A little girl dressed in a pink dress was walking down the street with something in her hand. It was my last sight as I left the School of the Sovereign in Haiti. I could only smile. It is exactly what my heart wanted to see. She had heard the news. She was now traveling in a different direction.
We had done many diverse and helpful things in our time in Haiti. We found around 150 new children to sponsor through CRF who were orphaned or destitute. We helped teach around 250 children at our school. We painted the classrooms. We made pews for the church. We visited the widows. But there was one thing that pretty much dominated our thinking on this trip—water.
We had built water purification systems in the area that had been exposed to so much cholera. And now clean water was flowing to all the children at our school. But it didn’t seem to be enough. Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to die in this region from the water this year.
So at the last minute, we put the pipes outside our compound wall. The water would be for everybody in the community not just our school. It was just a few minutes before we had to leave that we finally finished running the water outside the walls. My fellow Texas Tech buddy put up his hand in the shape of a gun (the sign of someone who is a Red Raider) and turned the valve. Clean water was flowing to the community. All of us from Mississippi, California and Texas drank the water. Then we passed the cup to the Haitians. First, the children started drinking gulps of water from the cup. Then older people starting filling their containers. People were spreading the news in the streets—“Non-cholera water is here!” They couldn’t believe that even the white people were drinking it. We heard joyful shouts and people were hugging in the streets.
Jesus said, “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Have you ever thought about what Jesus means in this passage? Maybe he means exactly what he says. He literally wants us to give water to children.
Certainly, there was other water just down the street from the school. Children had been drinking it for years. But it carried death in it. There was now a change of direction in the community. People were hearing the good news of pure water. People came. There was clean water flowing.
So as we piled in our big truck to drive off and leave our work in Haiti, my last sight was of a cute little girl in a pink dress walking down the street carrying something in her hand—a cup for her water. I just had to smile.
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