When we talk about the work of Healing Waters, it’s tempting to use the word impact. After all, it’s a buzzword in the nonprofit world. But the more I think about it, the less I like it.
Why? Because “impact” usually means hitting something hard, smashing into it. An asteroid impacting the earth doesn’t bring life—it wipes it out. And when I look at the communities we serve—in Haiti’s slums, in Guatemala’s highlands, in Chiapas—I see scars of exactly that: impact.
Polluted rivers.
Stripped forests.
Families uprooted and pressed into shantytowns.
Livelihoods crushed by inequitable development.
This is what impact has looked like: exploitation, destruction, brokenness.
So let’s not have an impact.
Let’s be what Jesus called us to be: salt and light.
Salt: Strength to Carry On
Earlier this year, we completed the hardest project we’ve ever done: ROSALBALI in Mexico. Just being there was a challenge—118-degree heat, heavy solar panels carried up mountainsides, iron pipes wrenched under the sun. In conditions like that, you need salt.
Salt gives strength. Roman soldiers were once paid in salt. Today we call them electrolytes—you see athletes drinking them to keep going. Without salt, your body wilts.
That’s why the technology we designed at ROSALBALI is so powerful. The river water was poisoned by mining, so we built a nanofiltration system that removes heavy metals but leaves the healthy minerals people need. We didn’t strip it all away—we left the salt.
And that’s the role our teams take on, too. Our health trainers—Isaura, Kathya, and Nephtalie—remind women in their communities that they are “clothed in strength and dignity” (Proverbs 31). They help people rediscover the strength and richness of the life God created them for. They are salt.
Light: Shining a Better Way
At ROSALBALI, the solar panels we carried up that mountainside now power 20-horsepower pumps every single day. They bring and purify water—literally running on light. Without them, we’d be burning thousands of gallons of diesel fuel every month. That’s not the kind of impact we want to make.
Light does something different. It shines, it restores, it shows a better way forward.
Healing Waters will never reach every single community that needs safe water. But part of why we labor so hard on projects like ROSALBALI—or in the hardest corners of Haiti—is to set an example.
“A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
When people see mountainside tanks of safe water glistening in the sun, powered by clean energy, it becomes a beacon of what’s possible. A testimony that God’s Kingdom can break through even in the most impacted places.
Salt and Light, Not Impact
The forces of exploitation have already left their impact. That’s why Healing Waters is called to something different.
We’re here to bring strength.
We’re here to shine hope.
We’re here to be salt and light.
And we’re grateful you’re with us in this calling. Together, we can carry on in the strength God provides and illuminate a better way—so that others may see, and glorify, our Father in heaven.