water source they can find. Every day, 13,000 of them die from it.

“They think, ‘If the water looks fine and smells fine, it must be fine, right?’” said Earl Pond, a Murfreesboro, Tenn., farmer and computer technician who does mission work in Nicaragua.

Other Third World residents, having learned the dangers posed by contamination, spend large parts of their meager incomes for safe drinking water.

“Maria has five children, but three of them died from water-borne illness,” said Remi Van Compernolle, a Houston, Texas, engineer with extensive overseas mission experience. “She has seven grandchildren, and Luis and Esau want to go to university. If their families can save the 25 percent of their $45-a-week incomes they currently spend on bottled water, maybe they can go.”

Cleaning it up
Living Waters for the World is an outreach of the Synod of Living Waters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) whose vision is “clean water for all of God’s children.” It is the brainchild of the Rev. Wil Howie, a Lafayette County minister and missionary.

The guts of LWW’s clean-water provision is a $2,500 system that renders biologically contaminated water safe for drinking. Most parts from plastic tanks to PVC fittings are available even in many underdeveloped areas, and the rest - including filters and ozonation unit - can be transported in three or four suitcases.

Under Howie’s supervision, LWW staff and volunteers have worked in nearly two dozen less-developed communities from Mexico to Brazil to install the system, which can purify 300 gallons of water in 75 minutes at an ongoing cost of less than 50 cents.

“Last year was our best year to date; we installed four units,” Howie said in September. “Thus far this year we’ve already had nine installed.”

Multiplying the effort
This year’s growth is not due just to harder work from Living Waters team members.
In March, the ministry began “Clean Water U,” a four-day training program whose initial session equipped some four dozen volunteers from across the United States to do the same kind of work. A second session followed in September, bringing in another three dozen participants.

Based at Hopewell Camp and Conference Center near Oxford, Clean Water U equips volunteers to work with leaders of needy communities to install the inexpensive water purification systems in less-developed communities. Already, the response of missions-minded people has inspired its expansion.

“There are three sessions scheduled next year and a ‘graduate school’ in October, where we’ll bring in people who have gone through Clean Water U and have completed an installation,” Howie said.

The what ...
Clean Water U consists of three separate tracks that address different areas of responsibility for missioners aiming at a clean-water project.

CWU’s construction curriculum helps current and prospective missioners understand the mechanical, electrical and plumbing aspects of the purification systems.

In it, two teams share a 24- by 30-foot block building across Lake Andrew from the camp and, in about the same time allotted to most installation trips, build finished versions of the system.

Just as in real life, unexpected challenges arise. One team’s plumbing sprang a major leak, forcing them to make repairs and start the purification process from scratch just before a school-wide demonstration.

“Failure is not an option,” Howie said. “Of the 24 teams that have gone out, 24 systems have been installed. We know it’s probably a matter of time before something goes seriously wrong, but God has been gracious.”

After the construction teams help each other make the needed adjustments, the entire student body marks the teams’ success by drinking cups of the purified lake water. At the end of the school, the same water reconstitutes grape juice for a Communion service.

... the why ...
A second CWU training track furnishes the health and hygiene perspectives necessary for communities to benefit most from having pure water.

Class members learn to assess local knowledge levels about germ theory and basic hygiene issues, then tailor presentations to that knowledge. Stories and role playing are important to the process, as are visual aids such as an ultraviolet-reactive lotion that demonstrates how incompletely most people wash their hands.

“The two main points are ‘Use this water’ and ‘Wash your hands,’” said Mary Ann Shillington, a CWU participant from Duluth, Ga.

When graduates of CWU 102 go on mission trips, they will train local residents already acknowledged as teachers. They will also leave educational materials in the native language to aid those trainers in reaching other community members.

“We used not to do health education,” Howie said, “but then we realized how incomplete the system is without it.”
As with all Clean Water cross-cultural contacts, the CWU 102 curriculum emphasizes attitudes of humility and service in interacting with recipient community members.

“It’s important to have fun with our hosts,” said Susan Jordan of Cordova, Tenn. “We learn through humor, and it draws us together as God’s people.”

CWU training emphasizes the importance of spiritual relationships among the people involved in missions. Water lends itself to nearly endless biblical metaphors that become part of the teaching, and daily shared devotions are part of both the Clean Water U experience and most survey and installation visits.

CWU 102 instructor Joanie Lukins said, “It’s easy to get caught up in activity as we learn to install water systems, or to educate, or to do surveys, and forget that it’s directed toward people - real children of God.”

