Chris Bond used to feel like a square peg in a round hole.
He was an engineer, but he felt God “stirring in my heart to have some deeper involvement” in ministry. He quit, started teaching engineering at a high school and enrolled in seminary.
But he still didn’t know what to do. People would ask Bond if he wanted to be a pastor, or a missionary, or a youth minister. He’d just shrug.
“I knew this calling was from God, but I wasn’t sure what it was for,” said Bond, a member of NorthPark Baptist Church, Trussville.
Until one day he was at a workshop for engineering teachers, and they were tasked — as part of a new curriculum — with designing a solution for an existing problem.
“One of the things I thought was I would like to be able to charge my cell phone when I ride my bike,” he said.
But God quickly planted a bigger seed in his heart, Bond said.
“God said, ‘You know there are other people in this world who lack electricity. How about doing something like this for them?’”
That was when Bond started thinking about people in darkness — in Africa, specifically.
“A quarter of the world’s population lacks electricity or any means to get it,” he said. “And in Africa, one of the greatest tools is the bicycle. It’s their No. 1 mode of transportation.”
With that in mind, he began designing a small generator that harnesses the energy from the rotating bike wheels and charges a battery. People using the battery can ride around with it during the day, then take it inside at night to power lights or charge cellphones.
Both are a great need, especially for pastors and evangelists in Africa, Bond said.
“A lot of times it’s really hard for them to do ministry based on the conditions in which they live,” he said. “Most are farmers and work during the daylight hours. With lights, they can have Bible studies or church at night.”
It also makes it possible for them to read Scripture at night, run water purification systems or save the hours it normally takes to get a cellphone charged, Bond said.
“There are more cellphones in Africa than there are toilets — everybody has a cellphone,” he said. “They use it for banking, for business and for communication.”
But charging it is a costly and possibly all-day affair, Bond said. Many people will walk to a village or town and pay 20 cents to charge their phone.
“When they only make $1 to $1.50 for a day’s work, that’s a lot of money and time spent every time you have to charge your phone,” he said. “That’s almost the whole day gone.”
When Bond took the first battery packs to Uganda and explained what they could do, he “kept getting 10-minute embraces” from the ministers.
“The response was overwhelming, and they were so gracious,” he said. “They were excited and telling us the things they could do in their ministry now that they had this stuff — that their ministry could grow.”
Now, as part of a nonprofit called Designs for Hope, Bond has 60 battery packs in use in Africa. Fifty-two of those were delivered in July by a team of 15 people from NorthPark Baptist; Ridgecrest Baptist Church, Trussville; Ruffner Valley Baptist Church, Irondale; and Sulphur Springs Baptist Church, Trussville.
“When the people’s eyes saw the abilities of the devices they were given, the expressions on their faces brightened,” said Stephen Hall, associate pastor of NorthPark. “They realized how valuable it was and how impacting it would be on their life.”
If you’ve got access to power, it opens up a lot of opportunities, Hall said. “If you charge someone’s cellphone, you’ve got an opportunity to share the gospel.”
An International Mission Board journeygirl from NorthPark who is serving in northern Africa also took a battery pack to use in her country.
“She actually has power now when all the power goes out,” Hall said.
Bond is using his skills in an “exciting” way to meet spiritual and physical needs, Hall added.
Designs for Hope is working now to raise funds to build enough battery packs to return to Uganda in 2014, as well as start projects in Congo, Zambia, India and Nicaragua.
Each battery pack costs about $100 to make, and Bond assembles them all in his basement.
It’s thrilling to see what’s happened since the moment God made his “skills and passions intersect,” Bond said. “God said, ‘This is the reason you’re an engineer. This is the reason you love missions. I’m going to combine them both and give you a purpose and a calling.’ God used my expertise to meet the need.”
For more information, visit www.designsforhope.org.
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