All eyes were on Texas in February 2021 as historic cold temperatures pushed their power grid to the limit. But just across the state line in Lake Charles, Louisiana, hundreds of homes sat empty and uninsulated because of the back to back hurricanes just a few months prior. Pipes burst all over town during that long freeze, causing many homes to reflood and adding to the heavy burden on many families.

Miss Carol's pipes broke in the freeze of 2021, and it was too much for their family to be able to fix at the time. So for almost four years, they kept the water shut off in their home almost all the time. When they needed more, they turned on the water and filled buckets to keep in the house, knowing that at the same time more water was flowing out of the burst pipes under the house. Once the buckets were filled, they shut the water off again.

ReachGlobal Crisis Response sent teams to work next door to Miss Carol at Miss Rosie's house for more than a year before Miss Carol asked Mark, our site leader, about fixing their pipes. At first he wasn't sure that he understood what she meant when she said they didn't have water in the house, but once he saw the buckets Mark was shocked at how they had been living for almost four years. "You don't really think about people living like this in America."

Plumbing requests can be difficult for us to help with because they can require specific skills and tools. But God provided - just a couple weeks after Miss Carol asked for help, a team came to serve from Minnesota with two professional plumbers. They were able to fix the situation at Miss Carol's in a few hours, lifting a yearslong burden from her shoulders.

We praise God that serving at Miss Rosie's gave our staff and teams the opportunity to share the love of Christ with Miss Carol and her family as well. Please pray with us that we can continue to minister in this community, and that families like Miss Carol's will receive the living water that comes from a relationship with Christ.