Whenever we take photos of Heaven’s Family beneficiaries in public places, we instantly draw a crowd of curious people who want to see the "muzungus" up close. That happened this morning once again, so I decided to surprise the surrounding crowd by rapidly shooting many of them with my camera. I got this guy at point-blank range!

This morning we rose before dawn for a quick visit to another beneficiary of Heaven’s Family’s Micro-Loan Fund. Chantal Maluba is a widow whose extended family kicked her out of the family home because she refused to marry a non-Christian man. She trusted God. He has not failed her.

With a $300 loan, Chantal started two small businesses. In the mornings she cooks corn porridge which she sells as breakfast to workers, and the rest of the day she sells beans and flour. (She also leads a house church and is making disciples.) From her business, Chantal is able to support herself and send her only daughter to school.

I’m loving these micro-loans. They are a huge blessing to everyone who has received one. And once they are repaid, others are blessed. Thanks to all who have given to the Micro-Loan Fund.

Chantal Maluba

We landed in Kigali, Rwanda, mid-morning, to be met by two friends, Rwandan pastor Justin Nkundabagenzi, and Congolese church-planter Simeon Muhunga. I gave pastor Justin sixteen Sawyer water filters on behalf of Chuck King (Director of our Safe Water Fund), and Justin drove all of us to the bus station in Kigali.

I had heard that Kigali had experienced an amazing renewal since the end of Rwanda’s genocidal civil war, but I was amazed to see it for myself. It is, by far and away, the nicest African city I’ve ever visited. Most folks here attribute it to good governance, something which is unfortunately in short supply in Africa. I asked pastor Justin if he was Hutu or Tutsi (who were slaughtering each other a few years ago), and he laughed and replied, "I am a Rwandan." He went on to explain that it is now against the law in Rwanda to discuss the tribe from which you originate.

We said goodbye to Justin at the bus station, and Simeon paid our five-dollar tickets for the three-hour ride to the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our journey took us up and over a beautiful mountain range where the famous gorillas live, and past some volcanos as well. I had a possibly providential conversation with a young pastor along the way.

When we crossed the border from Rwanda into the DR Congo, the contrast was stark. It was like crossing into a war zone. Most Westerners don’t realize that there have been two major wars here in recent years. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 fueled the First and Second Congo Wars. The second war, which began in 1998, involved seven foreign armies, and it directly or indirectly resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people. That makes it the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. How many people outside of Africa know that? (Yet we know when Brad Pitt sneezes.)

Goma, the border town where we now are, has become the home to thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs), many of whom are traumatized widows and orphans. Beyond that, Goma, which sits on the shores of the beautiful lake Kivu, also sits near the base of the active Nyiragongo Volcano, which erupted in 2002. It sent streams of lava through Goma that flowed at 40 miles per hour, destroying 40% of the city, leaving 120,000 people homeless, and extending the Lake Kivu shoreline 500 feet into the lake, so that shorefront properties were no longer on the shorefront.

The evidence of the war and the 2002 eruption are very evident when you drive through Goma. We hope to bear some fruit here over the next couple of days on your behalf.

After a dinner gathering at Simeon’s house where we met a number of fine men and women of God, we checked into our hotel and rejoiced that it had hot water and a mosquito net over the bed. Becky and I are looking forward to a good night’s rest. — David

P.S.: Four other interesting facts about the Democratic Republic of Congo:

(1) There is another country adjacent to this one called the "Republic of Congo." (I suppose they didn’t want to call it the "Undemocratic Republic of Congo," or the "Other Congo!")

(2) More people speak French here than in France.

(3) A quote from Wikipedia: "Lake Kivu is one of three lakes in Africa identified as having huge quantities of dissolved gas held at pressure in its depths. One of the others, Lake Nyos, experienced a limnic eruption or ‘lake overturn,’ a catastrophic release of suffocating carbon dioxide probably triggered by landslides, which killed nearly two thousand people in the area around the lake. Kivu is 2,000 times bigger and also contains dissolved methane as an additional hazard. Nearly two million people including the population of Goma live in the vicinity of Lake Kivu and could be in danger from a limnic eruption triggered by one of the nearby volcanoes and the earthquakes associated with them."

So if we hear the sound of a huge gas bubble bursting on Lake Kivu (which we aren’t too far away from at our hotel), should we hold our breath and run up the slopes of the Nyiragongo Volcano?

(4) The largest concentration of professing Christians following William Branham—an interesting American prophet from the 1950’s who taught some very strange doctrines—is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is estimated that there are up to 2,000,000 followers. Following today in Branham’s footsteps are many American prosperity preachers who are pumping their spiritual sewage into the DRC via satellite television.

Kenyan Pastor Felix Mwambonu and school teacher Robert Luchitio with their new Sawyer water filters

The air was suffocating in our non-air conditioned van as we waited at the ferry crossing in Mombasa, Kenya. We had just begun our drive to a rural village of Mwangaza, which means "light" in Swahili. This very poor and mostly Muslim community has been the focus of several of my mission projects since 1999. With the help of a church I formerly pastored, we had built a Christian school building for a local Pentecostal church. We also supplied its pastor with a motorcycle for him to take the gospel far and wide. But what was needed more than anything was safe drinking water. So we later spent thousands of dollars drilling a borehole that failed to produce. In 2007, I returned to Mwangaza to distribute emergency food supplies and to attempt to treat their drinking water with water-purifying chemicals. The results were less than we hoped for.

