Living Water

While it’s true that Living Water works around the world to drill and repair water wells, our work is more than that. Each well is a stone in the water, causing endless ripples throughout the communities where we work. Often, we don’t know the extent of this ripple effect; but one Sunday in Burkina Faso, Living Water’s Burkina Faso Country Director Geoffrey Richter got to witness it first-hand as the well he helped repair last summer opened the door to save someone’s life. Yes, we know clean water saves people’s lives...but this time was a little different.

For the past two years, Bethany Community Church in Seattle has dared to imagine a world where the hope of Jesus and his resurrection overflows into the world, spilling out into every corner of the planet. It’s called Spilling Hope, and it is spreading the word about the global water crisis and knocking down the walls that divide the rich and the poor.

BURKINA FASO – Komsilga, Kadiogo

GPS: 12 10.523 N, 001 37.499 W

It’s before dawn in a remote Ugandan village, and a young girl wakes. She picks up a jerry can and begins her two-mile walk to the nearest pond, where she will fill that jerry can with murky brown water. She’ll carry the now heavy container on the two-mile walk home, where her family will use the water to cook, wash, and drink. The water may make her and her parents sick. It could cause her little baby brother to contract intestinal worms or chronic diarrhea, or worse.

NAMIBIA – Mubiza, Caprivi

GPS: 17 37.866 S, 24 24.453 E

The Kavango people of Namibia live in the north near a river that doesn’t dry up in the dry season—a rare thing in this arid nation. They are proud of their crops, mostly corn, and they walk back and forth to the river many times a day for water for these crops—and for themselves. “River water is running water, so it is always clean,” they tell us. “The only problem is crocodiles eat us sometimes.”

UGANDA – Rwentobo, Ntungamo

GPS: 01 03.414 S, 030 24.436 E

LIBERIA – King Grey Township, Montserrado

GPS: 6 14.872 N, 10 42.227 W

RWANDA – Kiruruma, Rweri, Rwamagana Province

GPS: 01 58.109 S, 030 17.710 E

Along one side of the school in Complan is a small grove of fruit trees and a garden, withered and dry. When the school’s pump stopped working, the students could no longer use the water to care for their trees and their garden—or for themselves.

UGANDA – Kemironko, Ntungamo District

GPS: 00 57.862 S, 030 22.312 E