Super Sisters!
Greetings from Rwanda, East Africa, where Heaven’s Family has been serving for over a decade. Rwanda ranks 159 of 193 of nations on the UN’s Human Development Index. The average person in Rwanda earns roughly 1/77th the income of the average American.
Outside the cities, rarely do people have electricity or running water. Most everyone collects daily water in plastic jerry cans from local water sources, which are often small muddy ponds. They often live ln simple mud-brick homes with dirt floors. Everyone grows what they eat on small plots of land, and they are often not able to grow enough to feed themselves for an entire year. That makes them failing subsistence farmers.
Heaven’s Family has been changing that through our Farming God’s Way (FGW) ministry. African director, Jerry Jefferson, and I are here to interact with our FGW trainers and meet with successful FGW farmers. Many are women who faced resistance from their husbands when they first implemented FGW principles that contradict traditional farming methods. But their husbands have not been able to resist the results!
Two women whom we were blessed to meet this morning, Josephine and Louise, are certainly in the “super sisters” category.
On her small plot of land, the most maize (corn) Josephine had ever harvested was 4.5 pounds. A month ago, she harvested 88 pounds of maize! It was her very first FGW harvest! As she continues to practice FGW, her harvests will continue to increase. Josephine told us that she almost didn’t attend the FGW training when she learned that she would not be given any money for attending (standard “worst practice” of many nonprofits that offer training in the developing world). Here’s a photo of Josephine standing in front of her recently-harvested corn stalks:
Prior to FGW, the most Louise (below) had ever harvested from her land was 11 pounds of maize. She just harvested 132 pounds on the same plot! It is her first FGW harvest.
Needless to say, Josephine and Louise are very happy farmers. Neither of these women and their families will ever face hunger again, something that so many in rural Rwanda faces at least once a year during the “hunger season.” That is when all of last year’s crops have been consumed and they wait for the next meager harvest.
Another beautiful part of all of this is that the fields of successful FGW farmers quickly draw the attention of their neighbors. That gives them the perfect opportunity to invite those neighbors to a weekly “God’s Love Group” (GLG), where they not only learn how to farm God’s way, but how to follow Jesus and multiply disciples. Josephine and Louise have been learning from another super sister named Clementine. The morning we met with those three super sisters, four of their neighbors who want to learn Farming God’s Way also joined us. So, in the photo below, there are three FGW generations pictured. Clementine is standing between Josephine and Louise, and their four neighbors who will soon receive initial FGW training are in the background. Pray for all of their husbands!
This same thing is happening in many other places in Rwanda through our full-time and many volunteer FGW trainers. We currently have 122 God’s Love Groups in Rwanda. So far in 2026, we’ve trained 12,743 struggling subsistence farmers in Rwanda, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe. All thanks, in part, to our generous investors.
Below are a few more photos from the last two days with captions. Thanks for joining me on this trip! — David
Heaven’s Family’s African Director, Jerry Jefferson, standing next to a widow named Dativa who lost her husband in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. She did not know how old she is. Her God’s Love Group (GLG) helps her farm, and they came to her rescue when thieves broke into her simple house and stole all of her stored maize. That is another beautiful thing about GLGs. The members love one another.
After listening to several folks in the village of Nyamata share how their lives have been transformed through FGW and GLG’s, Jerry brings a word of encouragement and admonition.
Bosco and Angélique, residents of the village of Mareba, have become stellar FGW farmers, and are now training many others. But Angélique told her husband he was crazy when he first implemented FGW. She had never heard of not tilling the soil or of covering it with mulch. But she became a believer when Bosco’s first FGW harvest was eight times any previous one!
Zawadi and Gilbert, of the village of Nyamata, showing off some of the first fruits of their yams (a local variety). You can always identify a FGW farm by the thick layer of mulch that we call “God’s blanket.”
Zawadi’s father heads the local village mosque, and he is very interested in FGW now that he is seeing his daugher’s success. Like him, she is still a Muslim, but she is leading a God’s Love Group that is studying the Bible (as they all do), which she is growing to respect. It won’t be long for her! Gilbert was a “drunken Catholic,” but has recently been born again, and Zawadi has noticed the big difference in him!