LIVING WATERS

VOWaterTank_1

Whilst we were in the Mekong Delta distributing food for the poor plus bicycles for poor students plus wheelchairs for handicapped children we encountered a desperate situation involving some 11,000 families.

They have an acute shortage of fresh drinking water due to the salting of the lower reaches of the Mekong River caused by China’s damning the upper reaches to generate hydro-electricity. This has allowed seawater to penetrate over 70 kilometres into the lower Mekong.

Soils are ruined & crops stunted. The fresh water is not only needed for drinking, but also cooking & personal hygiene.  Continual bathing in tainted salt water is causing many skin diseases. Drilling efforts for fresh water only produced tainted and brackish results.

Whilst there is a monsoonal season the poor have no way to store water when it rains. These families have had much of their meagre livelihoods destroyed by the salting of the river. They are in a “Catch 22” situation …. for now their crop failures mean they have no money to build water tanks.

We immediately responded by supplying 200 of the poorest families with 1500 litre concrete water tanks and followed that by providing over 1,000 additional tanks to other poor families.

Supplying these water tanks which we built on site show these precious but poor folk that Christians do care and that we share God’s love not just by talk but also by action.

A quick update:
We also praise God that our Project Hope program giving free surgery and other forms of assistance to handicapped children has now helped 26,205 children! Next goal, 30,000!

 

VOWaterTank_1

Psalms 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to guide my feet, and a light for my path.”