Ever since my repentance, as a pastor, about 25 years ago—a repentance that was precipitated by an honest reading of Matthew 25:31-46—I’ve been trying to serve those whom Jesus referred to as the “least of these.” During the same time, I've been continually burdened by the fact that most professing Christians do not have the “least of these” on their spiritual radar. For them, caring for the poor and marginalized among our spiritual family isn’t a component of their faith in Christ. But it should be. The New Testament makes that abundantly and overwhelmingly clear. It warns that, if we don’t care for the suffering poor among our spiritual family, we aren’t actually members of that spiritual family (see, for example, Matt. 25:31-46; 1 John 3:14-19). We don’t actually love Jesus!

I’m absolutely convinced that if more people learn what is happening in rural East Africa through Heaven’s Family’s Farming God’s Way (FGW) and Disciple-Multiplication Ministries (DMM), they will become as excited about it as I am.

During the second half of our 12-day trip, first to Northern India and now Nepal, our Heaven's Family team has spent a lot of our time meeting with indigenous church planters who are making disciples in unreached areas, some of whom are supported through Heaven's Family's National Missionary Ministry. One of them is "Fatima," pictured above. She was born and raised in Balochistan, the largest and least populated of Pakistan's five provinces, that shares its borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Fatima traveled all the way from Pakistan to meet us in Nepal.

I am looking forward to the day when the first question that Christians ask each other when they first meet is, "In what country does your national missionary work?"

Greetings from an undisclosed region of North India. I can't reveal our exact location because it could put members of our spiritual family in danger of more persecution from their Hindu neighbors. But Heaven's Family, through its various ministries, has been working here for at least ten years. Myself and several staff members are visiting for a few days and checking up on projects (that some of you made possible!).

Today our motorized canoe took us on a two-hour trip downriver, all along a stretch of the Ngkoko where Bomwali people live in small, scattered settlements. During Colonial times, their ancestors fled from their ancestral home village in Congo to escape capture and slavery by European settlers, and they adapted to the isolated life that still characterizes them today. That isolation has kept them beyond the reach of the gospel—until just recently.