This is Personal

We invest in service immersion trips with our partners because they make global issues personal. It’s one thing to read that one out of ten people in the world live on less than $2 per day. It’s another thing to have a friend who grew up working in the garbage dump to help his family avoid starvation.

It’s one thing to hear that around two billion people worldwide don’t have access to clean water. It’s another thing to turn on a water faucet and find nothing coming out.

Samaritans like you who take these issues personally dug deep last year when you learned that an entire village of families we serve in Buen Samaritano, Honduras (literally named after the Good Samaritan in Spanish) had no access to running water. That felt personal, and you came through big time.

By the grace of God, water began flowing in Buen Samaritano this past Saturday! In less than a year, Samaritans like you helped this community go from a desperate dream deferred to the life-giving relief of flowing water. 

We thank God with you for how beautifully the Body of Christ is reflected in these memories that took place in communities across the world last year to make water happen.

God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

1 Corinthians 12: 24-27

Mike Tenbusch, IntSam President

Mike joined IntSam in 2018 after two decades of leading social change in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He’s a University of Michigan Law grad and author of The Jonathan Effect: Helping Kids and Schools Win the Battle Against Poverty. He and his wife, Maritza, have three children who keep them young.