Stories & Videos

Abigail Radtke

When 6 year-old Abigail saw the video of children in need of clean water. “I saw children dying, and it made me sad. I was thankful that I had clean water, and that night I said, ‘Mommy, we have to help those kids.’ ”Armed with hand-made posters showing brochures from LIFE Outreach and her own letter and photo, Abigail began her venture with the full support of her parents. “I went out asking for money and told people if they gave, I’d give them a bag of cookies!” What began as a small adventure of faith and compassion began to grow. Someone suggested Abigail should go speak to a civic group that met for lunch, and someone else invited her to a homeowner’s association meeting. Little Abigail put her public speaking to work as she told people she wanted to raise money for children in need, adding, “God told me to raise this money because children were dying.” And then, with no prompting from her parents, she added something to her presentation that drove home the need for clean water. She asked politely, “Will you count with me to eight?” As she finished counting she said, “Now another child just died from dirty drinking water.”

You could hear a pin drop in those presentations. What began among family and friends spread, as she ultimately raised about $5400 for a well. Looking back, her father commented, “This experience helps me to remember to not put limits on what God can do. We could go through our ‘friends and family list’ and go through the neighborhood, raising maybe a couple hundred dollars, and that would be pretty good, but not realize that with the power of God anything is possible.” Her mother, Jamie adds, “It made God that much more real for me because I could see Him working through my five year old. It just seemed all that much more real that God is real and that He can do great things through anybody.” In typical childlike exuberance, Abigail summed up the experience by saying, “I’m so happy for myself and the children, that they’re going to have a well to drink clean water out of!”