Dear Family and Friends,
It is with much joy and anticipation that we send this letter to you. God has revealed an opportunity for us both to use our experience, gifts, and passions to participate in a Mission Trip with Living Water International to help drill a well and provide clean drinking water to a community in El Salvador.
The statistics are startling when you learn that:
• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world’s population. (WHO-UNICEF)
• 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day. (UNDP)
• The simple act of washing hands with soap and clean water can reduce diarrheal diseases by over 40%. (UNICEF)
• Providing water and hygiene education reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhea diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)
• Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis. (UNDP)
From Sept. 1-8th, we will travel to Nicaragua to help provide clean water to a population of people that have never had it before. David will utilize his previous background in storm water pollution prevention and his current experience with oil drilling equipment to do the hands-on work of drilling the well. Lorraine will be doing what God has blessed her with the passion of doing, teaching. She will be educating the local women and children on the subject of hygiene while the well is being drilled.
While we believe that God has provided the opportunity to serve Him in this manner, we also believe that he will provide financially to cover the cost of the trip. The cost of the trip is $1700 per person, which totals $3400 for the two of us. We know that what He has started He will finish!
This is where you come in. First and foremost, we ask that you pray. Pray for the people of El Salvador that will be impacted by the team going down there. Pray for the team to be fully prepared and ready to do His Kingdom work. Pray for us, that we will be ready to leave work, family, and friends behind for a week to be a living example of what God has called us to do. Secondly, we ask for your financial support to help us make the trip. Each donation is tax deductible as Living Water International is a non-profit organization. We ask that you pray together as a family as you consider supporting us in this endeavor. If you feel led to do so, checks can be made payable to Living Water International. You can use the enclosed pre-addressed and pre-posted envelope to send the donation back to us and we will pass it along to LWI. For more detailed information on Living Water International, visit www.water.cc.
We look forward to seeing how God works through us on this trip and how people will be impacted by not only receiving clean drinking water, but also receiving the Living Water that only Jesus Christ can offer.
With love, gratitude, and blessings,
Date
Dear Family and Friends,
It is with much joy and anticipation that we send this follow up letter to you today! We can not thank you enough for your generosity, love and support in helping us to achieve our goal to be able to participate in the Living Water International trip. Through your giving, we were able to exceed the needed financial amount of $3400 and pay for the trip in full as well as sending extra support funds to LWI.
Sometimes, however, God’s plans our bigger than our own or even those that we thought he had mapped out for us! We are thrilled to announce that we are expecting our first little one! Everything is progressing well and mom and baby are both healthy and growing. Our due date is December 4th and we are beyond excited that we will be celebrating Jesus’s birthday with a little bundle of joy.
Through our doctor’s advice, we will no longer be participating in the trip. However, we felt it was very important to make sure that we continued to be good stewards of the gifts that were so freely given to us for this trip. By working with LWI we were able to work out all the details to allow for the funds that were donated specifically to sponsor us to be transferred to support the next Living Water International trip that Cy-Fair Christian Church will be taking in September. While your funds will no longer be specifically supporting us, it will continue to bless those that are in need of clean drinking water by sending two other people from our community to help drill a well. It is our hope that the people who will be able to use those funds will be blessed by them and your generosity.
We ask that you pray along with us to cover the team that will be going on the trip to El Salvador from June 10-16th. Pray for their health, safety, ease of the well being drilled, and that God reaches the people of El Salvador through not only this well, but the team that will be there volunteering and reflecting His glory.
With love,
Your name
“Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.”
Proverbs 11:25