On Sunday morning I first visited the “home” of Kana Claver, the brother in Christ I mentioned whose legs were both amputated due to torture wounds. He, his wife, and their four children live in one room of a three-room “house.” In order to take a photo of that one room, I had to stand outside and take it through the single window (see photo below).

The floor is dirt. The walls seem to be made of dried mud. From inside you can see the roof rafters made of tree limbs and the underside of the corrugated tin roof. Kana rents their single room for about $12 per month. The other two rooms are rented by another family and a single person. They have no running water or electricity.

From left to right: Kana Claver, Tuyisenge Innocent, Nashirimana Anita, Ndayishimiye Gloria, Kirimwogabo Claver, and mother of four, Ngiriyimana Sephrine. The green door behind them leads to a second room where another family lives. The curtain over the opening on the wall beside them leads to the third room where a single person lives. They all sleep on a mat on the floor.

Kana and his wife were excited and thankful to know that they would soon have their own business via a grant from Heaven’s Family’s Handicapped Christians Fund.

From there we traveled to a different part of Bujumbura to meet another handicapped brother in Christ, whom we will feature in a future Ministry Update.

After that meeting, I rushed back to our hotel to pack, eat lunch, and head to the airport. There we said good-bye to Bienvenu. I pray that someone who is reading this will adopt him through our National Missionaries Fund. He is a very strategic person for God’s kingdom in Burundi, leading a house church network that has grown to 700 house churches in the past five years. Yet he told me that he and his family sometimes go for three days without eating because they have no money for food.

As I’m writing this, our team of four is about to land in Nairobi. Teryl and Danny will travel from there to Uganda for a two-day pastors’ conference organized by a new friend of mine, Kenneth Wafula, who is the General Secretary of the Uganda Baptist Convention, which consists of 370 churches. Kenneth was also elected to head an organization of pastors called the Association of Kingdom Builders Network, an interdenominational fellowship of 2,510 churches across Uganda. At his enthusiastic request, we have just given him 2,000 copies of The Disciple-Making Minister to distribute to Ugandan pastors.

John Carey and I have a long layover in Nairobi and will depart for London tonight, where we will spend a day meeting with the board members of Heaven’s Family U.K. before heading home on Tuesday. Just two more days and I will be with my family! Thanks for reading. — David