by Virgil Hughes
I’ve just returned from visiting our teams and locations in Africa, and I have amazing news to share—a lot of it!
So please bear with a slightly longer letter this time: You are partners, and critical to this ministry, so I hope you will be blessed by the following summary. Thanks to you we are seeing lives changed across communities and even entire church cultures in both East and West Africa. Here are some snapshots:
Kenya: Grassroots Transformation
Right after landing in Nairobi, I found myself in a small living room with five young women. Each one had ended up on the streets through rape, trafficking, or self-destructive choices, and all of them were now seeking a way out.
A former addict we trained a few years ago is now a street preacher walking with 50 to 70 former addicts, including the women mentioned above, helping them find sobriety and new life in Christ. The need for skills training and stable support is far beyond what we can meet alone, but it is exactly the kind of brokenness NVI’s discipleship aims to address: not just rescue, but long-term restoration and reintegration.
Pray for workers, resources, and wise partnerships so this emerging recovery community can grow strong.
Changing Lives—and Mindsets—in the Slums
Next, I reconnected with our former trainee Chris Kimani. Chris lives in Nairobi’s Kuwinda slum by choice to serve his neighbors. Combining our NVI training and his own initiative, Chris has:
- Set up a Self-Help Group and trained them in all of NVI’s principle.
- He then helped them set up a clean water business and secured city water access and donated water filters (this is a huge victory!)
- Won regular trash collection from local authorities.
- Created a neighborhood soccer field and formed multiple youth and women’s teams.
- Helped organize a washing-machine micro-business; NVI funded the machine, the women funded the setup—ensuring “skin-in-the-game” as well as pride of accomplishment!
Finally – at their group meeting, several members spoke about moving from a poverty mindset to a stewardship mindset—understanding that financial freedom is about using what you have as a good steward, not how much you can get.
Chris asked nothing for himself. He supports his family and his community work by working as an Uber driver. He is exactly the kind of locally rooted, sacrificial, entrepreneurial leader NVI is designed to equip—and powerful proof that when training, faith, and local ownership meet, sustainable transformation is possible. Please keep Chris and his initiatives in your prayers.
W. Kenya – From the Church to the City
In Kisii, Western Kenya, we met with Pastor Charles and his leaders to plan something new: our move beyond serving a single church to a citywide conference, “Receiving God’s Blessings.” The conference will feature biblical teaching on repentance and reconciliation, as well as practical instruction in living with integrity, stewardship, and generosity.
The goal is to move from training in a single church to a city-focused effort that shows how spiritual renewal and practical wisdom work together to change not just families, but neighborhoods and entire communities. This is a new pilot project with enormous potential. Please keep it in your prayers!
Strengthening Key Leaders and Strategy
Our Regional Directors and Senior Trainers gathered in Katito, Kenya for a strategic Leadership Conference. Four critical initiatives were rolled out:
Unveiling Phase 2: Biblical Ethics and Culture
Building on Financial Stewardship (Phase 1), Phase 2 goes deeper into biblical ethics—honesty, fiscal integrity, purity, family life, and public conduct. We discussed and finalized content, delivery plans, and criteria so that only groups which have truly implemented Phase 1 move on.
Stronger Marriages, Stronger Ministry
We also spent significant time teaching about family unity, healthy roles, and shared spiritual disciplines for couples, based on the knowledge that Christ-centered marriages are essential for long-term prosperity and credible ministry.
Restructuring NVI with a Missionary Ethos
We simplified NVI’s structures to radically promote local responsibility, with more attention given to ministry and discipleship, rather than meeting program metrics. This sets us apart from many other organizations.
Providing Practical Help for God’s Poorest
We have begun building a library and training our team in micro-farming techniques such as cone gardens and homemade chicken feed to serve the poorest households and eliminate a culture of dependence.
At the heart of all these initiatives is a single goal: to align family life, church life, work, ethics, and culture with biblical values in practical, sustainable ways.
Response from Church Leaders
From Kenya to Uganda, the response to Phase 2 has been a resounding “Yes.” It is being welcomed as the necessary next step in raising up and equipping ethical, trustworthy, culture-transforming churches.