This time, however, I had something I knew would work. I had five Sawyer water filters. I also brought more emergency food for the poorest of the poor believers in the village of Mwangaza. When we arrived, I discovered that their only source of water was rainwater collected from their roofs. Since my last visit, they had added several large cement and plastic reservoirs to hold the rainwater. So I rejoiced to know that the Sawyer filters are well suited to make such water safe to use.

After a short training session on hygiene, sanitation, and the proper use of the Sawyer filter, we distributed one filter for their school (400 students and teachers), another for the Pentecostal church (200 members), and three additional filters to families who will share the filters with perhaps 150 other people. They rejoiced to receive, not only those five filters, but also large sacks of corn and beans, made possible by Heaven’s Family’s Food Fund.

At left: one of the village’s rainwater reservoirs. At right: Mwangaza brethren rejoicing for sacks of beans and corn.

It is also important to note that the Pentecostal church school is attended by perhaps 25% Muslim children. The Muslim parents used to object to their children being trained in a Christian program, but they soon realized that this school is the only good local option for furthering their children’s education.

So the Light is indeed getting brighter and brighter in Mwangaza! Thanks for helping through your gifts to the Safe Water Fund and/or Food Fund of Heaven’s Family!

In Christ,

Chuck King
HF International Director

The testimonies below, from Rwanda, summarize the wonderful effect that our biosand filters are having to improve the lives of our poor brethren overseas. The demand for these filters is so great that I am devoting as much time as I can to training new teams in several nations to provide this biosand filter technology. I am so grateful for those who are partnering with us as we continue to serve the Lord and His people. So please enjoy reading some of the fruit of our labor together. God bless you!

Gakusi Innocent

From Gakusi Innocent:

“I am so grateful to the generous people who thought about us and assisted us in giving us filters. In this area we found the problem of water since we were born. We were just wondering when and how this situation would come to end. Our children were dying very often and we always believed they were given poison. But since January this year after I received a filter I didn’t pay any more visit to the hospital. Myself, my wife and our children are in good health since then. I was spending about 12,000 FRW (11 USD) each month at the hospital. And now I have used this money to buy a she goat which is going to produce and help me in the daily needs. Now I’m very happy for the good health of my family.”

Uwase Josiane

From Uwase Josiane:

“I am so grateful that since I got a biosand filter my family’s health improved so much. We had never had the privilege to get safe drinking water. Now my children are no longer frequently like they used to be. Every month I was taking them to the Health Center either for diarrhea or other diseases related to unclean water. Myself I was frequently suffering from abdominal pain but now I have none. And due to that situation of frequent visits to the doctor, poverty was becoming so severe in my house. We thank the servants of God who thought about us. May the Lord bless their source of income so that other people who are having the same problem I was going through may also be reached and receive a filter because it has been a great answer for us. May God bless you abundantly.”

Thanks once again on behalf of the families of Innocent and Uwase, and the many other families like them who are benefitting from your compassion.

In Christ,

Chuck King

Safe Water Fund Director

Heaven’s Family

Learn how you too can help provide safe water for our spiritual family around the world.

Two amigos working together to bring pure water to the poor in Peru

Dear Friends,

Arcadio Apestugui Florentino, pictured above, attended our biosand filter training in Lima, Peru, earlier this month. To be with us, he traveled most of an entire day by bus from his home city of Nuevo-Chimbote, where he oversees several churches. Arcadio loves the Lord and His church, and he has a great sense of humor. He was keenly interested in our training, and he was always willing to do whatever was needed to help us manufacture our pilot filters. As he was learning very quickly, it became obvious to me that he would be an excellent person to develop another biosand manufacturing project in his own city. So I granted him $1,100 from our Safe Water Fund to get started under the watchful eye of Ruben Cano, our biosand team leader in Lima.

With our grant, Arcadio will be able to manufacture twenty biosand filters. He will then find twenty families who will each purchase a filter, agreeing to make ten, $5 monthly payments. Arcadio will follow up and collect the payments while making sure each family is correctly using their filter. After just thirteen months, Arcadio will be able to manufacture sixty more filters from their payments. This process will enable Arcadio to continue making these safe water filters indefinitely. This is the vision that we have for all of our biosand teams, of which we currently have nine, in Kenya, India, Rwanda and Peru.

Notice the difference in the water!

Above is the first plastic biosand filter we built in Peru. Notice how dirty the water is going in, and notice how clean the water is that is coming out. Biosand filters make unsafe water safe to drink!

I was able to have our Lima team build three of these filters during our three-day training, and we installed two of the three in people’s homes while I was there. Ideally, I need about five days to train teams thoroughly in hygiene, sanitation, and biosand technology, but our time was limited. Praise God for people whom God has given us around the world like Arcadio, who is now our second biosand team leader in Peru. I will be traveling to the Peruvian jungle city of Iquitos in January to train a third team. Both Africa and India are on my schedule for the Fall to train additional teams.

Thanks to you, we are able to continue to provide this simple, effective technology to those who are suffering from unsafe water. And while we do so, we provide these teams with a vital ministry to the poor that will continue indefinitely without further financial investment from us! God bless you as you continue to love and serve His people around the world!

In Service to the King,

Chuck King

Safe Water Fund

Director
Heaven’s Family