A message from the Maxwell's

We am so excited about what God has in store for Heart for Africa in 2007. 2006 was a year of transition for the organization and for the Maxwell family. We are all settled in Atlanta and are looking forward to the plans that God is laying before us for this year.

Our goal in 2007 is to IGNITE people about Africa, have them EXPERIENCE Africa through a trip and CONNECT with the people they meet to form an ongoing relationship with Africa. We will do this through our H.O.P.E. trips (Hunger, Orphans, Poverty, and Education) with the Never Ending Gardens being a foundation block for the “H” on all trips. These trips will continue to focus on providing sustainable food security for the people of Africa.

We are adding three trips to Kenya in 2007 as well as continuing trips to Swaziland and Malawi. Please visit our website for dates and more information on the trips.

Many of you have asked how you can assist Heart for Africa. One of our biggest needs is in the area of recruitment for trips. We would love to have you join us on a trip and also to bring a friend with you. If you can’t go please help us to encourage others to go. If you are interested in recruitment for future trips please contact donna@heartforafrica.org and join the IGNITE TEAM.
We need your help to make 2007 be a year that changes lives in Africa. Each of you has a part in God’s plan for the African people. Ask how you can IGNITE , EXPERIENCE and CONNECT. Ask what God is saying to you. Please come and join us this year as we bring HOPE to the people of Africa.

God bless you,

Ian and Janine Maxwell

Important Note: Heart for Africa Address Change

Please take a moment and change the address you now have for Heart for Africa.
Our main office accounts are no longer located in Oklahoma.

If you are mailing something to us from the USA, please mail it to:
Heart for Africa
PO Box 573
Alpharetta, GA 30009

If you are mailing something to us from Canada, please mail it to:
Heart for Africa-Canadian Office
P.O. Box 246 Dept. HOPE
Pickering ON L1V 2V4

Thank you so much for taking the time to make this important change. We certainly do want to receive everything you mail to us.

It's Time to Ignite - want to join the team?

Ignite: verb, to set on fire; kindle.

If you have joined us in Africa, then it is our prayer that you have felt a kindling in your heart that has not gone away. To look into the faces of the people living in Africa, to be witness to the hardships of their lives, and still to see the love of our Lord there with them, truly does ignite a fire inside our hearts.
It is our hope that everyone who travels to Africa with us will return home holding an armload of "kindling".

So what can we do with this kindling? Kindling has one good purpose. It is used to ignite a fire.

We invite you to share your heart, share the warmth of your fire with others. The only way we can continue to make a difference in the lives of those in Africa, is by continuing the labor of love we have begun. And in order to continue this work, we need people joining us on trips this year.

Is there anyone in your life that would love to be a blessing to someone suffering in Africa?
Then ignite them to join you on a trip.

Is there anyone in your life that would love to be used as a vessel of God's love?
Then ignite them, and ask them to join you in Africa and lavish those there with the love of God.

Is there a day that goes by that you do not remember your time in Africa?
Then ignite your own flame, and fan it again by joining us once again this year.

Do you still enjoy the blessings of what the Lord did in your life in Africa?
Then seek Him further, join Him again, and walk with Him again in Africa.

Heart for Africa longs to help you Ignite - Experience - Connect.

Ignite by fanning into flame the desire the Lord has placed in every heart to help those who are hurting. To be God's hands of service, His voice of love, and show His heart of compassion for any and all who are in need.

Experience what God is doing in the lives of those living in Africa as He uses the Body of Christ to reveal His deep love for them, while He is also seeking to bless you in new and amazing ways.

Connect with those living in Africa and with others who seek to know God more, serve Him more fervently, and make a life-changing difference in the lives of those we meet in Africa.

If you would like to inspire others in your world to experience God in Africa, we would like to invite you to join a special group of people known as our Ignite Team 2007.

If you would be interested in being a part of our Ignite Team please email Donna at donna@heartforafrica.org

We look forward to hearing from you as we lay our kindling together and fan the flames.

Watching Doors Open in Kenya - Tim Hunt, Chairman

Heart for Africa will serve in its fourth African country in 2007 after God threw the doors to Kenya wide open.

The team exploring options spent from Nov. 22 to Nov. 29 in Kenya meeting with potential partners and discussing how we could work together. Heart for Africa Vice-President Janine Maxwell led the North American team which also included new operations director, Rob Shoemaker, and board Chairman Tim Hunt.

We invited the leaders of our two Swazi partner children’s homes, El Shaddai and New Hope, to join us in Kenya as well as Lad Chapman (Heart for Africa Country Manager in Swaziland).

