Missions

---

Elizabeth is a twelve year old girl living the slum of Kibera in Africa, where over a half of a million people live in poverty. There is no electricity or running water. Her mother is deceased and her father works odd jobs to make a few shillings. She is fortunate to be alive, as many children die here before the age of six.

The house she lives in is a mud shack. The ground is used for a toilet, bringing stench and diseases. Sewage runs like rivers of water through the village during the rainy season.

Elizabeth can’t go to school because she must stay home and care for her younger brothers and fetch water. She walks quite a distance and must carry heavy containers. She sometimes has to pay for water, so she gets very little. The family goes without washing their hands or bodies because water must be used for drinking.

Due to the sanitary conditions, diseases like malaria and dysentery are rampant in the village. Both children and adults get sick and die. Medical help comes from outside and is scarce.

Elizabeth’s four year old brother Dominick is dying. She hears a new clinic on the edge of Kibera has opened, so she literally carries him there. He has severe stomach trouble and is dehydrated. The child moans in agony as the doctor does all she can, but it is too late. God mercifully takes another angel home.

Elizabeth sobs as she steps out of the clinic with her brother’s lifeless body in her arms, and sees a golf course with water sprinklers running over a lush, green, lawn. A high fence separates the rich from the slums of Kibera. Children dying for water stand outside the fence watching men play golf, and eyeing the water as it quenches the thirst of the grass. They do not understand.

The characters in the above story are fictionalized, the events are not. A child like Dominick is just one of 6000 children dying in Africa every day. 6000 a day! There is a global water crisis in this world many people are either unaware of or simply choose not to think about. We must do something to help!

In 2008, Dick and Terri Greenly (co-owners of Pumps of Oklahoma) founded a public charity called The Water4 Foundation to provide water to impoverished areas such as Kenya, Ghana, Haiti and many others. They not only drill wells at a small fraction of the cost of others, they also teach the gospel of Christ and get the natives involved by providing them employment opportunities and allowing them to become a part of a solution to their own water shortage problem.

Please go to Water4 and learn more, and then, give! Even the smallest donation will help save a child by providing clean, safe, water. These children are God’s most precious angels, and they need your help. You will be blessed many times over!

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE