Gospel for Asia

Gospel for Asia (GFA) , Wills Point, Texas, Special Report 4/4 on a Christ-like response to the global clean water crisis. What Scripture Has to Say About Water It is intriguing, in light of the fact that 71 percent of our Earth is covered by water, that Scripture has a great deal to say on the topic. One commentator suggests that water is mentioned 722 times in the Bible. This total is less than the mentions of God, Jesus, heaven or love, but more than faith, hope, prayer or worship. In Genesis it says: “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters The name of the first is Pishon … The name of the second river is the Gihon … The name of the third river is the Tigris … And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” For those of us with a Sunday School background, the stories dealing with water are memorable: Moses parting the Red Sea as the children of Israel fled the pursuing chariots of the Egyptians. Moses striking the rock at Horeb so that...

Gospel for Asia (GFA) , Wills Point, Texas, Special Report 3/4 So let us take a deep breath. Let us think a moment about that peaceful and stunning NASA photo: AS17-148-22727. Let us remind ourselves that of all the spinning planets in our solar system, it alone has been created uniquely to sustain water, and that not one other drop has been discovered anywhere else in interstellar space. Let us remember that 75 percent of our planet is covered with water, some 96.5 percent of that in its oceans. Then let us say a prayer for its water resource preservation and purification, and let us remember that some religious systems view water to be holy. Only then, let us absorb the fact that an investigative report by Reuters released December 19, 2016, found nearly 3,000 areas in the United States with lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint. This headline tagged a report released by the Associated General Contractors (AGC): “Both Public and Private Studies Find Astounding Gaps Be...

Gospel for Asia (GFA), Wills Point, Texas, Special Report 2/4 The Global Clean Water Crisis Exists in America, Too In her master work titled Dirty, Sacred Rivers: Confronting South Asia’s Water Crisis , Cheryl Colopy, a prize-winning environmental reporter specializing in water systems and clean water restoration , makes a wry observation about the Western form of household waste management: “But the system I have known and used, quite unconsciously ever since I was potty trained, is nuts. In a world where the supply of clean drinking water is becoming an almost universal worry, why would anyone put clean water into a toilet? For South Asia, flushed toilets and the treatment systems they require have become untenable long before they have become universal. For the Western world, the system as it is currently practiced will surely become untenable before too many more years have passed.” Orange County, California Any discussion of clean water inevitably introduces the twin dilemma on th...

Asian girls carry clean drinking water for miles because of the global clean water crisis. Gospel for Asia (GFA), Wills Point, Texas, Special Report 1/4 on the global clean water crisis. The “Blue Marble” photo of Earth shot from Apollo 17, the last of NASA’s Apollo missions as the rocket ship was hurtling toward the moon, wasn’t the first satellite image of our planet, but it was the first full image—stunning in color—taken from some 18,000 miles in space, with the sun fully illuminating Earth. The south polar ice cap, despite heavy cloud cover, was clearly captured, and the photo showed almost the entire coastline of Africa, extending from Antarctica to the Mediterranean Sea. Most of us who saw it at that time were stunned with how much water covered our planet. This one single dramatic image eventually gave the name “Blue Planet” to our Earth, due obviously to the abundant water sources we could see on its surface. The photo was taken on December 17, 1972 and for all of us at that t...

Gospel for Asia is in the business of providing answers. Providing answers to questions like: “Does my life have any value?” “Does anyone care about whether I live or die?” “How can I find peace for my restless heart?” To those questions, our workers can say confidently, “Yes, your life has incredible value; God cares so much about you that He sacrificed Himself in order to make a way for you to live with Him for eternity; the longing in your heart is met through relationship with Christ.” Gospel for Asia ( GFA )-supported workers help provide other answers too—like the solution for a family trapped in poverty or for a community battling illnesses due to impure water . Just in the last 10 years, hundreds of thousands of families have received clean water and income-generating gifts, such as livestock or sewing machines, through the ministry’s community development initiatives. But what answer is there for a pastor who doesn’t have a way to visit all his congregants or neighboring commu...