News & Links > News Archive > Healing Waters

Healing Waters International makes safe water accessible

By Paul Ramsey

My journey to the left has been arduous. I grew up in the Churches of Christ here in Denver. My parents were considered conservative in a church of biblical literalists. We were at church every time the doors were open. My mother was faithful to her faith, and my father is faithful to his. They practiced what they preached. They were benevolent, loving, and graceful.

I grew up with a love for church, but loving God wasn’t always so easy. God was loving but only to people that loved “Him” in the correct way. As a child and adolescent, God was more of a guilty conscience than a loving creator. In college I began to see flashes of a God that loved me no matter what I had done and loved everyone else too. It was so freeing. Over the past twenty years embracing this freedom has taken me to a Disciples of Christ divinity school and then six years ago to Mayflower Congregational Church United Church of Christ.

Part of the fallout of my freedom in Christ has been a deep rooted and many times unhealthy fear and prejudice against biblical literalists and evangelicals. I tend to write them off at the first hint of an evangelical catchphrase or fundamentalist faux pas. Other than Raiders fans, Christians who don’t agree with me are the most difficult for me to humanize and to show compassion and love to. I am grateful that my love for my own family members that I disagree with has been constant and constantly reciprocated.

For the past few years I have been the front man for a Gospel bar band, Reverend Leon’s Revival. We have played at many of Denver’s dive venues and quite a few of the more respectable ones (including Red Rocks Easter sunrise service). This past fall we were asked to play a benefit at the Gothic for a faith-based non-profit, Healing Waters International. My evangelical antenna was activated. I went to their website to check out exactly what their angle was. On the website I noticed several “suspect” phrases, but I could not escape the purity of their work. Even my prejudice could not argue with their mission: “Healing Waters International works to reduce water-related illness and death in developing countries by building self-sustaining projects that make safe drinking water accessible to the poor and empower local churches to bring physical, social and spiritual healing to their communities.” It is tough to argue against safe drinking water in developing countries.

A few weeks before the benefit, I met with Tom Larson, the President and founder of Healing Waters at Stella’s Coffee House; he explained what they do and how they do it. In the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, and Kenya, they work with local churches to distribute purified water to the people of their community. The local contaminated tap water is cleaned by a six step process that filters and purifies the water. The purification system is provided by donors who give money to Healing Waters International, headquartered in Golden. People bring their own water containers to the distribution site at the local church, and their containers are sanitized before being filled with purified drinking water. The people pay for the water; the cost is between 1/3 and 1/5 the price of commercially produced purified water available locally. Money made from the sales goes back into sustaining and growing the project and to social outreach ministry of the local church. Each distribution site offers water free of charge to local schools and other non-profit organizations.

After Tom explained Healing Waters, I was speechless (this doesn’t happen often). I decided to set him straight about myself and our church. I wanted him to know where I was coming from philosophically and theologically. I thought that this might scare him off. As I shared with him about myself, our denomination, and my Open and Affirming church, Tom did not blink. In fact he said, “We really want to extend our organization in all areas of the Church. In the Dominican Republic and in Mexico we are working with Catholic churches and protestant churches. I think that we need to be as ecumenical as we can here in the States too.” Once again I was speechless. As we left Stella’s, Tom invited me to come to the Dominican Republic in January with him a journalist and some other musicians. I don’t get called a musician very often so of course I accepted.

On our trip were three Healing Waters insiders: Tom Larson; Jeremy Phillips, Communications Manager; and Ed Anderson, member of the Board of Directors. There was a journalist Jason Boyett of Relevant Magazine. Brad Corrigan (Braddigan), a rock musician formerly of the band Dispatch, Brett Larson, a singer/songwriter from Minnesota, and Richie Furay, minister of Broomfield Calvary Chapel and (oh by the way) a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Richie was a founding member of Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young and Stephen Stills and was also a founding member of Poco.

On our five day trip we traveled throughout the Dominican Republic visiting the water distribution sites. We met with the pastors of the churches that house the distribution sites and learned about the amazing work they are doing in their communities. The first pastor we met was Ramon Rodriquez of Gualey Assembly of God Church in Santo Domingo. Gualey is the most impoverished neighborhood in Santo Domingo. It was sobering to see how the people of Gualey live. As we walked through Gualey down a winding path surrounded by corrugated tin houses, I was afraid that we might be perceived as poverty voyeurs; maybe we were by some of the residents. But most of the people were quite friendly (more friendly than I would be if a group of tourists were walking through my neighborhood). My fears subsided when one man (a local), who had been walking next to me throughout our trek, patted me on the shoulder and smiled. “Mi Casa, Mi Casa,” he said smiling pointing at his small corrugated tin house with pride. As we watched, I could see that Pastor Rodriquez was the pastor of Gualey. Shoeless children came to him with their arms up to be held, and their parents updated him on what was going on in their lives. I never asked Pastor Rodriquez the nuances of his theology, but as I watched him with his people and watched his people carry water away from his church, I decided there was no reason to. I did ask him what they did with the proceeds from the water project at their church. He told me that there was a child in Gualey with AIDS and that the church was paying for her medication among other benevolent gifts.

Each pastor that we met on our trip was equally impressive; each water site equally effective. We visited five churches and water distribution sites on our trip. Each church was the gathering place of her neighborhood; the water sites at the churches had helped contribute to that reality. These churches are meeting the most basic need of their people. I pray that I am learning something from them. It seems that God Is Still Speaking through people that I had thought I didn’t need to listen to, through people that I don’t even share a common language with. Healing waters indeed!

For more information about Healing Waters International visit healingwatersintl.org or call 303-526-7278; there is more information about Paul’s trip on their site as well.

Home - About Us - Our Churches - Camps & Retreats -Calendar & Events - Conference Committees
Outreach Ministries - Annual Meeting - News & Links - Daily Whisper