Our son-in-law, Cody Hall, is a mechanical engineer who came through the SonSet Solutions apprenticeship program. Cody and our daughter Emily just returned from a very successful trip to Kenya where they saw God at work in many ways.
SonSet Solutions’ ministry partner Harvesters International works with Pokot Outreach Ministries (POM), a ministry founded and led by nationals focused on reaching the Pokot people with the Good News of Jesus. They accomplish this by evangelizing the people in villages and communities where they help provide clean water. The work is led by Pokot pastors who have completed a rigorous two-year training program. As people come to Christ, these pastors go out and start more churches farther out in the West Pokot County of Kenya and across the border into Uganda and South Sudan.
After installing two SonSetLink™ water monitors at a children’s home, Cody and Emily traveled into the bush to visit two recently installed wells. They talked with about 20 people who had walked nine miles with their donkeys loaded with water jugs to collect water. They had left their village early in the morning, and it took them several hours to fill their jugs.
The Pokot people are nomads and travel depending on where the water sources are. Their livelihood is their livestock (goats and cattle). These 20 people had recently come across the border from Uganda and are moving closer to the well so they will not have to walk so far.
Asked if the water from the pump was better than the water from an older hand-dug well, they enthusiastically said, “Yes! We are feeling better since drinking this water!” What a joy to hear this! POM says this happens often; that groups find a reliable source of clean water installed by POM and become established nearby, instead of wandering to where the next water source is. It is into this community that POM sends one of their pastors to build relationships with the people, lead them to Jesus, and a new church grows organically. This is the church-planting model that POM has been pursuing successfully for over 20 years.