SUDAN VIDEO from Rock for Water tour

This video was created by some conveniently creative cats from my church with footage from the first visit to the Sudan in the fall.

PART 1: Last Fall, Ryan (the bearded man, now husband to one of my best friends) and Travis (the voice behind the video and the Vans, my pastor and teammate on this coming trip) spent a few weeks traveling to these villages, meeting new friends and scouting out the needs in these areas. They returned...overwhelmed. They also returned motivated and determined to make cleaner water available to these new friends.

PART 2: The Rock for Water Benefit Concert Tour was organized. Musicians donated their time and the church covered the expenses for ten concerts where they shamelessly asked for money to build wells for our friends. no mega churches. no auditoriums. just extraordinary people...in really ordinary places like the Cellar Door on a Thursday night...joining in the vision. and now, look what's happened. Within 3 weeks, $26,000 returned from extraordinary partners, like you. They surpassed the original goal of $20k for 2 wells. They are building 3 wells this summer instead of 2. And our friends in these 3 villages will have access to clean water for the very first time.

PART 3: I can't wait to meet them.

...some of the issues taking lives of these people are starting to b-l-o-w my mind. they are absolutely preventable. We're not talking about needing a cure for an unknown cancer. We're talking about separating the water they drink from the water collecting the human waste we send down the toilet. When they drink the polluted water, the bacteria from the waste results in diseases that they don't have access to medicine to treat it. Often times this "disease" is diarrhea. You and I would pop one of the 450 Immodium AD tablets i can buy at Coscto for $5.50, lay down and stay close to the restroom. For them, without anything to curb the diarrhea, they face dehydration to the point of...well, dying sometimes. or, how about a lot of the time. Here's a statistic from Water Aid that's a little challenging to digest: In the past 10 years (1997), diarrhea has killed more children worldwide than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II (1945).

my wheels spinning about how to sustainably fund clean water projects...
i'm mulling over these facts:
- a typical well runs us $800k-$1M these days.
- a well in the Sudan runs $9,000- only 1-2% of that.

A Hypothetical-
What if you were in the business of needing a well.
What if you received an enginerring bid that was 1% higher than the others.
What if that 1% built 1 well in Sudan by every 1 built in the Valley.
What if they offered you the tax benefit for that donation.
What if you decided there were other benefits.
What if we started...1 by 1.

i'm intimidated and humbled by this opportunity. to be the first group to build relationships with these people. i have no idea what I'll end up doing. what we'll see. what i'll feel. what God will do with this experience. but, i have a strange peace about it in my bones...which has deposited a great spirit of expectation.