Inside a sprawling campus of farmland, Myles Hamby spent two summer months tending to the 88 orphans who had taken refuge there.
Located in Sierra Leone, the orphanage was a sanctuary for children affected by a decade-long civil war.
There the third-year global studies student met a 17-year-old named Stephen Michael.
Rebel groups had split Michael’s family during the civil war, and after eight years, he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of his parents.
Already an orphan, Michael was also confined to a wheelchair and was unable to walk because of polio.
Nevertheless, four days a week, Hamby pushed his new friend’s wheelchair into a village called Wonde where Michael helped build a church.
They returned regularly to meet friends and worship at the church of 40 people.
With each 30-minute trip, Hamby and Michael grew closer together as stories were shared about their radically different upbringings. Hamby said their faith in God drew them close.
“I was moved by his story, courage and faith in God through all his trials and tribulations. His faith in God is more than any other person I’ve met my entire life,” Hamby said.
Since coming back to the United States, Hamby said he regularly reflects on his trip as a missionary and especially on his friend.
“I really miss him a lot,” Hamby said. “He’s an amazing man with amazing faith.”
A history of unrest
Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa bordering Guinea and Liberia. The country gained independence from Britain in 1961. The official language of the country is English.
The country was devastated by a civil war that left tens of thousands dead, according to a BBC News online profile, and it ranked last in the 2007-2008 United Nations-commissioned Human Poverty Index.
Peace was officially declared in January 2002, but the country was left impoverished and thousands of children were orphaned and in danger of dying.
According to the U.N. Children’s Fund, infant mortality rate in the country is the highest in the world.
A sprawling campus
Hamby said he first heard of Children of the Nation, a Christian organization that works with the children of Sierra Leone and other developing countries, through a friend. He applied and was accepted for an internship over the summer.
Once inside the country, he was driven to an estate in the city of Marjay Town.
Established last year and 250 miles from the capital, Freetown, the 150-acre complex features a 24-hour medical clinic, a school for the orphans and 600 other children in the surrounding villages, and a skills training center for carpentry, sewing and soap making, Hamby said.
“I have a passion to go where others aren’t going and helping people across the world who are less fortunate than us,” Hamby said. “The biggest driving force was to change my life and share God’s love with these people.”
He found work assisting the employed teachers in English teaching, but he encountered a situation where the only textbooks were National Geographic magazines. Many children could not afford pencils.
“Going through the American educational system, I am better qualified than the certified teachers there,” Hamby said. “But the goal is to empower, assist and work alongside the nationals already there. It’s not the Americans’ job to do everything.”
Hamby said he taught the kids the sound and phonetics of English words instead of rote memorization as they were previously taught.
In addition, Hamby and his 13 member team went five times a week into local villages for evangelism and outreach programs for the local children. They would share songs, skits and stories about the Bible through activities and games.
“So many of these kids from the time they walk have to work,” Hamby said. “We just wanted the kids to be kids.”
Mission to Vietnam
Short-term mission trips are not uncommon for Christian college students on vacation for the summer.
Annie Nguyen, a second-year psychology student went to Vietnam over the summer to visit house churches and orphanages for two weeks.
“I wanted to go on a mission trip this summer to test my calling and see if God wanted me to be a missionary,” Nguyen said.
She said in recent years that the Communist Vietnamese government has given churches more leniency in worship and expression for mega-churches registered with the government.
However, the bulk of her tour went to unregistered house churches that are smaller and are responsible for the 600-percent growth in Vietnamese Christians per year, according to a 2005 U.S. State Department report.
“It was good visiting the house churches. It was different because of how close they were as a community compared to bigger churches that I’ve seen and been to,” she said.
There have been government crackdowns on these smaller meetings, but Nguyen said Vietnam’s goal toward modernization has led to increased religious freedom.
During the trip, she prayed for and assisted on two conferences that members of her team taught and made trips to orphanages that were both legal and illegal in Vietnam, Nguyen said.
Struggling to find a location for her short-term mission, she said she met a fellow believer at a spiritual retreat who introduced her to a team of six people who were going to Vietnam.
Vietnamese-born and raised until she was 8, the trip was an opportunity to visit her extended family despite the challenges brought by her faith in the predominantly Buddhist country.
Nguyen said her extended family had preconceived opinions about her and her faith.
“They thought I was crazy for believing in God and going on this trip,’ Nguyen said. “I felt separated from them because of the differences we had regarding our faith and beliefs.”
The isolation was constant throughout her trip she said, but it also strengthened and taught her how to stand up for herself and lean on God during the tough times.
Following the trip, she said she wants to work overseas, even for non-Christian organizations, because she is drawn by the plight of suffering people, especially victims of rape, domestic abuse and the sex trade.