The Ripple Effect of Spreading Divine Love: Kurt Avery and Britney Higgs
This episode contains content that may be triggering for some listeners.
Kurt Avery: I’m not a scientist, but I’ve always been on the fringe of science. I’m a marketer, but you’ve got to look at creation. And if you look at creation, how do you not get to the conclusion there’s a God? It’s phenomenal. From micro to macro creation, it’s phenomenal. So you have to have the establishment that God is out there and He’s bigger than us—way bigger than us.
The Ripple Effect of Spreading Divine Love: Kurt Avery and Britney Higgs – Episode #456
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week we’ll hear from Kurt Avery, the leader of Sawyer Products, who shares his mission to bring clean water to underserved communities around the world. Kurt discusses how God equipped him with the means and the determination to create life-changing products that improve global access to safe, clean drinking water.
Then, we meet Britney Higgs, the founder of HER Campaign, an organization dedicated to rescuing women from the devastating realities of sex trafficking. Britney opens up about her passion to provide women who have been trafficked a safe place to heal and the support they need to rebuild their lives with dignity.
Let’s start with Kurt’s story.
Kurt Avery: My name is Kurt Avery, and I’m the founder and owner of Sawyer Products. Our company does techie kinds of products. We do the military stuff and we’re in the techie stores like REI. We also do water filtration, and that’s where we’ve really changed the whole industry with the new technology, hollow fiber membranes.
But what’s really cool is we have the one filter which you can go into the remotest parts of the world and guarantee nobody’s going to get sick from drinking the water that goes through our filter.
We have done work in creating the mosquito nets that people sleep with. The kids that use our product—the moms wrap them in it at night—two-thirds of the kids don’t get malaria that would have otherwise gotten it. Half of the world dies of one of two things, either a mosquito or bad water. So I just said, “You know, God, why don’t we just go fix all that?” I have a very, very big God. I have no box around God at all.
When we go into a village, anywhere in the world, within two weeks, nobody’s sick. We just wipe out all the waterborne sicknesses. They close medical clinics because there are no customers when we’re done. So it’s absolutely life-changing. About two to five million people a year, we’re able to give clean water for the first time. It’s just life-changing.
When you break it down and you think about wanting to be a missionary and you want to change the world, there’s three entry points: one is food, one is medicine, and the last one is water. You have to go in with some credentials, other than the fact that you care about the people. So usually the missions revolve around one of those three things—food, medicine, or water.
We like to work with the charities that are also focused on sharing the gospel. Now we have secular charities as well. We just finished a project in Kibera [Kenya] where we had 400,000 people and seventy-six toilets. They would actually [use] what they call a “flying toilet,” which means you’d use a paper bag and you just throw it out in the street. But it’s filthy, filthy, filthy.
Within weeks, we reduce all the sickness by ninety-five percent. And we typically save them so much money by not having to buy water that we can increase their annual income by fifteen to twenty percent at the same time. So you seriously get their attention. And now that you have their attention, what we do is we follow up every couple of weeks–the charities do this—and each time they follow up, they share the gospel. I think they’re up to 27,000 conversions, and obviously more every week. So you really do spread the gospel. And now, because of that, crime has gone down in the whole place. Water scarcity and water security has kind of gone by the wayside now that it’s pretty easy to get clean water. It used to be that five years ago, you wouldn’t even dare walk down the street without SEAL Team Six. But now you can walk down the street, and walk at night, because crime is just gone. And it’s gone because of the water, but also because the water led you to the gospel. I think there’s twenty-seven pastors ministering now and it’s just a whole different world. I mean, water is water, but it’s kind of like the Chick-fil-A thing—they’ll know we’re Christians even if we serve everybody.
“They’ll know we’re Christians even if we serve everybody.” – Kurt Avery
I’m not a scientist, but I’ve always been on the fringe of science. I’m a marketer, but you’ve got to look at creation. And if you look at creation, how do you not get to the conclusion there’s a God? It’s phenomenal. From micro to macro creation, it’s phenomenal. So you have to have the establishment that God is out there and He’s bigger than us—way bigger than us.
