Teresia with her new sewing machine
What a lady. Her faith is strong. She is very outgoing and shares the gospel with everyone she meets. Even though she is a widow, she refuses to allow discouragement to pull her down. Her name is Teresia Wambui, and she lives in Nukuru, Kenya. I met her a few months ago for the first time, but I already knew something about her. She is one of scores of Kenyan widows whom Heaven’s Family has assisted with a small business start-up loan. Let me tell you her story….
Teresia was happily married for twelve years to her husband, Jonah. They had four beautiful children. Jonah had been pastoring a thriving little house church. In an instant, however, everything changed. A brain aneurysm took his life.
The lives of Teresia and her children were turned upside down. They were already impoverished by Western standards, but without a breadwinner, they were thrust into a truly desperate situation. Worse, four days after Jonah’s death, his unsaved family members kicked Teresia and her children out of their home and took all their belongings.
With no other options, Teresia and her children moved in with her aged parents in the cramped quarters of their little house. She took all the small jobs she could find to earn some cash, and her church family helped as much as they could, but it was still never enough to meet even their basic needs.
Teresia did possess tailoring skills, however, and she longed to use them to start a small tailoring business to support her family. Although she lacked a sewing machine, fabric, or money to buy them, Teresia knew that she served an amazing God. She believed that He is the Father of the fatherless and the Defender of the widow (Psalms 68:5). God rewarded her faith and made a way for her dream to come true.
Today, through a small business loan from Heaven’s Family’s Widows & Abandoned Women Fund, Teresia works every day in her own tailoring shop making school uniforms, clothing, and tablecloths. Her children are eating regular meals, and she is able to pay their school fees. Teresia continues to lead the house church her husband started and her small flock has witnessed the faithfulness of the Lord in her life. She recently wrote to us:
Teresia with her four children, Monica, Benjamin, Janet, and Wanjiru, standing at the doorway of their one-room home
For surely God has remembered me just like He remembered Hannah in the Book of Samuel. I want to thank God for the Heaven’s Family ministry for the great heart of reaching me and many other needy widows like me. With a new sewing machine and enough material both for table clothes and for making children school clothes and others, I believe God for great things ahead.
