If you were on a mission trip, and a villager walked up and handed you her dying child and asked desperately for you to save the child, what would you do?
Spokane Linwood member, Dan Fuller, and his dental team were on their second mission trip to a hillside village in Guatemala Feb. 24 when this exact scenario occurred. A mother carried her 3-year-old daughter to the team asking for help. After taking the child’s temperature, which registered at 101 degrees, Fuller prayed for the girl.
“I considered giving her medicine to lower the fever, but then I remembered reading something about the symptoms of severe dehydration; one of those symptoms was fever,” says Fuller.
Fuller gave the girl 12 ounces of water and she drank it eagerly. Within 5 minutes he gave her a second cup of water and she drank that also. About 20 minutes later the young child was up running around and smiling.
“It was amazing,” says Fuller. “Here was a child who was extremely sick and the only thing she needed to make her well was clean water.”
A public health expert in Guatemala estimates that 95 percent of villagers show signs of dehydration. Lives are being cut short due to something as simple as chronic, severe dehydration.
When Darin Patzer, Spokane’s Positive Life Radio station manager, learned about the need for clean drinking water during a radio interview with Adventist well-drillers Rod and Gary Bartholomew, he looked for a way the station could help.
During subsequent station fundraisers, a percentage of every listener donation has been matched with a gift from local businesses to provide clean water in Guatemala. Just this year alone, approximately 700 people in two villages received brand new wells through the station’s partnership with the Bartholomews and Water for Life.
In addition to what the Spokane station (KEEH 104.9 FM) is doing with Water for Life, the Positive Life Radio network seeks to share Christ's love in other tangible ways all year long. They annually raise funds to provide rice to hungry people in Cambodia, sponsor food drives to benefit local food banks and give listeners opportunities to sponsor needy children around the world.
Positive Life Radio is a listener-supported network of five stations across Eastern Washington. Its music ministry reaches more than 100,000 listeners each week. You may get more information or listen online at plr.org. For information about the Water for Life ministry, visit h2oforlife.org.
Positive Life Radio station, KEEH 104.9 FM, helps provide wells for clean drinking water in Guatemala.
Representatives from Water for Life pose with villagers who received a new well.
A workman completes the cap work on one of the new wells.
