Water for the Weary

this past weekend i had the opportunity to attend the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Jubilee is run by the CCO, an incredible organization that ministers to college students that i have the joy of serving as Associate Staff. Jubilee does better than most conferences at giving students practical, vocational training at how to integrate their faith with their jobs. i love their holistic view of life, work, and spirituality. there were a number of highlights from the weekend for me, which hopefully i'll be able to reflect on over the next several days on here.

one piece of the main sessions each meeting was some time set aside to highlight 4 very solid organizations. this included Compassion International, who most people have heard of, International Justice Mission, for whom I have an immense amount of respect, an indigenous orphanage ministry who's name i can't remember and Blood:Water Mission, the AIDS organization founded by Jars of Clay.

Blood:Water Mission's primary mode of working in the AIDS crisis is to provide clean water, which directly impacts the spread not only of AIDS but of a variety of diseases. they have a goal of providing 1000 wells in communities all over Africa. the story of the woman who's running it, who's younger than i am, was very encouraging to hear. i have a small understanding of the need for accessible water from my time in Mozambique. when i was there i had a pretty incredible experience retrieving water one day...i wrote about it for Relevant Magazine...take a look.

one of the things she mentioned was that for just $1, you can provide clean water for an African for a year. $1. wow. our host for the weekend brought that right to home when he mentioned that he'd drank three years worth of clean water with his Starbuck's latte that morning. surely we have much to do, much to give, much to change in ourselves to pursue a just world where everyone can have drinkable water.