From 01/22 - 01/28 I spent the week at the Global Ministries headquarters in bustling Huntington Indiana for orientation. This week although mentally exhausting, was extremely beneficial. It was a great week of team building, personal emotional growth, and lots and lots of paperwork. You may reread back through that last sentence and focus on the word "team" and ask yourself ,"I thought matt was the only person going over to help in Mattru Hospital?" However, I am not the only person going to help provide help to the hospital. So far in this blog I mentioned that I am working as a project engineer to install solar power and water sanitation (you may have missed it because this is the first post and I only said it in the little intro section so I forgive you), well anyways the cat is out of the bag, I am not the only one going to help Mattru Hospital. Although I am the only engineer going to help, there are three other wonderful people going to accompany me on my journey.
I bring up these other three individuals because they will most likely come up again in future posts. Joining our team is a extremely experienced and kind hearted nurse practitioner. She will aid the hospital in helping retrain the nurses and help formulate a stable hospital administrative plan for the hospital. The next individual is a wonderful person who is certified in child psycholgy. This person also has 14+ years of experience working in Sierra Leone. This person's combined extensive experience in country and psychological background will not only aid those Sierra Leoneans that are still feeling the mental effects of a gruesome war that took place in their country, but can also aid in being a mediator for the team if issues are to arise. Lastly is a doctor. This doctor has had an extreme heart for missions and has worked in developing countries for multiple years. The doctors role is to lead the hospital in surgeries, patient care, and training other doctors to perform surgeries.
Before this week, I had only heard of these others in emails. It was such an interesting experience to all meet in person. Imagine meeting someone new that you would spend one week "getting to know" and then move to Africa and work with them for the next two years. At first it was awkward, but every first introduction is a bit awkward. Throughout the week we opened up to each other. We shared our testimonies, our history, and reasons why we were feeling a desire to help in Sierra Leone. It was incredible to see that although we all came from different backgrounds and found our way to Christ in different ways we all had very similar reasons why we were feeling called to Sierra Leone. This call seemed to always come down to a combination of a humanitarian desire to help those in need, a desire to make a difference in the world with our personal skill sets, and lastly a believed calling to go from a higher being. Through this week I have learned that if you personally feel a desire to go and help those in need, the first step is talk about it to those around you. Yes, not all of your friends and family are going to relate to you in a desire to go into underprivileged areas to help others but you could be very surprised at those who support you and have similar desires.
We did many other team building events like eating together, traveling together, personality evaluations ( I'm an ENFJ on the Myers-Briggs if you are curious), but the best team building was just the casual interactions we had with one another at our bed and breakfast. You really learn the personality traits of others when four people have to share one bathroom and you have to make a group consensus on what type of food you want to order for dinner.
We finished our week with a big dinner at our coordinators house. We said our goodbyes, and climbed into our cars and drove off to say our final farewells to family and friends. I will be leaving the USA February 1st to arrive in Sierra Leone February 2nd, and my team members will not arrive in Sierra Leone till the end of March. When I first arrive in country I will spend approximately a week in the capital city of Freetown to get all my work visas and other paperwork in order. Please pray that the Lord will protect me in my travels and make the sadness of my goodbyes easy to manage.
As I continue on with these posts, they will become more and more directed at the solar and water sanitation project as a whole, so if at any time I become sounding too technical and boring please comment on the post and let me know. I have always been more of a technical writer as opposed to a creative writer so this is all new to me.
