A small church in Rimbey with a big heart is reaching out to do its part to ensure families in other parts of the world have access to safe, clean drinking water.
Members of the Rimbey New Life Fellowship will travel to Cambodia in February as part of a Samaritan’s Purse water project to install BioSand Water Filters in homes in that country. They will also help families understand the importance of using safe, clean water.
To help raise money for the mission trip, the church is holding a fundraiser at Rimbey Drop In Centre Nov. 30 featuring an evening of entertainment, a silent auction, and coffee and dessert.
Spokesperson Shirley Hartman said the fundraiser promises to be a great night featuring Gospel 792 singers from Crestomere, and cowboy poet Bryn Thiessen from Sundre.
“He is the real thing; a true, blue cowboy,” she said. “And the singers are becoming very well known.”
The silent auction items are many and varied, and Hartman is positive there will be something there for everyone.
Dennis Eisenbarth, a Red Deer College instructor who attends Rimbey New Life Fellowship, will travel to Cambodia with four other church members.
He is looking forward to the experience.
“I’m pretty excited,” he said. “We’re all Christians and we love other people and our goal is to help each other when we can.”
Eisenbarth and the other volunteers will attend a training session prior to travelling to Cambodia to learn about the culture and what to expect when they arrive.
The BioSand filter is an adaptation of slow-sand filtration that is designed for use by families at the household level. The award-winning water filtration technology was developed by Dr. David Manz, a former University of Calgary professor.
The filters are a proven, effective and inexpensive technology. From start to finish the filters can be constructed in roughly 10 days, at an average cost of $100, which covers the raw materials, construction, transportation, supervision, training for the family in the filter maintenance and personal hygiene, as well as monitoring and evaluation.
The filter removes organisms responsible for diseases spread by water, such as cholera, typhoid fever and amoebic dysentery. The filter also strains out particles causing cloudiness, and much of the organic matter responsible for taste, colour and odor.
Samaritan’s Purse Canada is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that has been providing spiritual and physical aid to people around the world since 1970.
Through Samaritan’s purse water project, lifesaving clean water and essential health and hygiene training is provided to hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world.
Samaritan’s Purse Canada works in about 45 countries around the world while Samaritan’s Purse International (including offices in the United States, England, Ireland, Holland, Germany and Australia) is working in more than 100 countries.