“I’m not a scientist, but I’ve always been on the fringe of science. if you look at creation, how do you not get to the conclusion there’s a God? You have to have the establishment that God is out there and He’s bigger than us—way bigger than us.” – Kurt Avery
We have filters that have been in use for fifteen years every day in Honduras, and they’re still working. We give women the opportunity to start businesses. They now have water where they can make and sell food that they never could because they didn’t have clean water before. So, we’re totally disrupting everything. We can change a whole country. You give us one to two years and we can flip a whole country to where the whole country’s fifteen percent richer, because people aren’t sick.
That’s what we’re negotiating now. And it all started with a little, little, little bitty company. I started with an index card and a little calculator in the back bedroom. And now we’re up to this. So think big.
Try to think what He could do with you. He gives you skill sets. And I’m big on, Don’t fool yourself—know what you can and can’t do. But He gave you skill sets for a reason. It isn’t just so you can have a nice house and a car. He’s given you a reason to share the kingdom and everything. He’s given you the skill sets. Let Him use you to do the most things you could do, and do not limit Him. Don’t say, “Well, I don’t think I can do that.” He’s going to find your sweet spot—what you can do—and He will explode it.
I’m just an old country boy, and to be able to do this—to save millions of lives a year—it’s just staggering, actually. But if my God was little, we never would have got here. Always let your God be as big as He is. If you make God small, you’ll do small things. If you let God be big, you’ll do big things, because it’s not you, it’s Him. He just gave you the gifts. Let Him show you how to use them in a much bigger way.
“Always let your God be as big as He is. If you make God small, you’ll do small things. If you let God be big, you’ll do big things, because it’s not you, it’s Him. He just gave you the gifts. Let Him show you how to use them in a much bigger way.” – Kurt Avery
The passage today is from the book, Jesus Listens, August 26th:
Wonderful Lord,
This is a time of abundance in my life— my cup overflows with blessings. After plodding uphill for many weeks, now I feel as if I’m traipsing through lush meadows drenched in sunshine. Help me enjoy this time of ease and refreshment to the max. Thank You for providing it for me!
I admit that sometimes I hesitate to receive Your good gifts with open hands. Feelings of false guilt creep in, telling me I shouldn’t accept these gifts since I don’t deserve to be so richly blessed. But I realize this is fuzzy thinking, because no one deserves anything good from You. How I rejoice that Your kingdom is not about earning and deserving! It’s about believing and receiving.
Instead of balking at accepting Your gracious gifts, I want to receive all Your blessings with a grateful heart. Then Your pleasure in giving and my pleasure in receiving can flow together joyously.
In Your generous Name, Jesus,
Amen
Narrator: You can learn more about Kurt’s story and how Sawyer Products is making a difference in the world by checking out his latest book, Sawyer Think: How a Small Company Disrupts Markets and Changes the World (and Over 25 Tips to Help You Do the Same), wherever you buy books.
Stay tuned to Britney Higgs’ story after a brief message.
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Our next guest Britney Higgs, founder of HER Campaign. She shares how she dedicated herself to addressing human trafficking after witnessing the heartbreaking stories of survivors firsthand. The mission of Her Campaign reflects a deep, holistic understanding of the trauma that comes with being sexually trafficked and helps bring awareness to survivor needs.
Britney Higgs: I am Britney Higgs, and I am the founder of HER Campaign. It is an organization that provides safe housing for survivors of human trafficking. I am also a mom of four amazing kids and a wife to Sammy.
The Heart-Breaking Reality of Human Trafficking
About twelve years ago, I had a friend who was going over to the Indian-Nepal [border] and working with a safe house over there. They were in the red light district, and they were rescuing women and girls out of sex slavery and helping them to reintegrate back into society. When I sat down and I heard from her what that looked like and what that mission meant to her, my heart broke in a way that I had never been broken before.
I had a film company with my husband, and we were very content with our life. We had a cute little storybook house with our two boys and our film company, and we just were loving life. But when God came and broke my heart for this, we started getting connected with NGOs [non-governmental organizations] that were going overseas to help survivors of human trafficking. After meeting one of those particular NGOs, about two weeks later, I got an email and in the email it said, “We are going overseas. We need to bring more awareness to this issue, and we’re trying to rally the church community to come behind these people.”
My husband and I hit our knees, we prayed, and we said, “Lord, we don’t know exactly what this is, but if You want us to do this, please give us peace.” We both had just complete and total peace rush over us, and I knew it was something that we were supposed to be doing.
