Love on Tap
Pouring the love of God into the hearts of His servants, enabling them to better serve others
Dear Friends,
Fine (pronounced feen) is a Heaven’s Family partner who serves as a prison chaplain. She “commutes” a very short distance from her home in Gisenyi, Rwanda, to a prison a stone’s throw across the border in Goma, DR Congo.
Fine is a survivor of the Rwanda Genocide in 1994. During a 3-month melee, an estimated 1 million people of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by members of the Hutu tribe. Although Rwanda has been peaceful in the years since, many scars remain.
Many of Fine’s family were also killed during the genocide. She still feels the pain of missing her family, but she has learned forgiveness through the love of her Lord and Savior, Jesus. For more than 20 years she has dedicated her life to serving Him through helping victims of the genocide be reconciled with their imprisoned attackers.
Heaven’s Family works with Fine and other chaplains through the Prison Ministry & Rehab Fund. She tirelessly serves the Lord in many other ways, including faithfully visiting and feeding the sick in crowded hospital wards where many, because of the genocide, have no family to bring them food or encouragement.
Last year, when we visited our ministry partners in Goma, we started a Sawyer water filter* program beginning with 10 hard-working, dedicated prison chaplains who are seeking to bring reconciliation in and around the prisons on both sides of the border.
Last February, however, we learned that Fine no longer had a Sawyer filter for her ministry use, an important tool since Rwandan’s must boil their drinking water or risk illness. She had unselfishly given the one she received last year to a shelter (a Heaven’s Family partner that helps women who have been raped by militants in DR Congo’s civil war) so they could provide sufficient quantities of safe water for the mothers and children under their care. We quickly provided Fine with her own filter, thanks to gifts to the Safe Water Fund.
True to Fine’s selfless nature, she now shares her safe drinking water with not only her family, but her neighbors as well. Besides reaping better health because of the filter, they are also saving money on charcoal used to boil water, and the time it takes to boil it. Even more, this enables Fine to express the love of Jesus through sharing clean, pure water.
Safe water is a rare commodity for so many around the world. Our ministry partners and the spiritual family whom we are serving often drink from water sources that are polluted or bacteria- and feces-ridden, causing chronic illness and death. Thank you so much for your gifts to the Safe Water Fund. You are making a difference in the lives of so many. I thank the Lord for you!
Serving together,
Diane Scott
Director, Safe Water Fund
*A Sawyer water filter is capable of filtering 1,000,000 gallons of water during its lifetime, effectively removing 99.99% of all cysts, protozoa, bacteria and other harmful contaminants.