A couple of months ago we were sitting down watching the news and noticed that there was a breaking news announcement saying that there was a boil advisory for the entire county that we call home. It was determined that there was a break in one of the large pipes providing most of the water for the county.
It took crews several hours to locate the break which was actually under water in one of our larger rivers which also happened to be near flood stage. Then it took several more hours to fix the break and over 24 hours to test the water to make sure that it was safe to drink.
The really interesting thing about all of this is it didn’t effect everyone simultaneously. Some people had water, others had very low pressure, and some didn’t even have water. So, the county issued a boil advisory that was in affect for days starting once they realized there was a problem until after the water tests came back clean to make sure people were safe and didn’t get sick.
When they first announced that there was a boil advisory it took all of us a minute or two to realize that this didn’t affect us. Since we live on a well we didn’t have to do anything different…but for others, this became a HUGE problem. I mean, just think about how many different things we use water for. Drinking, washing clothes, cleaning, bathing, food preparation, etc. Although we weren’t really affected by the Water Crisis it did make us stop and think about just how blessed we are. We have easy access to clean SAFE drinking water.
The United States and various other well developed nations have things in place to insure that our water won’t make us sick. There’s guidelines and protocols in place to protect our health when there is a problem. Because of these guidelines and protocols we’ve been able to prevent a lot of waterborne diseases.
Other nations don’t have this luxury. In some places around the world people (usually young children) are tasked with walking an AVERAGE of 4 miles to get water each day. And this water is often dirty–easily making many sick with the diseases that we’ve been able to prevent with clean water.
For 11 years our church has been closely involved with the work of Healing Hands International. One of the big things we do is their Walk 4 Water program. This program encourages people to walk and raise money to build clean water wells in places like Haiti and Ethiopia. Countries that don’t have easy access to clean, safe, drinking water.
For about 5 years of those 11 our family has been actively participating in Walk 4 Water.This is seriously one of the highlights of Spring for me. I love being able to get together and walk for something so simple yet so life changing. All we’re doing is walking so they don’t have to.
When these wells are drilled the people that will eventually be using this well often gather and watch the well being drilled. HHI will also tell them stories from the Bible–sharing with them the life giving water that Jesus offers all who believe in Him. Meeting their physical needs as well as their Spiritual needs–just like Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.
This year our family is planning to once again Walk 4 Water. We’ve set up a page where you can donate money to sponsor our walk. All the money raised goes straight to Healing Hands International for the building of water wells, personal water purification systems, or parts to fix existing wells. I do not receive any compensation from the money you donate! If you’d like to learn more about the work of Healing Hands international visit their website HERE. Information about their Walk 4 Water program can be found HERE. If you’d like to sponsor our family for this year’s walk you can do so right HERE.
I hope that this post reminds you of just how blessed we are and how often we take these blessings for granted…
Until next time,
Bailey Sue
