In response, the European Union has pledged €250,000 in relief funds for Kenya’s drought-impacted communities.

One ministry working on the ground is Kenya Hope, which supports Hope Centers in Narok villages. Each Hope Center has a well for clean drinking water and provides meals and other community resources.

Bryan Haley, executive director of Kenya Hope, says, “This area really missed out on all of the rain and water that they rely on for the entire year. So a lot of…the communities that we serve are really dry and in drought right now.”

(Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope)

As the drought drags on, Kenya Hope is pivoting to meet people’s growing needs.

“We’ve increased the water supply that we are providing. Normally, we ask our centers to collect a small fee for water so that they can prepare for ongoing maintenance and things. But we’ve stopped that so that water is free and accessible to everybody,” Haley says.

“We’ve also increased the amount of…meals that we are providing so everyone in the community is still being fed during drought because obviously, without water, that means they can’t sell their livestock. A lot of their sources of income have dried up, literally, because there’s no water. So we want to make sure that people are cared for in the most essential way possible.”

Even as Kenya Hope responds to physical needs, Haley says the ministry’s mission goes deeper.

“The word hope in our Hope Center means so much more than just water. The Gospel is key to that as well…. We want to see the Gospel flourish in every area of life.”

(Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope)

As Kenya Hope meets peoples physical and spiritual needs, your prayers are an encouragement. Haley asks, “Pray for rain. The next rain season isn’t really until March, but we are praying for God to deliver water at any time and to sustain people during the drought.”

You can find ways to support Kenya Hope’s mission at kenyahope.org.

Header photo courtesy of Kenya Hope.

(Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope)

Kenya (MNN)—Kenya Hope exists to change lives in Kenya through the Gospel of Christ with a holistic approach to children, families, and communities. The single most life-changing thing Kenya Hope can do for the communities they serve, apart from preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is providing a reliable and affordable source of fresh water.

“They’re dependent on the rivers,” Kenya Hope’s U.S. Director Steve Holman says. “Right now we’re out of that four-year-long drought, but only God knows how long we are. But what I saw during that period was these rivers are not fit for humans to drink the water, and it means that young girls and women carry loads of water great distances, couple miles or more, to the home, and that they just live with that awful water.”

Kenya Hope can help communities by digging wells, providing electric solar-powered pumps and storage tanks on their Hope Center property, with distribution points to go outside of their Hope centers, as well as building concrete water troughs for animals to come and drink. 

“It means drinkable water, safe water, is accessible to the same girls and women who would carry it from miles away from dirty rivers. It means it’s right there, within walking distance of their house,” says Holman. “It really is life changing.”

It also provides a bridge for Kenya Hope to reach people with the Gospel, by first showing communities that the ministry cares about them as people and about their most basic needs.

“It’s wrong to not proclaim the gospel,” says Holman, “but it’s ineffective to proclaim the gospel and ignore needs. They provide a bridge so that people will be inclined to listen. They will want to listen to the audio Bible put in their hands. They will want to come and see the Jesus Film. They will welcome teachers in their homes and settlements to talk about who Jesus was and what he claimed to be and that really the gospel is about the God of creation, and all those things they need to understand in order to call on the name of the Lord to be saved.” 

Providing water does come with challenges. The technology used needs to be made in a way that will last; it requires people who are familiar enough with the technology to properly operate it; and it requires security to keep parts from being stolen. 

So how can we be praying for Kenya Hope? 

Holman asks for prayers for personnel: “To raise up a person or persons that can be rapid responders, to keep all of our infrastructures going so it fulfills the use, why we spent the money on it. We can have all the money in the world, which we don’t, but we need people, and God always wraps his message in people as they live out and love and are faithful. And I’m speaking particularly and mostly about Kenyan brothers and sisters in Christ, that’d be the right ones to join the team and serve and make all these things happen.”

Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope.

For many, a morning cup of tea or coffee is a daily ritual. But for billions, access to safe water is a luxury that determines not just personal well-being but the survival of entire communities and nations. The presence or absence of clean water shapes the future, making it no surprise that Jesus compared Himself and His word to water.

Ministry in Bangladesh. Image courtesy of AMG International on Facebook.

Today, more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water, leading to devastating consequences. Brian Dennett from Advancing the Ministries of the Gospel (AMG) explains, “This causes all kinds of waterborne diseases — cholera, dysentery — and claims thousands of lives in many countries where AMG is working.”

In some communities, people drink, bathe, and wash their clothes in the same contaminated water source — often near outhouses — exposing themselves to serious health risks. Yet with limited water available, they have no other choice.

“It is one of the most basic needs for health, education, and economic stability. Without it, communities remain trapped in poverty, disease, and suffering,” Dennett adds.

Ministry in Bangladesh. Featured images courtesy of AMG International on Facebook.

That’s why AMG makes clean water an important part of its mission. Depending on the needs of a community, they implement two key approaches: drilling deep wells in central locations to serve entire villages or providing household water filtration systems to families one by one.

But their mission doesn’t stop with physical water. After quenching physical thirst, AMG helps people discover the living water of Christ.

