In Kenya, hundreds of thousands are crammed into Africa’s largest slum. Known as Kibera, it’s a world where hope is often in short supply. In this darkness, however, a miracle is unfolding as a Texas-based ministry goes door-to-door, bringing God’s love and life-changing water filters.
Infamous for its gritty reputation, where crime and violence lurk at nearly every corner, Kibera faces extreme poverty and gang violence, while lacking basic necessities like clean water and sanitation, earning its reputation as one of the “darkest, filthiest, and most hopeless places in the world.”
Kibera is Africa’s largest slum, and a typical house here measures only eight by eight feet, and it’s built with mud walls, a corrugated tin roof, and either a dirt or concrete floor. There’s not a bathroom in the home. There’s no kitchen area in the home. It’s basically for sitting and sleeping only.
Chris Beth, founder of The Bucket Ministry, first stepped into Kibera in 2017. What he saw shook him to his core.
“There wasn’t one home that had access to clean, safe drinking water,” he told CBN News on a recent trip to Kibera.
Water here isn’t a blessing — it’s a curse. Endless piles of trash are scattered throughout Kibera. The absence of proper sewage leaves human waste on the streets, which then ends up in the water. The official statistics say there are 78 latrines in all Kibera serving over 400,000 people.
Beth recognized the urgent need for clean water and sent a team of 60 to canvass the slum.
“And all they did for four months was knock on every single one of the doors in this place and we found out that there were 81,077 homes,” said Beth. “We found out that there’s about 408,000 people created in God’s image that are sequestered to live in this place.”
In 2000, The Bucket Ministry began a groundbreaking effort—distributing life-saving water filters to each home here.
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 was clear after only 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,” said Wafula.
Beth’s team distributed 81,777 filters, providing clean water to all 408,478 residents of the slum
And the transformation doesn’t stop there.
“Water is the secondary reason why we are there,” declared Beth. “The gospel is the sole reason.”
Missionaries visited every single home here, sharing the gospel.
Local pastor and 44-year resident Raphael Dihanda tells CBN News no NGO has ever shared the gospel so widely in Kibera.
“When The Bucket Ministry came in, and they recruited the missionaries, going and supplying the filters and the buckets, people started accepting the gospel,” said Dihanda, who pastors Grace Revival Church in Kibera. “And we can see now the great harvest is coming in the Kingdom of God.”
More than 22,000 people gave their lives to Christ and the miracles keep going.
The spiritual effects 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.
Prostitution, which had been a survival mechanism for so many women in Kibera, also began to fade.
“I was a very bad person before today, I was untrustworthy, I was a thief, a drug addict, but God healed me,” Mwang told CBN News after emerging from the baptismal pool. “Missionaries visited my home and told me about Jesus Christ, and I accepted Him into my life.