A disputed border didn’t stop Michael Mirilashvili from being a good neighbor. He used his knowledge to bring much-needed water to a hospital in Gaza City.

Mr. Mirilashvili owns a company called Watergen. It produces large machines that look like blue cubes. They make cold, clean water. Watergen gave a machine to a children’s hospital. It sits on the roof of the Al-Rantisi Medical Center in Gaza City. The machine makes clean water for the hospital’s pediatric cancer ward.

Watergen is based in Israel. Gaza City is in the Gaza Strip. That area lies between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. Many Palestinian Arabs live there. For years and years, Palestinians and Israelis have fought. War creates poverty. Most people in Gaza are poor.

The Gaza Strip has a water crisis. There just isn’t enough clean water. The clean water that is available is expensive. But Mr. Mirilashvili knows it’s important. 

The billionaire is a good neighbor. He is sending water generators to Gaza “because they are our neighbors, and it’s a great pity to look at them suffering from such severe water shortages.”

The Watergen machine takes moisture vapor from the air. It collects the vapor. The vapor condenses and turns into clean drinking water. The hospital will use the clean water.

Jerusalem-based Palestinian businessman Fayez Husseini thinks the Watergen machine is perfect. “It doesn’t need pipes. It doesn’t need concrete,” he says.

The hospital in Gaza now gets 200 gallons of clean water each day from its machine!

The Bible is full of stories about water. Jesus gathered crowds around the Sea of Galilee. He offered something even more valuable than the water that Watergen provides. Jesus says in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”