From Peru to Wales: How creation stewardship is filtering across the globe

A harried mother bends over a pot balanced on some bricks on the floor. She’s cooking for her business, selling street food to passers-by. In the background, her five-year-old son is playing. She wishes he wouldn’t come so close to the open flame. Even if she sells enough food, she’ll have to spend most of her profit on firewood just to keep on cooking the next day, and the day after that. Every time she lights the wood, she worries about the fire risk and about her son. Wiping her forehead, she snaps at her son, telling him to stop tugging at her leg and to go and play outside.

It's a made up scene, but it’s one many women in Peru experience every day. Cooking and collecting firewood are a woman’s responsibility, especially in rural areas. Worldwide, it’s estimated 3.2 million people will have died prematurely from illnesses attributed to household air pollution, cooking over stoves like these. It’s a problem Laura-Lee Lovering, BMS World Mission worker in Peru, didn’t have to tell the women of the Piura Regional Baptist Convention about. It’s a problem they navigated every day.

So when Laura first mentioned the idea of eco-stoves – a project that was to be one of her last while in her role as BMS Creation Stewardship Co-ordinator based in Peru, it was an idea the community could get on board with. Not really because the stoves were eco-friendly, but because they offered a glimpse of a life that was better than the one they had now.

It was an idea church leaders in the convention loved too. “I was talking with the leaders, and they felt that this was a good way of benefitting the members of the churches, but also going out into the community and reaching people who weren’t in church,” says Laura. One of these leaders, Pastor Renxon, was in particular an advocate for the project. And as he and Laura got going, hiring local workers to build 56 eco-stoves with 243 direct beneficiaries, they too were blown away by how God was using something as prosaic as an eco-stove beyond their expectations.

“I know what some of the benefits of eco-stoves are,” says Laura. “But as we began to talk to the women about the impact of the project, I was amazed.” One woman in particular stood out, Noelia. Noelia’s day-to-day is much as the same as the woman we began by imagining. In her 20s, with a little boy, she would worry constantly that he would fall into her cooking fire at ground level. The eco-stove raised the heat off the ground and stayed hotter for longer. She even found ways to adapt it and maximise its efficiency that Laura hadn’t thought of.
“It’s safer for her family. It’s safer for her,” adds Laura. “And she’s making 50 per cent savings on her expenses for her business. She gave us a wonderful testimony sharing her experience, and telling the other women how they could make the most of their stoves.” With less firewood used, Laura could begin to imagine a future where local deforestation might begin to slow. Other families had completely stopped their use of highly flammable liquid petroleum gas – or their gas bottles were lasting them 50-100 per cent longer than before.

So often we count the cost of being eco-friendly, of sacrificing economy for ecology. So it’s a delight when a project smashes through those misconceptions. When God uses an invention that will protect and care for his world to financially bless the people who have chosen to use it in faith. It’s a little moment of triumph and celebration. And it’s exactly the emotion felt by Laura when contemplating something as seemingly insignificant as an eco-stove.