His 2nd Wave Outreach – H2O

My name is Sophia Fleming, and I am the Director of His 2nd Wave Outreach (H2O). My husband, Patrick, and I are the founders of this ministry, although we consider ourselves more like stewards than founders. We wanted to take a few moments to share a little about ourselves and how H2O came into existence, because we believe our story is proof of the old saying that “God doesn’t always call the equipped, but He does equip those He calls.”

Where It Began

Patrick and I were married in September of 1993 and six weeks later we were baptized. As we look back, we can see that by following up with us after our premarital counseling, the pastor was able to lead us to be baptized shortly after our wedding. God used that simple act of following up to become the catalyst in our lives for more than thirty years of spiritual growth. It seems fitting that we would now steward an organization focused on ministering through follow-up visits.

In the years since we were baptized, the Lord has given us many opportunities to serve locally through our private business, through the churches we have attended, as well as through more than a decade of facilitating a Bible study at a local prison facility. In addition, I have had the privilege of serving for the past ten years as the administrator of a nonprofit organization made up of independent members, churches, and ministries.

Humbled by these experiences, we praise the Lord for giving us these opportunities to be co-laborers with Him in His work. These opportunities have shaped us and have also shaped our understanding of what ministry looks like both inside and outside the walls of the church.

These opportunities have also given us the privilege of partnering with other ministries and learning how they use the tools the Lord has given them. This exposure to different ministries ultimately became part of the genesis of H2O.

Learning from Other Ministries

In 2017, I first learned about the Sawyer PointOne water filter from a pastor whose team was preparing to take the filters with them on a mission trip to Africa. Not long afterwards, the organization where I worked discovered The Bucket Ministry (TBM) through Sawyer Products’ website; shortly after that we partnered with TBM to train pastors in Kenya on how to use the filters as a tool for evangelism.

In 2019, my husband and I, along with a small group, joined Chris Beth and TBM on a mission trip to Kenya. During that trip we participated in TBM’s first distribution of water filters in the slums of Kibera, as well as a distribution among the Pokot people.

That trip became the first of five mission trips to Kenya during the COVID years. Three of those trips were connected to TBM. The first was the initial distributions already mentioned. The second involved another distribution in Kibera, and the third focused on a time of fellowship and training with TBM’s local Kibera campaign leadership.

In addition to working with TBM, our team was also able to visit several ministries affiliated with the nonprofit organization where I was serving and fellowship with and train those local pastors. We also were able to visit an orphanage on the Tanzania border, and later we were blessed with the opportunity to deliver resources such sewing machines, shoes, and a solar panel to that orphanage. God worked through many folks to bless that ministry, and it was wonderful to watch.

At the time, we did not realize that these trips were more than opportunities to serve. Looking back now, we can see that the Lord was using the experiences from those five trips to prepare us for the work we have now begun.

An Unexpected Conversation

In 2022, I found myself sitting next to a pilot from Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). Although the trip itself was not ministry related, I assumed this connection was divine and that it would be my opportunity to tell someone from MAF about TBM. However, that was not the Lord’s plan.

It turned out that the pilot was already familiar with TBM because, while flying for MAF, he had helped transport supplies for one of TBM’s Haiti campaigns. In fact, he had been hoping to find someone connected with TBM because he was looking for donated water filters to give to his ministry friends who had been impacted by a hurricane in Kentucky. Unfortunately, this was not something TBM could provide while remaining true to its mission.

Over the course of the next week, I began writing down several thoughts and concerns about what TBM’s ministry model might look like in a disaster relief situation. After returning home, I shared those thoughts with Chris Beth of TBM, who planned to pass them along to some of his contacts involved in disaster relief.

After that, I moved on to other ministry opportunities through work and family, leaving those ideas in the hands of people more capable of addressing them. It seemed, however, that the Lord was not finished with the seeds He had planted during that week. Over the next few years, while we were serving in other areas of ministry, those ideas remained dormant but were not forgotten.

The Pieces Come Together

In 2025, Hurricane Melissa devastated much of the west side of Jamaica. As the organization where I worked began rallying hurricane relief support for those affected, the Lord began reminding me of those thoughts and ideas from 2022.

One of the major challenges I had wrestled with was how TBM’s ministry model could be applied in disaster relief, particularly the difficulty of conducting follow-up visits. In many cases, people in the United States are hesitant to receive follow up visits after disaster relief assistance.

The answer to this concern came through a ministry update at our local church from the international ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, known as Cru. Cru had been ministering to families in Ukraine through a program called the Yellow Box Project. Through this four-week program, families received a weekly visit that delivered much needed staples along with a portion of the gospel message.

By combining The Yellow Box Project model with the evangelism, follow up, and mission mapping elements of TBM’s ministry, a new picture of a new disaster relief ministry model started to become clear.

At the same time, the Lord was prompting me through a series of books He had laid on my heart to read, each emphasizing the need for members of the local church to become more service minded and outwardly focused within their communities and beyond – becoming the hands and feet of Jesus.

Finally, after much prayer, I sat down at my keyboard. Over the course of three days, the Lord, AI, and I worked through the different ministry ideas, putting them on paper and shaping them with the experiences the Lord had brought us through, as well as the concepts highlighted in the books I had been reading. After much revising and editing, a ministry overview began to take shape.

After sharing that overview with Chris Beth of TBM, who encouraged us to move forward in establishing this nonprofit, the Lord began connecting us with some absolutely amazing ministries and fellow believers.

A First Step of Faith

Through those connections we were able to organize the first pilot of this ministry model. In February 2026 we had the privilege of working with believers in, of all places, the community of Kentucky in Westmoreland, Jamaica, helping them bless their community. It was not lost on us that a conversation years earlier had begun with a request for filters for the Kentucky in the United States would later lead to the Lord opening the door for us to serve in Kentucky, Jamaica.

Read “The Jamaica Campaign” to celebrate with us what the Lord has done and continues to do there.

I remember writing in an email to Chris Beth after he encouraged us to start this ministry, “…we have absolutely no experience in the disaster relief field, and no real retirement set up, not to mention that this would mean creating an entire ministry from scratch. There is no conventional wisdom on Earth that would be in favor of such an endeavor. So, it sounds like a God thing, and we’re in.”

And so, we are.

It is amazing to see how the Lord used the simple act of following up more than thirty years ago to begin shaping the path that would eventually lead to this ministry, His 2nd Wave Outreach. The same kind of care that helped us grow in our faith is now at the heart of the ministry the Lord has entrusted to us to steward.

Our prayer is that H2O will help equip believers to serve their communities in practical ways while building relationships that allow the hope of the gospel to be shared through ongoing connection and follow up.

We are grateful to be stewards of this work and invite you to join us as we seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus wherever the Lord leads.