In Eldoret, we met a Bishop and senior pastors from a denomination already using our Stewardship training. As we shared our teaching on biblical ethics and culture, the Bishop told painful stories of compromise in his churches, driven by money and fear, quietly weeping as he grieved for his flock.
In Mbale, sixty senior pastors gathered for a two-day conference on money, and biblical stewardship. Their questions revealed years of mixed teaching on money and “prosperity.” Speaking to this confusion we emphasized that true prosperity starts with obedience and integrity, not techniques or guaranteed-wealth promises.
We asked for 12 pastors to pilot Phase 2: 34 volunteered! At the end, their Bishop stood and gave an Ad Hoc sermon for nearly an hour, urgently calling his pastors to embrace biblical ethics and become a clear witness in African culture. He preached the very message we hoped would develop over the next two years—on day one.
Returning to Revival Heritage in Rwanda
In the Gahini Diocese of Rwanda (Anglican), birthplace of the East African Revival, we met for five hours with the local Bishop and his House of Archdeacons to walk through NVI’s full program of financial stewardship and tackling the harder issues of ethics and culture.
Their questions focused on practical implementation and guarding against “prosperity gospel” distortions. By the time we were done, the House of Archdeacons voted unanimously to adopt NVI’s Stewardship Program as a discipleship tool.
Why? They were moved by testimonies of widows becoming self-supporting, families moving from survival to stability, and communities learning honesty, hard work, and accountability. In a place historically known for repentance and holiness, pastoral leaders now see stewardship and ethics as a modern expression of that same revival legacy. Please keep the church of Gahini in your prayers as they implement our training.
Tanzania: Parish-Wide Multiplication and Mindset Change
In a large Catholic parish of 5,000 believers near Mount Kilimanjaro, we celebrated the graduation of 21 new NVI trainers from 12 villages who had completed 55 hours of stewardship and small business training. Each graduate will return home to train others, freeing the parish from reliance on external trainers.
Even more powerful is the mindset change NVI has brought about. In Tanzania, bananas are the dominant crop, but take a year to mature and yield little income. Through NVI’s cone garden demonstrations, families saw that they could harvest vegetables in just 30 days and gain both food and surplus to sell. This visible contrast is shifting people from subsistence farming to profitable stewardship of their land.
Thomas, our Parish liaison, put it this way: “The NVI Training goes right to the individual’s lives. The other groups that come to work with the Parish are trying to build capacity in the Parish with big projects, but the NVI training goes right to the individuals first. We can feel the difference.”
Côte d’Ivoire: Self-Help Groups & Church Requests
In Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, a self-help group we seeded with a single zero-interest loan is now re-lending repaid funds to other members, functioning like a miniature, church-based “credit union” for the poor. We added two new small business loans there, and two more for a similar group in the interior.
In the interior, an Assemblies of God Bishop asked us to train pastors leading seven of his congregations. He said a large traditional Western NGO had previously established self-help groups, but focused mostly on gender issues rather than practical money management or applied Christian stewardship. He is hungry for “practical, biblical teaching”—exactly the kind of training your support makes possible.
Summing Up and Looking Forward
Across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Côte d’Ivoire, lives and communities are changing as NVI helps believers embrace biblical stewardship, integrity, and mutual responsibility:
Leaders are explicitly asking for biblical teaching on money, ethics, and culture—not just outside projects—and our Phase 2 training is perfectly designed to deliver what they’re asking for.
Gifted local leaders are multiplying our impact. Trainers, self-help groups and grass root missionaries like Chris and Thomas are expanding our work well beyond what we could do alone.
Bishops and pastors are witnessing profound mindset change in their congregations—from poverty (“What can I get?”) to stewardship (“How can I faithfully use what God has given?”), from Tanzania to Cote D’Ivoire – as it takes root, they are slowly seeing fewer requests for money, more children fed, more marriage harmony, and – slowly – more tithing, reflecting deeper discipleship and shared responsibility.
As NVI’s local trainers bring God’s Word to life with practical applications, and people embrace it, it seems we are seeing the outworking of Revelation 21: “See – I am making all things new.” We will see it fully then. We are seeing a foretaste now.
Thank you for standing with us as God does his work, thanks to you and your faithfulness. It is a privilege to be your partner in all God does!
NVI Leadership Council
Virgil Hughes,
David O’Kongo,
Jerry Custer