I got on a plane two weeks later to go to Northern Iraq to help reintegrate women and girls who had been trafficked through ISIS ranks, taking them back into their families in IDP [Internally Displaced Persons] camps, and helping them to step into recovery.
On this trip to Northern Iraq, it was considered a high-risk mission. It was in 2015, back before even the United States government had gone over there. This particular NGO was working with former Special Ops guys and really a team that was going in to come alongside local militia and help these women and girls step out of ISIS. My job specifically was to come and document the stories of these women and these girls and to try to bring awareness to the church back in America of what is happening and how we can come alongside of these women.
When we sat down with them, I was the only woman on the trip. So I was the one who culturally got to hug them, got to look them in the eyes, got to speak to them. As I started to interview them, I heard the same story over and over again. These women and these girls were saying, “I wish I would have just died in captivity. I have nothing left to give.”
The youngest girl we met was eight years old, and she had been rescued from ISIS ranks two days prior to that. Her entire world was shattered. She was almost just kind of a blank vessel and completely disassociated from what she had been through. And that broke me into a million pieces, because they were physically safe—they had been reintegrated with their families—but they still were saying, “I wish I would have just died.” My heart cry was, “God, this cannot be the end of their story. There has to be something more for these women and these girls.”
I just remember being so angry and crying out to the Lord and saying, “What are you going to do for them afterwards? Your redemption has to speak louder than what’s happening in their life right now.” And so that led me on a path of seeking the Lord on what could we possibly do for after care for these survivors of human trafficking?
“I just remember being so angry and crying out to the Lord and saying, ‘What are you going to do for them afterwards? Your redemption has to speak louder than what’s happening in their life right now.’” – Britney Higgs
A Safe Place for Survivors to Heal from Trauma
One thing that I have learned working with these survivors is that healing is not linear and takes a very long time. And I truly believe that God loves to work in a process. I believe in the miraculous instant moments, but more often than not, He chooses to walk us through a beautiful process and reveal more and more and more of Himself to us as we walk into healing, replacing the deep core lies that we’ve believed about ourselves—whether that’s from trauma that we’ve done or trauma that has happened to us—and replacing those with the deep truths that we need to actually step into our full identity of who we are in Christ.
“I truly believe that God loves to work in a process. I believe in the miraculous instant moments, but more often than not, He chooses to walk us through a beautiful process and reveal more and more and more of Himself to us as we walk into healing.” – Britney Higgs
For my husband and I, that was about a three-year journey of the Lord just revealing and healing things within us that could have just hemorrhaged over all of the people that we were trying to serve. And that was something that we saw as such a beneficial blueprint to now just walking survivors through that same process.
During that time of healing, we were just walking out in the hills with our two boys, and out of nowhere, it felt like lightning hit my chest. I just knew with every fiber of my being that we were supposed to start a safe house. I actually stopped in my tracks, looked at my husband, and I said, “Sammy, I feel like God’s speaking, and I think we need to start a safe house.”
And then all of a sudden as that seed starts to grow, things are just attracted to you. There’s just something that happens in the spirit where He releases the right people and resources to come alongside of you.
“All of a sudden as that seed starts to grow, things are just attracted to you. There’s just something that happens in the spirit where He releases the right people and resources to come alongside of you.” – Britney Higgs
We were crossing the street, and somebody was saying, “Hey, what are you doing?” And we said, “Well, we’re actually meeting with someone. We’re thinking about opening a safe house for sex trafficked victims.” And he’s like, “Well, crazy. I’m on the human trafficking task force and you need to talk to this person and this person and this person.” And that was our life for about a year where God was just strategically putting people into our lives to help us start to pioneer this new way of doing residential programs in the United States. And that led us on a path of doing a safe home out of our personal home for the first three and a half years of the HER Campaign.
One of the main things that helps me ground and stay focused on what’s important is really that daily time with Jesus. Every morning I wake up early before everybody else and I sit with the Word. One of the significant things that God has been talking to me about recently is from Romans 8:18, and it says, “For I consider the suffering in this present time is not to be compared to the glory that is about to be revealed to us. And we know that it is Christ in us, the hope of glory, that no longer I who live, but He in me.” It’s my staple when I wake up in the morning. No matter what we face today, no matter what these survivors face, we know that it is nothing compared to the glory that You are about to reveal to us. And we get to cling to that hope. So I am a huge proponent of just sitting down with the Word, and listening to His voice, hearing what He has for us each day.
