Today we went to Fengehun, a village outside of Bo.  We were welcomed with music and dancing!  People were screened for malaria and HIV and if they tested positive, were given medication.  Pregnant women were educated about pre-natal care and examined - listening for their baby’s heart beat.  People came from several adjoining villages, some arriving before 6 AM.  The new bishop and other UMC church officials attended and helped.  Lives are being saved!

Fengehun Village is in the Village Partnership Program. When a village is accepted into the Village Partnership Program, one of the commitments that they are agreeing to is a three year commitment to coming up with an idea of how to become self sustaining.  Each villages leaders get together and come up with ideas of how they can become self sustaining, which then are brought to the Village Parternship team who brings in experts in whichever area (whether it be agriculture or fishing or Palm oil processing or whatever they have come up with) to assess if it is actually a viable means of supporting themselves. We got to see the beginnings of a palm oil processing centre, the result of community collaboration.

​We got to attend a CRC alumni meeting in the afternoon.  It was great to see a number of the “kids” and how they have grown up!  Some have gone to university and are now employed by the church or other organizations that are doing good - so encouraging to see how they are passing it on and helping others!  One woman who has chosen to be a Christian is married to a Muslim - another example of how easily people accept one another and value the relationship between each other with mutual respect and love.  

Your Brother in Christ, 
Dave Brewster

Written by July 2025 Team 1 Member Dave Brewster:

After a 2+ hour delay on the tarmac at Washington-Dulles airport, the first July team was able to make the connecting flight from Brussels and on to Sierra Leone on time.  The new airport is so much nicer!  Spent the night at Lungi Airport Lodge and had a nice dinner of fried chicken, plantain, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  

​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.
​
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.

Before our trip, our church held a meeting to explain to the congregation regarding what we would be doing on our trip to Sierra Leone. As a part of this meeting, we held a small fundraiser to raise money to provide rice to families enrolled in the CRC program. 

During our trip, we were able to go with the CRC to deliver this rice.  Wow, I will never complain about the potholes in the streets of Philadelphia again!  Saturday we went out to deliver rice to families; it took most of the day and a lot of patience. I am truly grateful that yesterday was the last day for delivering rice. The holes, lumps, and bumps in the ground were a challenge to the driver, and a nightmare to me, but we made it safely to every family. At one point we had to drive through a small body of water, I looked out the window to my left and there was a mother and child washing clothes a few feet from us! 

Pastor Chaney and I were well please with the selection of people who received the rice.  Just to share a few examples; we met with one family that both parents where blind and dependent on help from the village to raise their children.  There was also the single mother who was physically disabled; she could not walk needed help daily to do simple chores for her children.   And yet at the end of the worse road ever, we met a family that was being cared for by the Auntie. The mother was not available because she had to walk to the city on the very road we were on to sale fruit to support her family.  

What a blessing it was to meet these families and participate in the food assistance that CRC provides to vulnerable families. 

Looking back over the last two days, I saw the much-needed improvements Mercy Hospital has made. The hospital is beautiful; it looks more like a working small medical campus.  I visited with and prayed for the patients who were housed on the second floor. I remember when mothers would come from long distances just to wait outside in the heat to be seen by the doctor.  In one day, I have observed almost 100 pregnant women who traveled from far away villages to be seen.  Those that came to Mercy where greeted in a building with conformable chairs.  During my visit the mothers participated in a lecture on self-care. I discovered the unique care provided by staff was an encouragement to mothers to take better care of themselves and their children.

Respectfully submitted,
Minister Jackie
House of the Lord Church ​