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In general if these children survive and manage to grow up, some of them probably end up on the street and join the many existing street children. Kinshasa is supposed to have already about 10 thousand of them and their life is a chapter in itself. In order to stop this vicious cycle we came up with a plan. We didn't just want to "feed them a fish, but rather teach them how to fish".

For the immediate help we bought some food supplies and organized urgently needed medicine for all the children from a dear pharmacy friend. We also bought two sewing machines so they can teach the older kids and earn a little money this way. But our main investment went into an agricultural project. Kinshasa is surrounded by lots of fertile land, but hardly anybody does anything with it. There are many reasons. The poor have no money and even if somebody wants to start such a project, the field "roads" are extremely difficult to pass and there is no infrastructure to speak of. In spite of all these obstacles, we bought two hectares of land near Kisenso plus the tools to clear the field and seeds to plant maize, beans, green vegetables, potatoes and peanuts. The future plan includes breeding fish, raising animals and growing more crops, bananas and fruits. We are also praying for a building for the orphans so they can take better care of them.

Together with the SABEC members we made a plan what to do with the food once it grows. Some is for immediate use to feed the children, the rest should be sold to buy more seeds for the next crop and to get other supplies for them. This is only the beginning as to support 98 orphans takes a lot and the proceeds of what we started only covers a small amount of what is needed. They need a lot more food plus medical care, school supplies etc so that in the future they can get training i.e. to become farmers instead of looking for jobs which don't exist. About 80 % of the people are jobless and have no support from anybody.

The other project we were working on was to strengthen our Bible Study group to carry on after we left. We believe that one of the main reasons the poor don't have enough to eat is because there is not enough love amongst the people. Jesus said in Mathew 22:37-40:  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." If everybody would keep those two rules – to love God and their neighbors as themselves - there would be no wars, enough food for everybody and people could live in peace. But since this is not the case we have a big job until people live more according to His Law of Love.

In order to reach that goal we distribute tracts to everybody which help spread this message of God’s love, sharing and peace. We also distribute the “activated” magazine by mail, e-mail and printed copies as well as other very helpful educational and spiritually uplifting materials. And for those who want to deepen their personal relationship with God, which a lot of people in the Congo want to do, we offer weekly special Bible Study courses called “12 Foundation Stones”. These cover important subjects like Eternal Salvation, the Word of God, Love, Prayer, Hearing of Heaven, the End time and Jesus' Return etc. If you are interested in any of these subjects please let us know and we will do our best to supply you with the needed materials. If you would like to help our work please use the bank account on the bottom of this page and let us know which project you would like to support. Thank you so much!

Then we needed more financing to be a bigger help to the great need in the Congo. One of our faithful friends in Europe got his business partners in South Africa to meet us. They were touched by our project and together gave us a very generous donation and are sponsoring our tickets. With their help we can get so much more done there. God bless them as well as all of you who are helping us in this project and we know He will as He promised in His word: “He that has pity upon the poor lends unto the Lord; and that which he has given will he pay him again” Pro. 19:17.

Thank God we could also find somebody in Kinshasa who is willing to give us a place to stay where we can even cook, which is a real blessing since food and lodging are both very expensive there. At the same time we were looking for a way to get literature into the country, especially the “Activated” magazines, the first 9 issues of which contain a basic foundation course for Christians, and a few other issues with helpful articles on up-to-date questions of life. We are looking for a way to get these in on a regular basis and that has to be a miracle to get around very high transport, customs and handling charges. The Lord is good and finally opened a door for us. We would like to ask you to keep this in your prayers as well as the whole project, especially for peaceful elections in June, their first ever since Congo’s independence, so that they can live in peace and the economy gets going to make it easier for people to find jobs and survive. Thank you very much!

The goal for our trip, the two main objectives: 1. we would like to help the children’s Home in Kisenso with some immediate food supplies and hopefully find a way to grow food themselves so that they can cover at least some of their basic needs by themselves. 2. Strengthen our group of Bible students so that they can continue to carry on the work we started there in 2004 and help spread the message in the Congo as far and wide as possible.

In the meantime our local work here grew and we found it especially inspiring and fruitful to get out faith and character building educational materials in the schools, which was developed by our colleagues especially for Africa and is getting very good responses. At the same time we had the chance to share the message of God’s love and salvation, especially now for the Easter time, with over 2000 children and we invited them to our special little prayer which we like to pray with people everywhere (see the prayer at the end of the attachment “What is Easter”).  This is still possible here in a predominantly Christian country with not just nominal but active Christians.

The projects of our local mission continued well with supplying regular food for the soup kitchen and giving free eye check ups in the settlement schools and finding sponsors for those kids who need glasses.

Thank you for all your help and prayers, which we need for our ongoing projects especially now for this coming trip to the Congo. We pray for you too and wish you all a very HAPPY EASTER time remembering the greatest victory of all times which came out of a seeming defeat.

One such example is Khayelitsha, the biggest slum area in Cape Town with about 800 000 black people living mostly in shacks, stretching about 10 km long and 5 km wide. About 80 % of these people are jobless and alcohol, drugs, prostitution, AIDS, criminality etc are rampant in these informal settlements.

Our team here is helping in the schools of two of the squatter camps with free eye tests for the children and is trying to get them as many free glasses as possible, which they cannot afford otherwise. They also bring food to a local soup kitchen which cares for the homeless people. We visit the University and help the students who have no goals and need new motivation. People here as everywhere else need spiritual help and support to gain new strength and to approach life with new vigor. We also want to - similar to Mexico - visit hospitals to give comfort to the needy and pray for the sick as well as distribute good educational and character building material to the children in the slums to give them a good foundation for their future lives.

The highlight in the humanitarian sector which we would like to achieve is to make a trip to the Congo as soon as possible as our assistance there is urgently required.
We would like to share with you two excerpts of emails which we received from Kinshasa just a few days ago; they speak for themselves.

Pastor Theophile wrote us: "… The situation of children in Kisenso isn't good, food situation is even worse. When you were here, we had 150 children (orphans), since you left, 52 died because of lack of food. Now, we have 98 children. Some of them (37 children) try to go to school but they don't have possibilities to continue studies because school in Congo is too expensive for them."

Another friend of ours there wrote us and explained how important it is to pray for the situation: "… We hope very much, that God will answer all these prayers and will show mercy to this country. He already did just that so many times, like on June 30th (2005, where elections were supposed to happen and got postponed). Unrest was planned and predicted.  Many foreigners had already left  the country. And NOTHING happened! God protects this city in an unexplainable way. Please pray with us for the coming year, which will be decisive with the coming elections. At the end of next June everything should be over."

Thank you for your prayers for the situation in Congo. Our thanks goes also to those of you who are actively helping through your donations to change the sad situation of the poor children there. We appreciate your help very much and wish you a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS and His blessings for the coming NEW YEAR,