We visited inspiring programs run by African Enterprise in one of the major slums in Nairobi and then traveled to Ndalani to spend three days at the Mully Children’s Family Home. We also visited the sister facility a few miles away at Yatta where Mully is teaching practical skills to teen-aged mothers so they have a way to earn an income. Seeing what God is doing at the Mully Family inspired all of us, particularly when you see kids from toddlers to teen-agers all coming together to celebrate what Jesus has done for them.

We returned to Nairobi for meetings that would transform the trip. The first was with Dr. Meschach Ong’uti, founder of "Help a Child Face Tomorrow", is a specialist who has been a leader in pro-bono cleft-pallet repair for kids. Dr. Meschach explained his plans for a medical mission team in Kisii, a very poor region of Kenya about two hours from the capital city of Nairobi.

The next meeting was with Bishop David Thagano from Glory Outreach Assembly (GOA) whose ministry has six pillars including evangelism and discipleship. The bishop was very excited as he had just returned from a hugely successful evangelism drive and was dispatching an emergency discipleship team to the area to spend a month working with the new believers. His enthusiasm and passion was contagious and inspiring.

Janine pulled out a map and asked where the evangelism campaign was, it was located about 25 miles from where Dr. Meschach already was working. Incidentally, Dr. Meschach’s group already has a list of more than 150 orphans in the target area. Bishop David was interested in expanding into that area, but thought a medical mission would really help draw people.

In 2007 we have 3 trips planned for Kenya partnering with GOA and Dr. Meschach's medical teams to bring H.O.P.E. to the area of Kisi. A medical mission will be included in each of these so we are actively looking for Doctor's and any medical professionals to join us. The first team will leave on July 9th and is being specially designed trip called the NextGen Team where parents and teenagers can go to Kenya and serve side by side. The other teams will travel in October and November. Please consider joining us for this important work.

God is moving and He’s using us in His efforts. Praise Him and join us in 2007.

Dirty Fingernails: Journals from the Field - Liz Higgins

We are home from Swaziland, changed forever by our trip. We fell in love with the kind Swazi people, the breathtaking landscape and the precious children of the El Shaddai Orphanage.

God first put Swaziland on our hearts last year as we helped my father prepare to travel with Heart for Africa. We loved learning about Swaziland and praying for the people he would meet. When he returned, he brought stories and pictures and a real love for this special place.

Mike and I had always hoped that we would be able to take our children on mission trips someday. We figured it would be in the future, when they were older. When we discovered that we could join my dad and take Jacob and Andrew (who are six and four years old) on this trip to El Shaddai, we were thrilled and began immediately to pray for God’s permission and blessing. It was a long road, we faced fundraising obstacles and opposition from some of our family. But it strengthened us in following the Lord and trusting Him completely. Before we knew it, He had cleared the way and our adventure was beginning.

Our first day in Africa, I was overjoyed to be there. I was awed by the beauty, warmed by the friendly people and eager to begin our work. But by the end of the next day, I was heartbroken. Of course I had known about the hardships in Swaziland, but to be there was different. I felt completely overwhelmed. I wondered how we could begin to help solve the problems that Swaziland was facing.

Again, God showed me that I only needed to bring everything to Him. Yes, the problems in Swaziland are overwhelming. But God is there.

Throughout the week, He refreshed my hope. He did it through the fellowship of our wonderful team, through Lad’s uplifting messages each night, through meeting Jabulani and seeing his love for God, and through witnessing Kallie and Charmain’s obedience and faithfulness. It was a special joy to serve alongside my family. Our family will be strengthened by all that we experienced together. I was proud to see my husband and my father working so hard and caring so much for the people at El Shaddai. Jacob and Andrew were so eager to pitch in and help. Our team was amazing. Twenty-four people who love the Lord and His children, ready to do whatever needed to be done. We cleaned, painted, sorted, installed and built. And while it felt good to be productive and complete our tasks, the real joy was in interacting with the children! They were so sweet! They are being taught about Jesus and they love Him so much. I dearly loved watching Jacob and Andrew play with their new friends. They are already asking when we can go back again.

We would love to go back to Swaziland, if that is God's plan for us. It was an honor to serve Him with Heart for Africa. In the meantime, He has put it on our hearts to pray for the children of Swaziland. The hope of Swaziland is in the children and the hope of these children is in the Lord. "Bambelela Ku Jesu," it says on the roof of the church at El Shaddai. "Hold onto Jesus."

A God Moment in Malawi - Rob Shoemaker

Every time I go to Africa my eyes see a new perspective on life and my November trip to Malawi was no different. We worked in several villages meeting and working alongside some of the friendliest, most amazing people, but one man in particular that I met in a village named Deya had the greatest impact on me.

