Going to prison marked the beginning of Emmanuel Chamango’s openness to God’s transforming power.
Emmanual describes his former self as someone who avoided hard work, choosing to steal or rely on others to provide for his family. Emmanuel’s imprisonment humbled him. “What led me to come here?” he pondered. “Is it the person who reported me to the police [for illegally farming land he didn’t own], or was it God?” A visiting pastor preached on forgiveness, and Emmanuel took the message to heart. He remembers praying as he never had before. “Slowly I started changing, and that’s when I started loving God.”
In 2006, Leah took her first loan from CCT (the Center for Community Transformation), HOPE’s local partner in the Philippines, to help her scale up her transportation business. Since that time, she has added a line of trucks and buses and expanded into managing a grocery store, a cooking gas business, and a large logistics operation. With later loans, she even purchased a cargo ship to transport agricultural supplies to the small island she lives on. 
