Like many people in Sierra Leone, the people of Batama Village have very little. There are nine houses in the village, even though more than fifty people live here. It takes one hour to walk from here to the nearest school, longer to walk to the nearest clinic.

One thing Batama Village had that other communities didn’t was two sources of water: a community well and a dirty swamp. Most people in the village gathered their water from the swamp, even though they knew it made them sick. Why? Because the contractor who dug the well had a disagreement with the community. There was no trust—no community involvement. As a result, people believed the well wasn’t built correctly and that the water was contaminated. The contractor never came back to check on the well, never came back to check on the people, never trained them in proper health and hygiene.

So the people drank from the swamp. For 23 years.

The people in Batama Village shared their struggles with our team. Children told us that drinking from the swamp made them feel sick. Everyone knew the swamp water was bad, but drinking from the well wasn’t an option, either. The pipes rusted through and the pad cracked years ago.

As we began repairing the well, community members worked alongside us, taking turns pulling pipe, digging the well deeper, and making additional casings. It wasn’t easy work, but they didn’t stop. At the beginning of each day the villagers would pray with us, and at the end of each day the women would serve us meals of rice and soup. While the team worked with some community members on the well, many of the women and children took part in the hygiene training classes. When the repair was finished, everyone gathered around the well to celebrate.

There was a true spirit of cooperation in Batama Village—in everything they did. They didn’t just help our team with the well; they helped each other with their homes, their fields, their crops, their children. With the well repair, they were empowered—offered the keys to their own transformation. Somehow, even though the people of Batama Village have very little, the value of their contribution was far greater than ours. It was their sweat, their time, their effort. They gave what they had. This is their well.

From the very first day my heart was broken when, toward the end of the day, the kids asked “Tomorrow? Tomorrow?” I knew I could answer honestly only a few times with a resounding “Yes! Tomorrow!” My heart ached every time I said “yes” knowing that on the last day I would have to answer “No, I won’t see you tomorrow.” And more than likely, never again.

With this realization, I made up my mind to soak up as much time with the kids as I could. I played harder in those few short days than I think I ever had as a kid. We ran until we collapsed in a heap in the aforementioned field. We sang ridiculous, made-up songs, and we sang them ridiculously loud. I taught them a little English; they did their best to teach me some Spanish.

I slowly began to realize that through all of this God was teaching me how to love him again. As we played I could hear him whisper to me, “This is how I want you to love me, this is how I want you to delight in me. All I want from you is:

…to laugh with me like a child
…to sing to me like a child
…to run to me like a child
…to cry out to me like child
…to trust in me like a child…”

I went to Guatemala to document a well being built, to tell a story about a village moving from dirty water to clean water, from death to life. In the midst of this I was blessed enough to capture my own resurrection story. I am reminded every time I look in the faces of the children in Los Cruces that God loves me, and all he desires of me is to love him back.
 

See more of Natalie’s work at nataliehebert.net.

The Advent Conspiracy—a movement founded by three pastors just a few years ago—is quickly becoming the new Christmas tradition for many people all over the world. It’s a massive move from the mall to the manger by people who are committing to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All. At LWI alone the movement has resulted in more than 300 water wells providing water in Jesus’ name for more than 200,000 people!

The Advent season is upon us and the [AC] buzz abounds. The movement has already been featured on Wired.com and in The Philadelphia Enquirer, The Oregonian, St. Joseph News-Press, the Idaho Statesman, The Christian Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and in editorials, church websites, and personal blogs all around the country.

There’s a new [AC] book and DVD published by Zondervan, available together as a study pack here, and thousands are using them as tools to help transform their Christmas celebrations. At last count, the [AC] movement had more than 15,000 Facebook fans and 1,500 Twitter followers, and its YouTube videos from last year and this year have now been seen over a million times!

All this buzz is beautiful, but what we love are the personal stories, like the one told in this 90 second film about clean water helping spread the gospel in India. Or this story about a youth group who provided water in Sierra Leone on Christmas day, or the church in Tulsa who quintupled their AC goal and became well drillers themselves.

We love the six-year-old in St. Louis who is making and selling Christmas ornaments and bracelets in order to provide water in Jesus’ name. We are touched by the church in Wisconsin whose 35 members decided to give all their offerings from November 8th through December 31st to provide clean water to people who desperately need it. We’re completely blown away by a story we heard just today of a homeless man in Texas who, after selling over $100 worth of his artwork at a local craft market, donated every penny he made “to people who need clean water” before he left to go sleep back underneath the overpass.