Theresa, our host in Malawi, told me about this man and wanted me to meet him which I was glad to do. As we walked up to his garden I saw this man sitting on the ground beside a container of water in front of the best garden I had seen in Malawi. He didn’t get up and as I looked at his legs I realized he had polio or some disease that left him crippled from the waist down but very fit looking from there up.

This beautiful garden of about 1/3 acre was his and he tended it by himself, on his knees, using his hands to move about. He had tilled the soil by hand, planted by hand, watered by hand and now sits for hours watching so the goats don’t eat his produce. His wheelchair was an upside-down bicycle mounted on a three wheel chair. Dragging himself from his house to this chair, he peddles 300 yards to his garden where he crawls out of the chair and around his garden each day to tend the future food for his family. He pulls water from a shallow well by hand and delivers it to each and every plant up to two times per week.

His resolve to take care of his family is so very rare for an African male, much less for one with a severe handicap. He is 46 years old and has been paralyzed for 20 years and takes care of a wife and three children that live with him.

I later asked Theresa what we could do for him and I was told he is a tinsmith by trade but has little money to pursue his craft, so some tin and cutters would be a real blessing for him. Two days later we return with the tin and cutters and he is so grateful but I still wonder what we can do to assist this man. I have Theresa ask him if there is anything else he needs and his response is my God moment. He says that what we have done for him with the tin and cutters is all he needs because now he can provide for his family. So little given but so much received.

He could have asked for a new wheelchair to replace the old one that is falling apart or he could have asked for a new roof for the part of the house where the kids sleep which blew off the day before or he could have asked for food for his family. But this humble man only thought about the abundant blessing that God had given him in the tin.(by the way he will peddle many miles to sell his tin buckets).

So many times we are only thankful for the big blessings from God that we fail to see the everyday blessings we are given. This man is thankful for the life God has given him and consequently for every blessing no matter the size.

It is sad that we in the United States do not have this same attitude about life. We seem to only value the large, whether in giving or receiving, and so we are sad when we can’t give a large expensive gift or we get a small one. What would our lives be like to have the same grateful hearts that this man has, who can’t walk and has so little, but is so humble and content with all God gives him? Please ask yourselves this question as the New Year begins and be prepared for God to answer and start you on a journey with Him.

Are You Wondering H.O.W? You Can Help Orphans and Widows???

Not only is H.O.W? an acronym for Helping Orphans and Widows, but by hosting a H.O.W? Jewelry Party, you can help contribute to the orphans and widows safety and well-being in Malawi, Swaziland and Kenya.

H.O.W? is designed to actively support women in African countries, helping them become self-sufficient and able to pay for their children’s or grandchildren’s food, clothing and education as opposed to prostituting themselves or their children to raise money to eat.

Our goal is to raise seed money to train women in need to skillfully create handicrafts of jewelry, rugs and tote bags to be sold at a profit through H.O.W?, benefiting the women, their children and Heart for Africa. This is done by partnering with ministries with which Heart for Africa already has a relationship (Somebody Cares in Malawi, Women’s Prison in Swaziland, Mully Children's Family in Kenya). All profits that come from the sale of the goods goes back to support the work and projects of Heart for Africa

In less than a month, 14 H.O.W? Jewelry parties were hosted mostly in the Atlanta area, raising more than $23,000 toward that end. The excitement about the products as well as the cause was infectious. If you would like to host your own party, please contact Deitra Shoemaker at deitra@heartforafrica.org or call 678-546-3782 for more information.

Book Launch and Open House in Atlanta, Georgia

On December 10th, past Heart for Africa trip participants living in the Atlanta area came together for a time of renewing and welcoming. We all joyfully welcomed the Maxwell family to Alpharetta as they have now enjoyed their first Georgia Christmas (just a bit warmer than their prior Canadian Christmas').

And how dear it was to us to enjoy time together with those from the Atlanta area who have traveled with us to Swaziland, South Africa, and Malawi. We thank our Lord for the family connection we all feel for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Just days later we celebrated together at King's Ridge Christian School the official book launch of Janine's life changing book, "It's Not Okay with Me" www.itsnotokaywithme.com

Our sincere thanks goes Canadian television program 100 Huntley Street for hosting the Candian launch of the book on the progam. To see this interview yourself go to our new Heart for Africa Forum at www.heartforafricaconnect.org The program can be launched from here.

For more information on how you can order a copy of Janine's book, please visit our website at www.heartforafrica.org and click on the link for "It's Not Okay with Me". While visiting our website please take a look at our trips for next year. We would be thrilled to have you join us for a time of service and love in Africa.