There was a saying among the neighboring villages: "Don't marry a man from Satawm—or you'll be carrying water the rest of your life." That's because Satawm's residents, all slash-and-burn subsistence farmers, were never assisted by any international development organizations—as were residents of many neighboring villages—with funding for water reservoirs and piping to bring water to their village. From Satawm's founding in 1860, wives had been carrying water up steep mountain slopes for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing, day after day. It was enough to incline eligible bachelorettes in the region to dodge the eyes of Satawm's bachelors.

If someone would have told me eleven years ago that, by 2014, Heaven's Family would grow into the ministry it has since become, I wouldn't have believed it.