In 2009, I was reading “The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us?” by Richard Stearns, the then President of World Vision, U.S., and I was praying that God would reveal something meaningful to Him that I could join into with Him.

I was about to travel to the Texas Rio Grand Valley and was at the grocery store buying bottled water to take on the trip. I believe that God speaks to us in many ways, and one of the ways is by putting a question in our minds about something socially relevant that we might be able to do something about. The question He put in my mind was: “What would it look like if there was a brand of bottled water on the shelf that used all of its available profits to help provide safe water in the developing world?” I thought that sounded like a great idea, so I attempted to find a bottled water company that was doing that, but I couldn’t find one.

I then faced a dilemma: as a busy family physician working long hours who knew nothing about bottled water or drilling water wells, how could I take that on? After several sleepless nights awakened with nightmares of children dying of water-related illnesses, I surrendered to God, phoned Steve Akin, my missions pastor at church, and said I needed to talk with him. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, I met with Steve and told him the story. I fully expected him to tell me I was crazy, but instead, he said, “What a great idea!  Why haven’t we thought of that before?”

At that point, Hope Springs Water was born.

Ted Mettetal, Founder of Hope Springs Water