... and the how
Perhaps the course covering the most variables is CWU 101, which offers an overview of likely challenges in laying the groundwork for water-purification installations.

Typically, mission teams work with a community that has an existing water source that is biologically contaminated to plan and install a purification system and then offer supervision and troubleshooting help for three years afterward.

Howie, the most experienced of the CWU instructors, teaches team leadership, initial site and community surveys, water testing and developing partnerships between American congregations and international institutions.

“The easiest thing about what we’re doing is the technical side,” he said. “We’ve got the board pretty much together. The cultural issues, the relationship issues, the communication issues are the hardest part.”

One of Clean Water U’s most valuable aspects is the “war stories” about wrestling with cultural differences. Sometimes, for instance, an American team arrives expecting a smooth installation experience only to find that local partners, despite assurances, had been unable to obtain key materials.

“Often people in the sites - especially in Latin America - will tell you that they have done something or acquired something because they don’t want to tell you, ‘No,’” said one veteran missioner. “That’s considered impolite in their culture.”

Other cross-cultural issues include conversational distances between people, welcome/unwelcome forms of touch and expectations regarding formality.

Prior negative experience with outsiders can also inhibit a project.
”The people in Guatemala have been so abused that they’re very distrustful,” said Katy BeDunnah of Universal City, Texas, who is LWW’s area coordinator for Guatemala.

Even seemingly innocent words or gestures often have unexpected local meanings that can handicap relationships. In some Asian cultures, for instance, a man’s wearing a green hat is shorthand for the idea that his wife is unfaithful. In many places, the thumbs-up “OK” sign carries the same message as the middle finger does stateside.

“Creativity, flexibility and patience” become Clean Water mantras for dealing with the unexpected.
”This course will not prepare us for a flawless installation trip and three years of smooth partnership,” Howie said. “Unexpected things are part of the process.”

Mission opportunity
Many in the project’s first classes have seen Clean Water U as a fitting addition to mission work they were already doing.

“I thought this was something my congregation could get interested in,” Earl Pond said. “We already had a relationship with a church in Nicaragua.”

Don and Gerry Kaller of Florence, Ala., had seen the need for water purification while they were missionaries in Brazil.

“All the drinking water came from a creek that flowed through a pasture - when it flowed,” Don Kaller said.
For others, learning of Living Waters for the World and Clean Water U was an invitation into mission work.
”Everybody in our church was asking, ‘What can we do?’” said Clayton Hackett of Columbus. “This was exciting.”
Dale Pumphrey, also of Columbus, agreed.
”I’m kind of a hands-on guy,” said the former diesel mechanic. “This seemed like something I could do; the calling felt like it fit.”

Because water purification teams tend to stay small, both to save money and to simplify logistics, Clean Water U and Living Waters for the World offer a mission opportunity for even small groups.

“It’s not critical to get a church involved,” Howie said. “Two or three fired-up people can do it.” Where a whole congregation wants to be involved, however, fund raisers and prayer partners can fill vital roles, he added.

“It’s great that youth groups can go on mission trips, and they do service, but this seems so much more important than painting a kitchen,” said Melanie Lesley of Holly Springs. “The bottom line is that it saves lives.”

Regional coordinators are now connecting U.S. churches and international communities.
”This allows congregations that don’t already have a relationship with a community to get involved,” Lukins said.

Into the future
Clean water’s importance is so easily grasped and communicated that scores of churches and even a California Rotary Club have expressed interest in Clean Water U. New projects are ongoing or planned from Kazakhstan to Ghana and from India to an American Indian reservation.

As a result, organizers hope within the next few years to vacate Camp Hopewell facilities and complete the Katy Bryson-Frankie Lawler Campus across Lake Andrew, where the CWU 103 building now stands.

“Our vision is to have a campus of seven or eight buildings that will be an international village,” Howie said. “Students will worship in a building of West African church design and live in Third World dormitories.”

Another plan is eventually to host international CWU sessions to train nationals to oversee purification systems in their own countries.

Other developments in the works include a bicycle-powered pump to eliminate electric limitations and a reverse-osmosis system that could purify salty water or that contaminated with chemicals.

Living Waters for the World is one of several international water-related ministries based in the United States. Some drill wells; others build entire distribution systems.

“This fills a particular need in a particular niche,” BeDunnah said. “In some of these little Mayan villages, there’s no way they’ll ever have a modern water utility. This system meets their modest needs.”

For more information, log on to www.livingwatersfortheworld.org.