“When we visit a home to provide a water filter, we immediately begin a relationship, Gospel conversations with the family.”

Jesus said that whoever drinks the water He gives will never thirst. Pray that as AMG International provides clean water, communities will also encounter the life-changing hope of Christ!

Featured images courtesy of AMG International on Facebook.

For the past five plus years, drought has been an unwelcome reality in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and other East African countries. Poor rainfalls have devastated the land and displaced millions in the urgent search for food and water. 

“They have experienced many crop failures because of drought. A lot of animals have died,” says World Concern’s Peter Macharia. 

Woman collects water from a protected water well.
(Photo, caption by Daryl Finley/World Concern)

In East Africa, World Concern serves as the hands and feet of Christ. They work among communities to provide water, nutrition and medicine in the face of hunger and disease. This help is critical, but today Macharia asks us to take a brief step back and consider how water points us to spiritual realities. 

“When we talk about physical drought, we should also be thinking about the spiritual drought. You know, water refreshes our weary bodies; so is the gospel. It refreshes our weary souls,” he says. 

“The Word of God in John chapter 15:3 says, ‘You already clean through the Word which I have spoken to you.’ So when you think about what water does to us physically, the gospel does the same to us spiritually.”

Macharia asks that the Church would take deliberate action to meet the practical needs of people in the Horn of Africa. 

“Think about people across the globe that are suffering without water, and find ways of how do they help? We are all living in a global village and we need to see the other person, the other country as my neighbor, because when they suffer, we all suffer,” he says.

Learn more about how you can partner with World Concern’s relief work here. 

Finally, in a world full of trouble, advocacy is another way you can stand with East Africa. 

“Prayer is able to go where we cannot go,” Macharia says. “(People) can also be participating by sharing the word and speaking about the suffering of the people wherever they are.”

Header photo of young girl in East Africa drawing water from unprotected well, courtesy of Daryl Finley/World Concern.

Kenya is among many countries whose people struggle find enough water to live.

“Don’t we just take clean water for granted?” says Brian Dennett with AMG International. “Our national leader (in Kenya) shared stories of people they work with that travel 12 miles in a day just to fetch water for cooking and drinking. Talk about how precious that water is with the amount of labor it takes to get it.”

Photo is of a bore well AMG installed in India to help fight extreme heat. (Image courtesy AMG India)

Multiple years of low rainfalls in the Horn of Africa led to a terrible drought in 2020–2023. Losses of livestock, crops and natural water sources were devastating. Then, heavy rainfalls and floods in late 2023 brought a different kind of destruction. It’s going to take a long time to recover, and in the meantime, help is needed. 

“In many countries like Kenya, we provide water filter systems. We’ve done hundreds of borewells just in the last several years. Like everything we do, we include the gospel,” says Dennett. 

The next time you turn on a faucet, would you pray for thirsty people in the world? Pray that ministries like AMG would be able to be the hands and feet of Jesus, offering physical water and the true spiritual water that Jesus is. 

You can partner with AMG to do this very thing. A gift of $60 covers one filter that can work for around seven years. Or you can give toward a borehole well, which costs as little as $3,000. 

“We’ve actually targeted five villages that are in desperate need of clean water. We’re going to be building wells in each of those five villages. Then in other parts (of the world), we want to be able to continue providing hundreds, maybe thousands of water filters,” Dennet says. 

(Header photo is a representative stock image taken in Kenya in 2023, courtesy of Evans Dims via Unsplash.)

The global authority on food security levels has projected that in Somalia alone, 1.5 million children under the age of five will experience acute malnutrition between August 2023 and July 2024. 

“There are so many families that have left their homes, and now they’re scattering all over looking for any assistance that can come their way,” says Peter Macharia with World Concern.

Woman collects water from a protected water well. (Photo, caption by Daryl Finley/World Concern)

“Most of those families are dependent on rains, and they have no choices. Women have to move miles and miles to access clean water.”

World Concern seeks to serve the unique needs of the communities in which it operates. In the Horn of Africa, the food and water crisis dominates. 

“We do water trucking, finding water that is clean in a well that we have built or others have built and we truck that water to villages that have no clean water,” Macharia says. 

World Concern also provides cash vouchers for food, nutritional supplements for children and nursing women, and de-worming medicines, among other helps. 

“We have also been working on permanent solutions like digging wells, constructing water dams to harvest rainwater, and those kind of things. So our desire is not just to help (alleviate) the suffering, but also to have a permanent solution to the problems that people face,” Macharia says. 

Pray for those who are suffering deeply from the effects of drought. Ask God to bring rain. Jeremiah 14:22 says, “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things.”

“I really encourage (listeners and readers) to be prayerful, and when they see things that are happening, let them see them as as happening to their brothers and sisters,” Macharia says.

Pray that World Concern and local believers will be able to serve the physical and spiritual needs of many in the Horn of Africa. 

Header photo courtesy of Peter Caton for World Concern.

Dave, Joy, and Kenya Hope volunteer Julie Holman were killed in a car crash in Kenya on October 25. The Muellers are survived by their three sons — Ian, Forrest, and Cameron Mueller, along with their wives and four grandchildren.

The couple served as executive directors with Kenya Hope for 13 years. Prior to that, they worked with New Tribes Mission, Partners in Compassionate Care, and Closed Door Ministries.

Ian Mueller says his parents were passionate about ministry at Kenya Hope, caring for Kenyan widows, providing clean water, and distributing audio Bibles.

Dave Mueller, Joy Mueller, and Julie Holman. (Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope)

Joy’s heart was especially with the widows they served at Kenya Hope. Each widow sponsored through a 24-month program receives food assistance, skills training, goats, and Bible instruction.

“She just saw the need of the widows in Sub-Saharan Africa was just like, ‘I can’t sit idle,” says Ian.

“The thing I want people to remember about my mom is she was impossible to contain. [She had] endless wells of energy powered by her love for the people that she valued and the people that God loves as well.”

Meanwhile, Ian says his father Dave was a handyman, known for fixing almost anything, “So taking a multi-year construction process and turning it into a two-week complete move-in — from prefabricated homes in the jungle for missionaries, to Ferro-cement buildings in southern Sudan, to water towers and water projects, churches, chapels, and school buildings in Kenya.

“A do-it-all guy. We called him MacGyver most of the time! The Kenyans called him ‘The General.'”

Dave and Joy Mueller (Photo courtesy of Mueller family)

Dave was also especially attentive to the audio Bible distributions. “These people walk everywhere, miles and miles and miles a day, and they’re just listening to the Word constantly,” says Ian.

“They would come to him like three or four years later and they would say, ‘It (the audio Bible) doesn’t work anymore. It’s been through rain and everything.’ He would hook them up with another one [and saw] the life that brought to so many people.”

The Muellers’ celebration of life service is on Saturday, November 4 at 1:00 pm EST. The service livestream can be viewed at this link.

You can read Dave and Joy’s obituaries here.

Ultimately, Ian says anyone can serve God as his parents did.

“You don’t need to be a super person because a missionary isn’t a special person. It’s just a job, and the job is faith.

“My dad would say you never graduate from the school of faith. It just gets harder. He would say he hated walking by faith, in all honesty. Even though he was an incredibly committed missionary, it never gets easier. It only gets harder. But Jesus is a light unto our feet and He guides the way, so you’ve just got to keep saying yes every time.”

Please pray comfort for the Mueller and Holman families, and for Kenya Hope as they grieve and continue in Gospel ministry.

Header photo courtesy of the Mueller family.

Water is critical in managing famine, epidemics, inequalities, and political instability. A recently released report by the Kenya Red Cross warns that “catastrophic” drought and famine will likely begin in five years:

Our analysis reveals that the frequency and severity of droughts and famines in East Africa have increased significantly in recent decades, with a clear cyclic pattern that suggests a looming catastrophic event in 2028-2035.

(Graphic courtesy of Kenya Hope)

In rural Kenya, “we are looking to put in between three and five wells in very needy communities that have no access to clean water,” Kenya Hope’s Joy Mueller says.

Kenya Hope identifies needs and eliminates corruption through an extensive planning process.

“We do have some criteria that communities need to meet because we want to make sure that the wells we put in don’t fall into the hands of the wrong people who might use them for personal gain,” Mueller says.

Besides installing wells, believers introduce villagers to Living Water: Jesus Christ.

“We have an unprecedented amount of audio Bibles that were given this year, and we are so excited to get these into the hands of many illiterate people who otherwise would not be able to read God’s Word for themselves,” Mueller says.

“We are so excited to see how God is blessing remote communities that have yet to hear about Jesus Christ.”

Help relieve physical and spiritual thirst through Kenya Hope.

“People can help by giving,” Mueller says.

“We use the funds to drill the wells and set up a complete system. It’s all done by solar, so [there are] no generators to run or maintain. We also provide a watering top for all their animals since [people here are] pastoralists.”

Header and story images courtesy of Kenya Hope.

Bart Maley says they serve communities in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Pacific islands. “Water is a key factor in all of our lives. It not only helps us to survive because we need water, but all of the things that we eat and survive on are based on a water supply to help them to grow, whether it’s vegetables, animals, or whatever type of things that people eat.”

Asia and Africa

These projects look different by region. In Asia, Wycliffe Associates usually helps capture spring water from the side of mountains. They pipe it down to the villages where people can use it for washing or drinking. Often this will include building a latrine, which many villages have never had.

In Africa, the ministry has to take a different strategy. Maley says, “A lot of that is well drilling or borehole construction. Many areas lack elevation change and the availability of springs in the mountains. Drilling water wells is a better solution.”

Wycliffe Associates often works with contractors to dig wells in the most remote and hard-to-reach villages. They also provide training for basic repairs on the water pumps. Maley says, “The key factor in that is community ownership. And that’s why we don’t just go in and do things for people. Community is part of all this. When the pump breaks down, they’ll feel it’s their pump.”

Living Water

As people get water, pastors often read portions of the Bible newly translated into the local language. People can drink clean water and hear about Jesus, who called Himself the Living Water.

Want to get involved? You can support both clean water and Bible translation here.

Header photo courtesy of Wycliffe Associates.