While Ronny Heyboer was pottering around in his garden one day, he heard God say: “Sell everything, pack up and follow Me.”

Obedience to that command would lead the Australian deep into the jungles of Borneo and into the greatest adventure of his life.

He and his wife Kay are the founders of Living Waters Village (LWV), an over 300-hectare space that is home to some 900 abandoned children from the Dayak tribe, a native group in Borneo.

An aerial view of Living Waters Village (LWV). Over the years, the jungle area has been transformed into a village that sustains more than 1,000 people and contributes to the economy of the area by providing work to the community.

Apart from houses, there are schools for 2,000 students, staff accommodation, visitor’s quarters, sewing rooms, a training centre, Bible college, and Praise and Worship centre, as well as a clinic, bakery, administration building and nursery for babies.

They are even building their own air strip.

The massive project has its own full-time staff, and countless other visiting volunteers who come to help out for anywhere from three days to a year.

Ps Ronny (centre in white) with the teachers of LWV. All 62 of them are former residents of LWV who have chosen to come back to serve.

But the work to get here took eight years, and countless roadblocks.

A heart for neglected children  

When Ps Ronny, 66, first answered God’s call in 1995, he started out as a missionary in Kuching, the Malaysian part of Borneo. Two years later, he moved to Sanggau, West Kalimantan, which is in the Indonesian part of Borneo.

While in Sanggau, Ps Ronny found his church-planting ministry expanding to the care of neglected children.

The children and staff of LWV. Ps Ronny started rescuing children while he was serving in Sanggau.

“Some of the kids were kicked out because their parents divorced and remarried, and the new wife or new husband didn’t want the kids. So they end up living in the jungles,” said Ps Ronny.

“If you are a strong kid, you will survive because there is plenty of food. If not, you die. Nobody cares.”

Fun and games at LWV.

Many of them had been so exposed to violence that they looked at “life and death as if it was nothing”, said Ps Ronny.

The girls faced a more grim fate. Once they reached puberty, they would be married off to older men who already had multiple wives.

“When you meet these girls by the time they are 20, they just stare into space. There is no spark, no joy left in them,” said Ps Ronny.

“I used to go home crying because there were so many of these children. I would cry and tell God, ‘Surely this is not Your plan for them.’”

There are some 900 rescued children currently living in LWV.

One day, God told him: “Bring the kids home.”

Ps Ronny was already raising three of his own kids on a missionary’s allowance. “I couldn’t make ends meet. But God said, ‘You bring them in and I will take care of them.’”

Ps Ronny baptising one of the children from LWV. When he became a Christian in Australia, he never expected he would become a missionary in the jungles of Asia.

So he started by sheltering seven little girls. At the end of the first month when he and Kay had to pay the bills, they found that they had just enough. Support had somehow come in.

God challenged him again: “If you can support seven, you can support 30.”

Morning assembly at the school in LWV.

So they took in more children. At the end of each month, the same thing happened. They found they had just enough to pay the bills: “Not too much, not too little. God was stretching our faith.”

So they started taking in boys too.

A place for 1,000 kids

After five years of this, Ps Ronny and Kay moved to Sintang, a city in another part of West Kalimantan in Borneo, Indonesia.

They rented a huge building to house their own three children and the 30 local children they had taken in by then.

Soon, word of their work spread and more children came to them, underfed, ill or simply homeless. Before long, they had 100 rescued children under their roof.

LWV gives the children a home, an education and a foundation in God’s Word so that they can go back to their villages and share the Gospel.

It was then that God gave Ps Ronny his biggest assignment. “God put in our hearts to prepare a place for 1,000 kids.”

There was no way they could get that kind of space in the city. Even if they could, they would not be able to afford it. So they began to search for land in the rural areas.

“We wanted a minimum of 25 hectares, roads that led to it, electricity, a river and springs in it, high enough so that it never floods, and it has got to be dirt cheap,” recalled Ps Ronny.

There was plenty of land for sale, but none that they could afford. After 10 months, Ps Ronny found himself getting impatient.

“Then I read Psalm 37:34 before bed and it said, ‘Hope in the Lord and keep His way. He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are destroyed, you will see it.’”

It was both the rebuke and encouragement that Ps Ronny needed.

A strange mix-up

That same week, he received a call from a man who said that he had a piece of land to sell. The land, he told Ps Ronny, was near a telephone tower. Could they meet at 11am on Monday?

When Ps Ronny went to the café at the appointed time, a man jumped into his car and told him to drive to the land.

As they drove, Ps Ronny realised they were going in the opposite direction of the telephone tower. But the man insisted they were headed the right way.

“I asked the man, ‘Where is the telephone tower?’ He said, ‘There are no telephone towers here. They are all the other way.’

“So I said, ‘Aren’t you the one who rang me?’ He said he never rang me. He had recognised my car and knew I was the man looking for land.”

Ps Ronny had at this point been driving for a whole hour with the wrong man. He wanted to turn back, but the man begged him to carry on. His land was another 15 minutes’ drive away, he promised.

