From CBN News
US-based The Bucket Ministry is bringing God’s love and hope, as well as clean water, to Africa’s biggest slums.
Around 400,000 people are crammed into the largest slum of Kibera in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
There are fewer than 80 toilets in a neighbourhood, notorious for gang violence, extreme poverty and an absence of clean water and sanitation.
It had a reputation as one of the “darkest, filthiest, and most hopeless places on the planet” before The Bucket Ministry arrived.
Its founder Chris Beth was horrified when he first ventured into Kibera in 2017.
“Out of 82,000 homes, there wasn’t one that had access to clean, safe drinking water,” he told CBN News on a recent visit there.
The Bucket Ministry began a groundbreaking effort to distribute life-saving water filters to every one of those 82,000 homes.
It partnered with the Sawyer filter company to distribute plastic buckets, each equipped with a filtration system that makes contaminated water drinkable.
“There’s these straws, these membranes and the contaminants, so that the dirty water gets caught on the outside of these membranes,” Mr. Beth explained.
“So then, the clean water comes through the inside of the membrane.”
One hundred local missionaries, mostly Kibera residents, joined in by installing filters and teaching residents how to maintain them.
Missionary leader Phoebe Wafula says the impact became significant within about 70 days of using the filters.
“As we are speaking today, there is a lot of changes, especially through clean, safe drinking water. A lot of diseases have been eradicated,” she rejoiced.
The Bucket Ministry used mapping software to track every filter.
“At the point of distribution, we scan the barcode and deliver the filter to the recipient family.”
“We then regularly collect baseline data on the family’s physical health and spiritual orientation to chart their progress.”
“And then during every follow-up visitation, we scan the barcode again and we collect new data.”
The ministry has literally cleaned up the giant slum, but that’s not its primary aim.
“Water is the secondary reason we are there,” Chris Beth stressed.
“The Gospel is the main reason.”
The Bucket Ministry’s mapping software also details which residents have been saved after hearing the Gospel while the water filters were installed and checked.
Local pastor Raphael Dihanda told CBN News: “When The Bucket Ministry came in, and they recruited the missionaries, going and supplying the filters and the buckets, people started accepting the Gospel.”
“We can see now the great harvest is coming in the Kingdom of God.”
More than 22,000 people have given their lives to Christ and the miracles keep coming.
The ministry team has shared more than half million discipleship lessons in the homes of the filter recipients.
“Nobody has ever done this,” Pastor Dihanda said.
“Thinking of visiting someone’s house once, twice, thrice. It has never been done.”
Local elder George Owegi said the spiritual Impact of The Bucket Ministry has rippled across the slum, transforming lives in ways no one expected.
“People are testifying, people are leaving crime, they are changing their ways and they have reformed,” he observed.
Prostitution, which had been a survival mechanism for so many women in Kibera, has been sharply reduced.
“People didn’t know Christ, but what we have done and the work that has been done in Kibera, through God, is really tremendous,” declared Phoebe Wafula.
More than 1,500 people have been baptised, including Samuel Mwang.
“I was a very bad person before today, I was untrustworthy, I was a thief, a drug addict, but God healed me,” he told CBN News.
Chris Beth’s team from The Bucket Ministry has also targeted other slums in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and Mexico with the same goal of transforming lives, both physically and spiritually.
Photo: The Bucket Ministry
