Faith family, we are so encouraged by all the ways we’ve seen you reaching out to and caring for one another and your neighbors during this time. We’ve seen so many small groups connecting with one another online even though they can’t meet in person. We’ve had many asking for various ways they can help and making sure their friends and neighbors have everything they need. We’ve also seen many of our friends and partners in the city providing essential leadership and support. Specifically, our partners at Oak Tree Ministries have taken on the mission of providing daily lunches for the children in Marks Village along with giving additional food support to some of the families who live there as well.

We wanted to highlight for you what Oak Tree has been doing because, on the last Sunday we all gathered together, we actually fully funded our Deepening Oak Tree’s Roots special missions project as part of our Roots & Reach Initiative. Seeing Oak Tree in action during this time helps us to understand even more how vital it is for them to have a permanent home there in Marks Village, and we are all thankful to have been a part of making that happen.

Even though we’ve needed to adjust our regular rhythms and gatherings, we can still move forward in ministry together. Now, with the completion of this third special mission project, we have the exciting opportunity to begin a new one we are calling “Clean and Living Water.” 

Through Clean and Living Water we will help complete three Neverthirst water projects in Miltou, Chad in Africa and provide training for local pastors serving in a least-reached context.

Neverthirst is a local organization and strategic partner of ours with whom we provide access to clean and living water to least-reached people worldwide. This year we have the opportunity to work with Neverthirst to invest in long-term water programs in partnership with local churches and church planters who have a vision to engage an entire people group with the gospel and provide clean water to whole communities in desperate need.

Chad is the largest of Africa’s sixteen landlocked countries with a population of almost 16 million people. The primary religion in Chad is Islam with over 52% of the population considering themselves Muslim. Despite the start of oil production in 2003, 46% of Chad’s population lives below the national poverty line. Corruption and violence define the government in Chad and make the country one of the lowest in all the world on the Human Development Index. Inadequate supplies of safe drinking water make Chad a very difficult place to live and survive, especially for women and children. According to Neverthirst’s Chief Strategy Officer, this is the most desperate water situation he has ever seen. In 2018, Neverthirst began piloting hand pump projects as a response to meet urgent need for water. This year, Neverthirst will partner with a group of local pastors and church planters to bring clean and living water to the people of Miltou and surrounding villages.
 
A network of Pastors in this area have a burden for those who do not have access to the gospel and who have never heard of Christ. New water wells and the rehabilitation of existing water wells will be installed through this network of local churches. Every pastor involved in the water program will also have the opportunity to be developed and strengthened by joining a series of three week-long intensives in evangelism and discipleship, as well as best practices for communities utilizing these wells.
 
The total cost of this project is $21,000. To ensure it’s funding, we’ll need to give an additional $105,000 to the Roots & Reach Initiative. If you add this amount to our initial three goals of $1,050,000, we as a faith family will fully fund this fourth special mission project once we hit a total of $1,155,000 given to Roots & Reach.

For more information on the Roots & Reach Initiative, along with ways to give, visit brookhills.org/rootsandreach.