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This ministry has a very humble beginning. The official date for the beginning of Living Water Christian Mission is October 9, 2002. However, the ground work for Living Water started three years prior to that. The first time it was described was a class assignment at Central Christian College of the Bible where Salonique was a student. At that time we had no name for it. Later the name came when Salonique was in the Seminary at Cincinnati Christian University. The name grew from an informal discussion based on a dire need for purified water in Gonaives, Haiti... Thus we called the ministry Living Water. The name has two implications: a spiritual and a physical. I will never forget that discussion in the basement of the Miamitown Church of Christ, just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. Our number one concern after we received the vision of the ministry was a piece of property. When God showed us the place, the challenge was “raising the money.” At this point, we received the help of several friends who shared with us their wisdom and their material blessings. There were a lot of other people who prayed and gave so that we could purchase the land. So, in the fall of 2000 we paid off the 40,000 USD for the price of the land. In the summer of 2002, again with the advice, the prayers, and the financial contribution of a number of brothers and sisters, a wall around the land was completed. The next project was to build a mini multi-purpose building. We started this endeavor in the fall of 2002. After months of fruitful efforts, we had a place to worship, to have our weekly meetings and to use for offices. The same building housed Living Water Christian School in the fall of 2003. We use the same building today as our Junior Worship Center. Our children use it for worship on Sunday morning. In the afternoon they have all kinds of activities in it. Moreover, we use it during the week to feed the students. It is a very useful building. We praise God for it and we thank everyone who made it possible. One of the memorable events of the year of 2003 was that we broke ground for our first school building. Richard and Carol Anderson of AIM came to Haiti to help us get started. Even though the building process was slow we did take some small steps forward. By September 2004 we had finished laying the block on the lower level before Hurricane Jeanne came on September 18. Hurricanes and the City of Gonaives People here remember three (3) major Hurricanes: Jeanne (September 18th, 2004), Hanna (September 1st, 2008) and Ike (September 7th, 2008). The first one claimed thousands of lives and caused untold damage. The other two in 2008 caused way more devastation in term of homes that were destroyed, farms that were devastated and other damage. However, fewer people died in them because people here became extremely cautious. Living Water lost buildings, walls, and suffered other devastation. We lost many things. We had about three feet of mud deposited in our two and half acre school campus. As I am writing a year later in 2009, we still have several mounds of dirt here. We haven't yet started hauling out the mud/dirt from our Church campus. We have rebuilt eighty percent of our wall on the school campus, but we have not done anything yet to rebuild the wall of the Church property. Our acres of farm land have not produced anything close to what they used to produce before the last two Hurricanes. There is no way to escape the memories left by those Hurricanes. However, as a ministry, we praise God because God has protected everyone having ties with Living Water. All our students and our Church members survived. Again praise be to God. You may wonder how the city is at the present. The city is basically locked. We don’t know when normal life will return. Everywhere you want to go there are still long detours. Trying to take a trip is a challenge. We still have a lot of pollution which is the direct result of all the mud brought by the water of the two hurricanes. Our hospital was destroyed. So in summary, there is a lot of work yet to be done. The Campus for the Church Building In the early days of Living Water we planned to build everything in one place. But, two years later, we realized that this was not possible. So the vision was broadened. We then bought 7 acres for the Bible College in 2004 and it has grown close to 10 acres now. In 2006, Brother Bill Fudge challenged us to find another property for the Church building we plan to build. Then we started to pray. Less than a week later we learned about a piece of land very close to the school that was for sale. After three months of fervent prayers, God used Kenai Christian Church and several other friends to provide all the money we needed to buy it. The obstacles that we faced after we finished to purchase the land were not small either. But with God we were, and we still are, “more than conquerors.” Two years later (2008), we built the wall around the 3 plus acres of land, but the Hurricanes Hanna and Ike destroyed the wall. We are still need to rebuild those walls. It was tough to accept the fact that the wall, which cost us sixty thousands dollars, was flattened. But we saw the wonder of God even in that destruction. Incredibly the one piece of wall we needed to stay up did stay up to separate us from the government market. I told the members of the church if we believe that God provided the money we used to build the wall we should not have any regret. If we also believe that God knows everything, including that the two Hurricanes were going to come less than three months after completing the wall, we should have no regret. He knew what He was doing then and what He is doing now. I don’t. I give Him all the glory and honor that He deserves.
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