​We arrived in the village of Sammie after a challenging drive over a dirt road that included mud, large rocks, washed away road, and quite a lot of water. The people of Sammie were as joyful about our safe arrival as we were!
 
The first thing they wanted us to see was an area they had cleared. They cleared it themselves in preparation and hope that a Medical Clinic will soon be built in that space. Once it is built, the current medical clinic will be used as a school.
 
We arrived to singing, dancing, and rhythmic instruments. There was so much joy in our being there and we joined into that joy.
 
They had us sit in front of the community. The Sammie is a community in which Christians and Muslims live as neighbors and in community with each other. The assembly was started with Christian and Muslim prayers. After that, introductions of the community and the mission team were completed. Many people spoke words of welcome. In addition, small gifts of relationship were exchanged.
 
Afterward, we visited two families with Helping Children Worldwide staff. Rice and chocolate were presented to the families who were both a part of the HCW Family Empowerment Advocacy Program (FEA).

​Mission partners and friends,
 
So many amazing things have happened on our trip so far, it’s hard to condense it into a small blog post and two pictures! We promise to more fully share our trip when we return but we will endeavor to write something short each day. Here’s our first go at it. The videos we have captured really are amazing, but these pictures made us so happy! More to come…

Our first outreach effort as a team was about an hour outside of Bo. As we arrived we closely zig-zagged between the houses until suddenly, the whole village appeared!  Tables and tablecloths and benches and chairs came out.  Almost immediately, the medical equipment that the Mercy Hospital team brought was set up and things were ready and organized.  The crowd was probably 250-300 people.
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We served mothers and babies with a medical outreach that included pre-natal check ups and malaria testing. We served over 8 brand new pregnant mothers and 81 babies! We were all engaged with specific jobs from registering families as they walked up, helping write prescriptions from the doctor, administering malaria testing, and filling prescriptions. We were told it was the largest outreach in the village to date, doubling the size of the previous effort. God is good all the time, all the time God is good.