And while we’re moved by the boy at Windsor Crossing Church who asked Santa for $10 billion so that all the kids in the world could have clean water, we know that Santa’s not going to come through for him. When we see stories like these all around us, though, it looks like God will—through us. Christmas [is] changing the world. Again.

Post-election violence rocked this region not too long ago. Three tribes, all at once, seemed to want to concentrate on being three different tribes instead of remembering that they are all Kenyan. The plastic tents on my right, filled with children and women and families, remind me that when tribes fight, there are always IDP’s. Homes lost, communities torn apart. People classified, named, perhaps more self-aware than they have ever been. Fear and insecurity are now a part of life more than ever before.

This entire area, a catchment of 15,000 people, breathes the same air and drinks the same river water.

The river does not care what tribe you are.

And when you get sick, you end up at Ikumbi Health Clinic.

Living Water International has torn the place up. A leftover mound of dirt from drilling in one spot, deep trenches for pipes everywhere, a pump house and community tap both in construction. It’s beautiful.

David Kamanga tells me that people are “coming together” over this beautiful mess.

“This water will bring these people together,” he tells me. He talks about the violence that occurred here. And he knows that this mess will be transformed into the only clean water in the area. He calls it “healing water.”

His words. Not mine.

I am still trying to take this all in. You see, David also oversees Ikumbi Clinic. He held a report showing crazy typhoid, worms, diarrhea, and amoeba counts, but he seemed more excited about “healing” and “peace” and “bringing this community together.” Because this will be a community well, tribal aspirations and assertions become displaced by visions of unity and health and redemption.

I hope that today you are encouraged to hear that on a mound of dirt, backed up to a mess of trenching and construction, a man named David Kamanga declared that a water well would bring all tribes together. It would be “healing water.”

We know that clean water is the foundation for all other types of community development, but it isn’t just because people need clean water to drink. Many benefits of clean water come when the communities we serve understand and value good hygiene practices—things we in the Western world do EVERY DAY but don’t even think about, like washing our hands, brushing our teeth, and using a toilet. In fact, lack of proper sanitation is the single biggest cause of infection worldwide.

LWI is working to change that, and we’re doing it with the help of partners like Saddleback Church’s Clean Water Initiative (CWI), led by Carolyn and Larry McBride. One thing that CWI does is provide community development hygiene training to Rwandan nationals. These fun, interactive training sessions empower villagers to identify and resolve their own hygiene and sanitation issues.

In July and August, folks from Saddleback traveled to Africa to teach this two-day curriculum to more than 100 Rwandan nationals. They provided 10 backpacks with Kinyarwanda lessons and teaching aids for the Rwandan trainers to use in teaching health & hygiene to their own communities. Now they are prepared to show other communities how to understand and value good hygiene practices.

Click on the pictures below to take a look at how hygiene training is conducted in a place like Rwanda.

Our team of twelve first met at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for our eight day trip to Guatemala. There were six women and six men, ages 22 to 65, all from different walks of life. I didn’t know anyone, so I was thankful we were instructed to wear our Living Water International t-shirts in order to find each other! Our flight first took us to Guatemala City, where Jaime and Alvero (our LWI representatives in Guatemala) met us. They drove us to Antigua, where we were able to get to know one another while being treated to home-cooked meals prepared by Jaime’s wife and mother.

After two days in Antigua, we made the four-hour drive to Champerico. Our team spent the majority of our time drilling a well for a village and school on the coast.

I brought a bunch of toys to play with the kids between drilling and on our breaks. I managed to teach them to play baseball (using Frisbees as bases). The little ones used a badminton racket or a plastic bat to hit the ball. They loved the jump ropes most of all and were, of course, excellent at soccer. Several team members joined in the soccer games, too. Everyone on our team played with the kids every day we were there, and we all had a wonderful time doing it. After all, how often is it that we get to play Frisbee, jump rope, play soccer, fly kites, or just generally act like a kid?

Our days were packed from morning to night as we absorbed the culture, met new people, and tried to process all that we saw. God’s love and grace came pouring out not only through our team, but even more clearly through the families and children in Champerico. Through those families and their children, I have witnessed faith beyond what I can express.

It was so much easier to see and feel the Lord when I was on this trip. I came home with new eyes to see, a cleansed heart, and an open mind. I am on such a spiritual high; I wish this would last forever. My goal is to try to see the Lord in Houston as much as I did in Champerico.

I went to Guatemala to share God’s love and serve those less fortunate than me. At least, that’s what I thought. In reality, the poor, the orphaned, the destitute, and the thirsty showed me more love and kindness than I could have ever imagined.