Global Ministries announces the passing of one of its most illustrious missionaries, Millard Fuller, founder of the Christian house-building charity, Habitat for Humanity.  Mr. Fuller died early Tuesday, February 3, 2009, after being taken to a hospital emergency room suffering from a severe headache and chest pains.  His wife, Linda, and four children, Chris, Kim, Faith, and Georgia survive.

By the time Millard Fuller turned 29, he had earned his first million dollars as an entrepreneur and attorney, but as his finances flourished, his health and marriage crumbled.  To save their marriage, Millard and Linda decided to begin anew.  They sold all they owned, gave the money to the poor and landed at Koinonia Farm, a Christian farming community founded in 1942 to be a “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.”  In time, Koinonia’s founder, Clarence Jordan, and Millard launched a program of “partnership housing,” building simple houses in partnership with rural neighbors who were too poor to qualify for conventional home loans.

In 1973, Millard and Linda took the concept of partnership housing to Africa as missionaries through the Division of Overseas Ministries.  Within a few years, simple concrete-block homes were replacing unhealthy mud-and-thatch houses … and Millard Fuller had a bold idea:  if partnership housing could improve lives in Georgia and Africa, why not the rest of the world?  The Fuller’s returned to the United States in 1976 and launched Habitat for Humanity International, and the rest is history.

“Millard would not want people to mourn his death,” Linda Fuller has stated.  “He would be more interested in having people put on a tool belt and build a house for people in need.”

A simple burial service for Mr. Fuller took place on Wednesday, February 3.