“One of the main things that helps me ground and stay focused on what’s important is really that daily time with Jesus when I wake up in the morning. No matter what we face today, no matter what these survivors face, we know that it is nothing compared to the glory that You are about to reveal to us.” – Britney Higgs
Jesus Calling has been such a sweet devotional for me throughout the years. I received my first Jesus Calling devotional from my grandma who was a huge staple of showing me what hospitality is. It was her, actually, that just walked me into knowing who Jesus was and prayed the prayer with me when I was five years old. And so I just think Jesus calling us in life—whether that is through Scripture, through this beautiful devotional, or just hearing the voice of God for ourselves—it has been the thing that has kept me grounded to do this work.
Stopping Trafficking for Good
Right now in the United States, we believe the estimated number is 300,000 children that are trafficked. That’s not including adults. We don’t have great data, but we just know that it’s significantly higher than that. The devastating thing is right now, according to the Institute for Survivor Care, there are only about 1,600 beds specifically for trafficking survivors across the nation. Eighty percent of survivors will go back to their trafficker if they do not have safe housing to step into.
That is a huge gap within the anti-human trafficking movement as a whole in our country. The lack of resources for that crisis intervention and emergency stabilization is huge. HER Campaign really saw that as a gap that we could fill. So after three and a half years of doing it in our home, we worked with a couple other incredible organizations that pioneered emergency shelters across the nation, learned from them, and then opened an emergency shelter in 2021. That is an eight-week stabilization program that is looking at the person as a whole person—how can we comprehensively come around them with care that is going to address the body first and then the mind and then the spirit?
One of these particular survivors was raised in a home where drugs were very rampant and there was a lot of sexual abuse. When she got to junior high and high school, her own drug use started and became pretty bad, and she just got herself in a lot of really hard situations. During that time, she was actually sent to a different state to go through a recovery program for drugs, but she ended up leaving that recovery program. There was a man who offered her a position to come and to work as a commercial sex worker, and he made it sound really great. It just was a really abusive environment. She ended up leaving that situation, was kidnapped, and was forced into the sex trafficking industry. So after going through all of that, she was able to escape, but the trauma that she had endured just led her deeper, deeper, deeper into drug use. She went through ten different drug recovery programs before she came to the HER Campaign. And here at the HER Campaign, we realized that drug use and other homelessness and other issues are actually just a byproduct of a deeper wound. Our goal is to address the common factors of why somebody would step back into trafficking.
She graduated from our emergency shelter program. She entered into our transitional living program, which is a two-year, more independent living program with wraparound resources. During that time, she had a baby girl. I actually got to be in the room when she was born, and it was by far one of the top blessings of my entire life to be able to support and advocate for her in that space and get to watch this beautiful, redemptive life being born. After that, she graduated our transitional program, and then after about eight months of just hanging out with our family and being a part of our everyday life, she stepped into the HER Campaign staff in Billings [Montana], and now she is pouring back into the survivors that are walking through our doors day in and day out. It is such a blessing to watch her just step into her own. She just recently graduated with her peer support specialist license as well, so she gets to come along those in drug recovery and really support them on that journey. It’s just a beautiful story of redemption.
It’s just a beautiful process of helping these women just go from that crisis, fight or flight mode, to then stabilizing and able to dream and decide where they want to go for their future.
Narrator: To Learn more about Britney Higgs and her work, please visit www.hercampaign.org, and if you’d like to hear more stories about changing the world with love, check out our interview with Delilah.
Next week: Lisa Boullt
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from Lisa Boullt, known for her work with some of Nashville’s biggest songwriters and artists like Charlie Daniels, The Warren Brothers, Rhett Akins and more. Lisa shares the tragic story of losing her sister, Andrea, and the legacy she has left through organ donation.
Lisa Boullt: I think when you’re passionate about whatever it is in life—if it’s your job, if it’s a mission that you’re passionate about—I think when God lays it on your heart, you’re gonna be an advocate for it, no matter what it looks like.
