Area churches mobilized in the past week to address the ongoing water crisis in Mississippi, where some residents have gone a month without clean water following a winter storm in February.
Last weekend, Orchard Park Seventh-day Adventist Church hosted a drive on its church campus for people to drop off water donations. The church in Orchard Knob partnered with First Baptist Church and Southern Adventist University to deliver water to communities nearly 400 miles away.
Troy Brand, senior pastor at Orchard Park, said he was shocked with the level of generosity and support from the community.
“What we thought would be one truck full of water, what we thought would be a nice deed, became three U-Haul trucks,” he said.
Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, were advised to boil their water before consumption after a series of winter storms in February damaged local water infrastructure. For weeks, some residents did not have running water at all, according to the Associated Press.