How a Trip to Achungo Changed a Life

Let me tell you my story of how a short term mission trip at MPPC affected me so deeply that I left my life in California to work in missions in Africa. 

I went on the October 2012 trip to Achungo with Monte Fisher and I felt my heart break for Africa and for the children there. I knew I had to go back, but I didn't want to go for two weeks. I wanted to change my life completely. 

 
[Sarah designed and painted these murals on her October trip to Achungo.  On the right is the "Tree of Achungo" where she created "leaves" out of hand prints from each of the Achungo students.]


So I left my job, my life, friends and family and I moved to Kenya in March to work as an intern for an organization called Empowering Lives International. I spent 3 months living and working with a group of 120 orphans, and I was blessed with the opportunity to paint murals in their school and home while I was there.

[On that second trip, Sarah painted the mural on the left on the new Achungo library]

I'm now back in the states for 2 months, and I will be returning to Kenya in September to continue pursuing God's will for my life there, whatever that may look like. 

God turned my life upside down, shook it out, and put it back together in a way that I never could have imagined when I signed up for that Achungo trip a year ago. 

-- Sarah Ackerley

Read more about her journey and other mural work at  http://eatpraylovewithjesus.blogspot.com/

Home Page for Trip Reports

This is the landing page for our team trips with links (on the right side of this page) to each of the trip reports from teams that have ventured to the orphanage/school deep in rural southwest Kenya known as Achungo Children's Center.

These trips are typically for 12 elapsed days with 9 days in Kenya.  We spend 2 days at a game park and 5 days working at the Achungo school.  We work with the teachers, helping with classroom materials, resources and methods.  We spend a lot of time with the children, introducing new resources, reading with them, teaching them new games, playing sports, and making crafts.  And we work on simple construction and repair projects, for example, building desks, repairing pipework or electrical, setting up computers. 


At the game park, we stay at a luxury resort.  At Rodi Kopany (the village near Achungo), we stay in a small but comfortable hotel (the Tausi, pictured here) and take our meals there.  It is a 2-minute walk from the hotel to the Achungo center.  Having this comfortable hotel so close is wonderful for our teams as a place to rest, refresh, use the facilities, eat all our meals, and all an easy walk from Achungo.

In the Trip Reports linked on this page, you'll read about our teams and the different trips with what we accomplished and what we experienced.