Today I finally reached my first original destination, the small village of Malapa, accessible only via a 30-minute ride in a motorized canoe down the Ngoko River. As our canoe approached Malapa’s riverbank, its citizens were singing and dancing in celebration of our arrival. Just a few months ago, Heaven’s Family’s Safe Water Ministry funded the drilling of a well and installation of a durable hand pump. Before that, the villagers had no option but to drink the muddy, contaminated water of the Ngoko River.

A major part of the vision of Heaven’s Family is not only to serve the “least of these,” but to serve those who want to serve the “least of these.” The value we try to provide to our donors is to give them an efficient, trustworthy means to invest their hard-earned dollars for the benefit of the world’s poorest people, and particularly the poorest among our spiritual family, and to expand Jesus’ kingdom. We do for our investors what most of them would have a very difficult time doing themselves, and we do it for much less money than they could do it themselves. But it isn’t easy or cheap for us, either.

I hope you’ll forgive me—and I know you will (because Christians forgive)! My previous blog wasn’t actually my final blog. I’ve reserved what is most important for this blog, which will be my final blog from Malawi.

Today was my final day in Malawi, and I got to be the bearer of some very good news.

One of the things that I love about Farming God’s Way (FGW) is that African farmers learn from the training that God has already supplied what they need. So their only actual need is to access His provision, and Farming God’s Way teaches them how to do it, agriculturally. All wealth comes from the ground. Humans only need to add value by organizing what is under their feet into corn and computers!

Father Victor Masangano, an Episcopalian priest in the rural Malawi village of Nangombe, was an "early adopter” of our Farming God’s Way program. That took courage, because the traditional agricultural methods in Malawi are well-entrenched. Everyone in the rural areas farms, and everyone has been farming the same way for as long as anyone can remember. Anyone who does anything different raises eyebrows. And Farming God’s Way puts a whole new culture into agri-culture.