Clean Water Changes Everything

As I wrote in an earlier post, in recognition of my 20th anniversary at New Covenant and my 60th birthday, I’m asking my friends to join me on Sunday, October 30 between 3:00-5:00 PM in room 209 at New Covenant for an Open House Celebration!

To celebrate, I want to help finance a water drilling rig in Zimbabwe. I'm partnering with the Mushayamunda Christian Development Foundation, a ministry sponsored by Dennis Matangira and his family. Dennis is from Zimbabwe and attends New Covenant.

MCDF works with 20 schools that represents over 10,000 children! Only five of these schools have a well and clean drinking water! This is not acceptable! The first priority will be to drill wells for the 15 schools that don't have accessibility to clean water.

Why clean water?

• Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.
• 90% of the 30,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are of children under five years old.
• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in six people.
• Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick.
• In Zimbabwe, the average woman or child walks three hours a day to get water.
• In 1998 Zimbabwe had an outbreak of cholera that devastated the country and shut down hospitals. The primary cause was unclean drinking water.
• Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe has dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 42 years, among the lowest in the world. The amount of time a Zimbabwean citizen is expected to live healthily from birth is 39 years.
• Water, when given in the name of Jesus, changes entire villages, impacts families and transforms lives!

Clean water changes everything! I hope you will join me in giving generously to the Zimbabwe Drilling Rig Project. I will share more about this project and how you can give at a later time.

Together, we can make a lasting impact on the country of Zimbabwe as we share the good works and the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ!