Category: Uncategorized

Join Our Cause

100% of the money raised goes directly to installing water systems in under developed countries.  No salaries, No administrative fees, just clean water.

Our Method

Agua Viva International (AVI) approaches The Crisis by providing health and hygiene education and curriculum typically to the women of the community, installing sustainable water purification systems, and delivering purified water to communities of need. Therein sharing the love of Jesus Christ. Agua Viva International creates opportunities for partnering with local people to be a part this cause and witness the need and solution first hand.

The water purification system is provided by Living Waters for the World (LWW, LivingWatersfortheWorld.org) . It is a system that is tested in the field with over 1000 installations around the world. There is a network of installations and support personnel to support the installations.

The LWW system can provide clean water to a community of up to 3000 people for less than $10 per person.

Honduras 2017-2018

In October of 2016, Agua Viva provided our first installation in Quisgualagua, Honduras.  Agua Viva took 10 volunteers to this very rural and poor community to bless them with pure clean ozonated water, health and hygiene education, and full dental services.

During our trip, we were able to consider three possible new sites for future trips in Honduras.  One such possibility is El Obraje.  Several team members split off from the group to visit new friends in this needy community.  Church of the Resurrection has been providing medical missions to this community for several years and they have requested that Agua Viva consider this site for an installation.  Alejandro, the head pastor at the Methodist Church in El Obraje, was pleased to give us a tour of their new construction project where the water system may be installed.

Victor Galo, Nancy Allen, and Alejandro sized up the room and it is looking good for a future trip.  No date has been set, but one possible time frame being considered is January 2018.

Africa 2017

Agua Viva is blazing a new trail into Africa.  Last year, Agua Viva performed site investigations in Kenya and Tanzania.  After careful consideration and prayer, Zinga, Tanzania was selected for first installation in Africa.

We had ten outstanding volunteers attending our first Training Session on Saturday, February 11, 2017.  With this great group of volunteers, our team leaves for Africa and our new friends in Zinga are very excited about having clean pure ozonated water in their new Children’s Hospital.  Agua Viva was invited to this hospital by International Health Partners and they have recently begun construction of a new birthing center and neonatal care unit.  It is hard to believe they have no clean drinking water at this hospital!!  But, not for much longer.

Tanzania is a very interesting country.  One half of the population is Christian and one half is Muslim and they live together in relative peace.  What a great world model for living!  Women frequently do not have an opportunity for prenatal care in Tanzania and this new hospital will provide a great resource to Muslim and Christian women alike to have healthy children and successful birthing experiences.

This is also a great opportunity for Agua Viva.  We are expanding our influence into a new continent and country, we are installing purified water in our first hospital, and Agua Viva is modifying the standard board to operate with 240 Volt, 50 Cycle Power.

We love the children!  They need clean drinking water more than anyone as they are developing and their immune systems are often weak from malnutrition.

The Crisis

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.

The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
People living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.

An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

Half of the world’s hospitalizations are due to water related disease

Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.

Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.

In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water.
In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed for the most basic of human needs — collecting water for domestic use.
This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, IBM, Target, and Kroger.

Lack of Clean Water, Hunger, Disease, oppression of Women and poor education are linked together.

Worship Times Two

With each additional installation, we not only gain more brothers in Christ, but the complexity of managing all the responsibilities of follow-up and new site visits increases. Trying to manage a total of five location visits this trip presented a new challenge. So,  Sunday brought about a change in plans. Since the progress on the system installation was ahead of schedule, we were able to schedule an official visit to last year’s site– Huerto de Getsemani.This meant that we would attend worship service at our current site– Eglesia Eben Ezer– and then in the afternoon we would worship again with our brothers at Huerto!

So the day began with the bone jarring ride to Eben Ezer where we were treated as guests of honor. Jim said a few words before the Pastor’s sermon and then Raquel Paz Pom (Jacinto’s daughter from Colegio Mark– a dental student), Suzie Williams, and Mike Springer gave testimonies about their involvement with Agua Viva.

We had a little time to do some preparatory work for the water education effort starting tomorrow and the rest of the group got involved with fellowship with the local community. Then we jumped on the bus and headed to Worship II at Huerto. Think about the prospect of your church (Colonial in our case) announcing in the Sunday morning service that they were having a special service that afternoon for guests from out of town. What do you expect the attendance would be? Well, we worshiped this afternoon, the entire water team gave testimonies, and then we were greeted by a reception line that would rival the largest wedding that you’ve ever attended!

Our friends at Huerto had a coffee reception for us after the service and the “elders” from both parties met for some official business while the rest of the team again enjoyed relationship building with the community!

You would think that this would have amounted to a pretty laid-back day, but if you judge it based on the universal fatigue that permeated the team at dinner tonight, you would think we were digging trenches all day. It was without a doubt emotional fatigue from the sheer amount of hearts that were poured out and shared through the day’s activities.

We’ve certainly laid our footprints in Guatemala and been blessed by the opportunity to be God’s hands and feet, but as we shared with our Guatemalan brothers and sisters today; even though they’ve received the benefits of our work, we’ve truly been the ones who have received the most from the relationship.

 

Amazing First Day!

Today the rest of the team arrived safely and despite a missing bag (long story), we got out of Guatemala City and within 90 minutes were entering the gates at Casa Angelina.

The advance team spent Thursday at the orphanage and had lots of wonderful stories of the goings on here due to the efforts of What Matters Ministries and Missions. The stories of the kids are heartbreaking but the results of this first class effort at repairing them physically, emotionally, and spiritually can only be a God thing. We spent an hour or so getting a quick tour and a lot of hugs. Agua Viva is in dialogue with Casa Angelina as a site for a future installation.
We’ll stop back to continue the conversation on our way back to Guate City next Friday.
For now, we’re preparing for tomorrow’s efforts on the new system installation at Iglesia Eben Ezer. Dinner at Hotel del Campo is complete and Jim’s inspirational devotional about Purity and a proposal for a new common definition of the word was well received.