In 2005, the Starmount’s mission committee responded to a request from Dr. Jean-Paul Beya, a Congolese Presbyterian, to support a small crop farm. With an anonymous donation to match funds from Starmount’s mission committee, $15,000 was sent to Dr. Beya through The Presbytery of Eastern Virginia, and its Congo mission interpreter, Etienne Bote-Tsheik. Thus the Crop Project of the Congo was born. The funds provided tools, salary and food for local women and their families. SPC member, Cathy Coons has secured more funding through the International Hunger Committee of the Salem Presbytery. This funding pledge is for a total of $45,000 over three years. The initial funding from Starmount’s mission committee has helped feed the village of Tubuluku and improve the economy through the salaries paid to the women preparing and harvesting the crops. The follow-up funding will sustain the Crop Project during the critical initial years of preparing the ground, organizing the planting and harvesting.

On that same land is located the Pig Project of the Congo (PPC), which provides fertilizer and meat to the village of Tubuluku. The PPC started with an idea from Dr. Beya to raise pigs to help feed the people of Tubuluku. This idea traveled through Etienne Bote-Tseik, mission interpreter of the Eastern Virginia Presbytery, to Starmount member, Cathy Coons, who was then mission coordinator at Wallace Presbyterian Church, to SPC member, Dr. Mark Hammer, an America pig veterinarian. Dr. Hammer took the idea to the Chester Presbyterian Church who adopted the Pig Project of the Congo. From 1996 Chester Presbyterian Church has worked to design and build a well and pig barn in Tubuluku. Within 5 years a well, cistern and water tank were built bringing fresh water to Tubuluku. By 2005, a pig barn was constructed and several sows and a boar were purchased.

Those at Starmount who have come to know Dr. Beya have experienced him as a man deeply concerned about humankind and deeply committed to follow Christ’s direction. His example is the model of Christ challenge to us to help provide the food needed to nourish the body. His spirit is as large as his belief that "Christ is Lord."