“After 15 minutes, we were really there. It was all jungles and hills. Then he told me, ‘Now, we have to walk awhile.’”

Over 20 years of construction has transformed the jungles of West Kalimantan into a village with schools, homes and healthcare facilities. Photo courtesy of Rudy Taslim.

The pair travelled a good distance, trekking up and down hills till they reached one of the highest hills. In order to see past the dense vegetation, Ps Ronny had to climb a tree.

“There in the tree, God said, ‘Ronny, this is what I want to give you.’

“I didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh.”

The land had everything he needed: roads leading to it, a river, a creek. He had no idea how vast the land was, but he agreed to take it all.

“It didn’t matter how many hectares there were or how much it cost because I didn’t have a cent. But I didn’t tell the man that.”

Oddly, the man who had first called Ps Ronny never called again.

Dayak children worshiping God.

“I knew God made it this way because I wouldn’t have gone so far. God had a way to get me there.”

They sent word that they needed money for the purchase. A week before they had to pay for the land, the money came. As usual, it was just enough.

Threats and thefts

Getting the land was but the first challenge. They had no money and no workers to develop the land. They also faced hostility from the local community.

When the children were helping to clear the borders of their new property, a group of men with hatchets came to threaten them.

“They told us to get out of there or they would come back and lob off our heads. They didn’t care if there were women and children,” said Ps Ronny.

Those were no empty threats. Land disputes in that area have often been known to end in gruesome violence. The children ran to warn Ps Ronny, begging him to hide in Kuching or Pontianak. He refused.  

“I don’t run. I never run. God is the One who brought us here. God will be the One to tell us to leave.”

A little over a week later, the men returned.

“One of my boys said to them, ‘You can come. There are more on our side than there are on yours!’

“All of a sudden, fear struck the men, and they took off and never came back.”

Ps Ronny never found out why the men were so frightened.

There was also a local religious leader who paid people to destroy the property on Ps Ronny’s land. Unperturbed, Ps Ronny encouraged the children to pray for him.

The children of LWV praying for one another. Photo courtesy of Rudy Taslim.

When the man had a stroke and was hospitalised, some of the boys went to pray for him. They even held his hand.

After a month, he was discharged although he never fully recovered. They have had no trouble with him since. In fact, they now have a cordial relationship.

Ps Ronny said: “People ask if we have a fence around our property. I say we do, you just have to look with spiritual eyes. The angels of the Lord encamp around us. If not, I wouldn’t be able to sleep every night.”

Entering a Miracle Zone

Twenty years since they first moved into the land, the tangle of trees has been transformed into a sophisticated settlement complete with miles of paved roads and an air strip in the making.

Right at the front of the property is a sign marking the place as “A Miracle Zone”, attesting to how they have seen God’s hand in the place and over the lives of those in it.

The sign at the entrance of LWV. Photo courtesy of Rudy Taslim.

Despite having received multiple death threats, Ps Ronny remains unharmed. Funding has always come in, often inexplicably and always just enough.

Beyond the daily expenses needed to run a place for over 1,000 people, many of the children have serious illnesses including cancer that require costly medical care.

There was a girl with a massive tumour in her mouth which required part of her jaw to be removed. They brought her to Kuching for treatment. The estimated bill came up to between US$30,000 and US$40,000.

“I just told them to start the treatment. I will go talk to my Father about it. She had five operations. In the end, the money was in the account. Not too much, not too little, enough to pay for all the operations,” said Ps Ronny.

No turning back

The love that Ps Ronny, Kay and the volunteers have shown the children have inspired many of them to give back to LWV.

When they have reached adulthood, some choose to stay and serve as house parents. Each set of house parents takes care of about 12 children. “They know best how the kids are feeling and are able to minister to them,” said Ps Ronny.

Ps Ronny (centre in white) with the house leaders of LWV.

While others leave to work outside of LWV, some choose to work within the compound. All 62 of the teachers at LWV are children who have come through the Village.

There are also former children who come back to work as doctors, nurses, pastors, church planters, accountants, lawyers, board members and mechanics.

The children of LWV dressed in traditional costumes.

“It’s not a job. It’s a ministry to them,” said Ps Ronny.

Still, more children stream in all the time. At the time of this interview with Salt&Light, about 140 children had just joined LWV. Ps Ronny does not turn any away.

Every year, new children come to LWV.

The children are also taught the Word of God so they can be spiritually nourished. Ps Ronny’s hope is that every child will be equipped to return to their own villages and other unreached ones with the gospel.

Already they have seen the impact of God’s love on the community they are in. About 40 members of the community (not within LWV) are under their payroll, and this has helped to deepen the Village’s ties with the community.

“We have prayer meetings for them. They come for coffee. One of the guys once came to us and said, ‘Last week, you prayed for the grandmother of the other guy and she got healed. Would Jesus like to heal my grandmother, too?’

“We prayed for her and from there, the guy came to the Lord.”

Ps Ronny celebrating his birthday at LWV.

Ps Ronny has spent nearly a third of his life at LWV. His biological children have all returned to Australia. But for him, there is no turning back.

”God called us here. I’ll be in Borneo till I die.”

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