Each morning and night last week about 50 of us sat in an old church in the hills around Oxford at Camp Hopewell.
The church was built in 1866, a year or so after the first church on the site had burned.
The church was a central gathering point for three groups of people who were learning the three different parts of constructing and maintaining systems to provide clean water for those who don’t have it.
Five of us were there from Washington County: Hardie Frankel, Kendall Cox, Scott Horton, Mike Caulfield and myself.
Both Frankel and Cox were there as instructors for Living Waters for the World and the rest of us were there to take classes to help move the ministry forward.
In the Living Waters system, there are three distinct groups of volunteers on each water team:
1. The coordinators who create the plan and make all the arrangements to complete the mission;
2. The educators who teach the people in the partner countries why cleanliness and using safe water is important; and
3. Those who instruct the local people on how to build the systems.
The program is highly organized and it has to be.
We are constructing these water systems in countries where basic necessities aren’t always available. In many cases if we don’t bring it with us, it simply can’t be had.
It sometimes boggles my mind to think there are places in this world in 2019 where just having clean water is a bridge too far for the governments in control.
Through the four days we spent in Oxford this week, we learned the intricacies of the program and our roles within it.
While the ABCs of constructing the system, maintaining it for longevity and teaching the reasons to use it are important, I think the most important thing we learned is that our partners in the countries we visit are truly partners.
Living Waters for the World doesn’t simply swoop in to a place as saviors, confer a blessing on the populace and the head back home.
We are simply the vessels which kickstart a group’s ability to provide clean water for their community.
We return regularly to provide items that can’t be found locally, but the people in the country have to operate the system daily and correctly with limited contact with their partners back in the United States of America.
It is without question one of the most well thought out mission initiatives I’ve seen.
Sure, we bring enormous resources our partners can’t provide for themselves, but those resources simply give them the ability to do the work they so desperately want to do.
While the five of us in Oxford are directly involved in the mission, we aren’t the only people.
The water team at First Presbyterian Church in Greenville is growing and every person who has ever eaten a plate of Grits and Grillades at Mardi Gras Madness has helped to make a significant contribution to the success of this mission. It’s just one of the many ways Greenville’s generosity manifests itself.
I kept all these thoughts with me as I sat in the church each morning and evening. It’s perhaps the oldest church building where I’ve worshiped.
I thought about the men and women who listened to sermons and sang in the small church building 153 years ago.
Those who built the church would have had the same problems finding good clean water as the countries we help service today.
They didn’t know the water they drank carried diseases which could do them harm, and they most likely prayed in that same church for people who were sick from those diseases.
I know they’d be proud of the work we do today in the building they built with their bare hands and the sweat of their brows.
It is, after all, the same work as their’s: the Lord’s work.
Angel alert goes out to any person who has given freely of their time to be a missionary at home or abroad and done good deeds without hope of recompense beyond the spiritual enrichment missions provide. Happy Birthday to Alan Spragins, Dave Clarke, Jamie Murrell and Scott Horton.
Jon Alverson is proud to be publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.comor call him at 335-1155.
