Living Waters for the World Awarded Major Grant

Living Waters for the World, the synod's water purification mission, stands to receive unprecedented prominence across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) because of a major grant awarded by Presbyterian Women.

LWW has been chosen as one of five innovative mission projects to receive funding through PW's annual Birthday Offering in 2007. The offering is promoted throughout the year by women's organizations in churches across the denomination.

The grant will provide a major financial boost for LWW as well, up to $250,000. It is not the first time the national PW organization has assisted the mission. Twice in its history, LWW has been named to receive grants for the women's Thank Offerings, $9,000 on one occasion and $30,000 on another.

LWW moderator Bill Williams with Steve Young, LWW administrator

"We are deeply grateful to PW, and we are aware of the support that Presbyterian Women in our own synod gave to our application," said Bill Williams, moderator of the synod's LWW Committee. "They have worked with us for three years in seeking a share of the Birthday Offering, and the award is due in no small part to their perseverance."

The funding will support growth of Clean Water U, the in-depth schooling program that has turned LWW from a small synod committee responsible for a handful of water purification projects each year to an ecumenical program with participants from coast to coast who have the world as their mission field.

A particular goal of the PW award is to see that CWU is a stable, ongoing operation, one that will be capable of meeting the needs for training of volunteers into the foreseeable future.

Clean Water U, conducted on the grounds of St. Andrew Presbytery's Hopewell Camp and Conference Center in North Mississippi, has expanded rapidly since its inception in 2004. That year, two training sessions were held, one in the spring and a second in the fall. The following year, three sessions were required to meet the demand, and 2006 saw four sessions. Five sessions have been scheduled for 2007, and LWW's application for the Presbyterian Women's grant projected that up to seven sessions may be held within a few years.

"God seems to move at carefully chosen moments," Williams said. "We are on the cusp of a problem — a blessed, happy problem, to be sure — arising from the fact that the demand for a CWU education seems about to outstrip our ability to deliver. As a matter of fact, we've scheduled a two-day retreat in January 2007 to plan strategy for how in the world we're going to be able to keep up with the demand."

Through its last session in October 2006, CWU had trained 379 students from 26 states and seven countries, and from a wide variety of faith backgrounds, in how to work with points of need abroad and in this country to provide for installation of low-cost, sustainable water purification units capable of supporting a small community. A central part of the training is an educational component, working with system users to make sure they understand the need and the proper uses for clean water.

Those hundreds of CWU graduates are fanning out across mission fields to deliver the gift of clean water in the name of Jesus Christ. In December 2006, LWW marked the installation of its 100 th water system, including both those in the United States and those in other countries.

With growth comes an increasing diversity of design. CWU teaches its students how to install three basic types of systems depending on the particular problems that local water supplies may have. But in addition, it is now seeing systems that draft water out of Amazon River tributaries to supply boats providing medical services to riverside communities, a system on a water services trailer in North Carolina that is designed to be part of a mobile surgical/dental hospital, and compact systems that purify the water coming from a single family's well.

"God seems to move at carefully chosen moments to open new doors for us and to challenge us to greater service," Williams said. "We will strive to be worthy of the trust Presbyterian Women have placed in us. Clean water will inevitably be one of the world's leading social issues of the century. We are grateful to be allowed to be a part, however small, of the solution."