News

Mount Pisgah Academy Builds Home for Doctor

March 10, 2010

 “I thought it was going to be bad, (but) I never had so much fun in my life. Africa has made me more positive in the way I look at life,” says 15-year-old Bo, a freshman from Mount Pisgah Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist boarding school located in North Carolina. “It’s changed me and the way I see Africa.”

At the end of February a group of 20 students from Mount Pisgah Academy and some of their parents made their first trip to Africa under the guardianship of Dean Andrew Rahm. Their mission: to build a much needed home for the community’s doctor and his family. Over the past four years the small clinic has become a center for affordable healthcare in the Maasai community, and is now self sustaining.

The trip is among the many mission trips organized by Mara West Camp under its NGO (nonprofit), Africa Mission Services (AMS). The goal of these mission trips is to combine the wild beauty of a safari to the Masai Mara, but at the same time give back to the community by helping build much needed schools, water catchment systems and even holding medical clinics. Most mission groups spend up to 10 days doing community work and then have a two-day Safari before heading back to the USA.

As a missionary student, Rahm came to Kenya and worked under Mara West Camp director Andrew Aho for nine months, a stint he says prepared him for the real world. In February 2010, more than 10-years later, he brought his own group of students. The group started fundraising just six months before they were due to fly for Africa.
For eight days the group from Mount Pisgah Academy left Mara West Camp and drove 6 km to work on the doctor's house at the AMS sponsored clinic.

“We put on the roof, poured floors in all the rooms, painted all the rooms, completed the walls, collected sand from the river and had vacation bible study with the kids at Oloosinon Primary School, another AMS sponsored school,” explains Rahm.

“For a lot of the kids who came on this 12-day trip, Africa taught them that to get the job done you got to do it yourself. It might take longer but that's the only way the job is going to get done,” Rahm said.

Bailey Golightly didn't know anyone in this mission trip. The shy reserved 17-year-old homeschooler who dreams of going places, seeing different perspectives of the world and helping people in need, was nervous before the trip, wondering how she was going to handle herself among a group of people she didn't know.

“I was freaking out, but this trip has opened me up so much,” confesses Golightly. “I also had doubts the trip was going to impact me in any way. We came here with the mentality of helping the kids, but the kids have helped us more than we have helped them. I am now going to think and pray about the details of what I really want to do. It’s amazing how in just a few days, this trip has impacted me.”