HEA Updates

1/09 Wow!! Once again, another year of God pouring out His glory in all the Earth!!

What an awesome year 2008 ended up being!! Together with you our partners, we pressed into the harvest around the World and 122,225 people surrendered their lives to Jesus!

Our desire at HEA over the years has always been to develop cutting edge ministries that reach out to the entire family. By putting powerful tools (like the KKC Backpacks) into the hands of the indigenous pastors we are not only helping them to bless the children in their communities but also to reach the kids parents.

By doing so we are “building churches around the world ... one family at a time!”

The 2008 KKC outreach was a tremendous success!! Thousands of children, moms & dads have surrendered their lives to Jesus!! We praise God for you all who helped make it possible for us to fill the 15,000 backpacks with over 300,000 items! What a miracle! (Read the related newsletter)

2/08 Uganda Update …

Uganda has suffered the worst of mankind. Under the destructive eight-year regime of Idi Amin as many as 300,000 people lost their lives as reported by Wikipedia encyclopedia. 

Later a rebel army, known as the “Lords Resistance Army”, began to ravage the northern parts of the country that share a border with Sudan. They have fought the government troops, raided villages and cut off the hands, ears, or lips of anyone suspected of sympathizing with the government. They slaughtered villagers and kidnapped as many as 25,000 children, forcing boys as young as eight years old to fight in their army. The abducted girls were forced to be sex slaves.

The raids and kidnappings forced the parents to send their children out of the villages and relocation camps every night just to protect them. The children would walk to the nearby towns or just to sleep out in the bush to avoid being kidnapped in the raids on their villages. The number of “nightly commuting children” soared to more than 25,000 in 2002. 

According to Wikipedia, the count of night commuting children dropped to 15,000 in May 2006 and to less than 500 in March 2007.  The area has calmed down now but the majority of the people are afraid or unable to return to their home villages from the camps. The current peace talks are shaky at best but they have brought some hope to the area.

With all that they have suffered and in spite of their seemingly hopeless situation, the people in the camps of northern Uganda are filled with hope for a better life. Their smiles shine bigger that Dallas and they are some of the friendliest people that Michele & I have ever met in our work around the world!! 

Everywhere we went the children would come running alongside, taking hold of one of your fingers and would walk with you just looking up and smiling!!  It was never long before their parents began to come out of their huts and sometimes they would just start jumping, shouting and dancing!!  When we arrived at one remote village the people came running up around the vehicles and began to jump and sing to welcome us!  Africa is truly about people!  Wow! What a welcome!!

HEA has had a full time native Evangelist in Uganda for the past five years. Thousands have surrendered their lives to Jesus through the Film Evangelism Campaigns of HEA’s Native Evangelist Jonathan Kabanda. Jonathan will now supervise 4 new full time Film Evangelism Teams that will be working in Uganda, The Congo and Rwanda.

One of the teams will work in northern Uganda, as a part of a relocation project headed by David and Dana Mann.  They will be leading a project to help the people return to their villages by drilling water wells, providing seed and other essentials and planting churches.  The pastors of the new churches will have Oxen and plows to lend to the villagers to plow their fields. >>more>>