The Bridge Year in Review 2010

bridge news 2010

Check out the attachment to see a quick review of all that was done at The Bridge because of your generous donations!

The Bridge News 2009

What will your answer be?

Sierra Leone Medical Team 2009

“Amidst the greatest suffering I have ever seen, God allowed our team from New Community Church to deliver love, kindness, healing, medical assistance and the message of salvation to the grateful people of Sierra Leone.  And through all this He uncovered another little piece of Himself to me opening my eyes to see just a little more of what He sees.”
You’ve heard your friends talk about their mission trips, you’ve seen the pictures of all those adorable kids.  You even see news clips about the hunger and poverty in third world countries and the urge to go and serve hits you.
But when that urge hits, why do our thoughts move so quickly away from what we feel God is asking, to thoughts of why we cannot do what He is asking?   In the tough economy of today we will assume that we cannot get the funds needed to go.  Other thoughts of time off from work, shots, and many others flood our minds and move the focus from Him to us.  We convince ourselves that we cannot possibly do this, it will not work, and so we push this call to the back of our minds until another time in life when we feel it will work.  The reality of life is that God can and will provide if you will place your trust in Him and not yourself. God’s hands are big and He will provide if He asks you to go on a trip. If you look through your own eyes you may never go.  Keep your eyes focused on Him and let Him make the way for you.  He will provide and calm your fears and do an incredible work in you along the way.  Pray.  Ask for God’s guidance. What is your answer going to be when He calls?
Come to a trip informational meeting on Sunday October 4th.  This brief meeting will be held after both services at New Community – Rock Creek Library (10:45 am and 12:15 pm).

Allie writes of her mission trip to Sierra Leone…

Our hearts sank as he spoke the words. The doctor said the only option was to amputate his leg. Each of our hearts literally ached as we grieved for our friend. Abu was a passenger on the back of a motorcycle taxi when it collided with a taxi car under the guidance of a careless driver. Tragically, Abu’s femur was left in two pieces. He had been on crutches since the accident in November, with hopes that something other than an amputation could be done. Then finally and sadly, the doctor delivered the grim news Abu had hoped to avoid by waiting for our visit. You see, for Abu, and for the rest of Sierra Leone, what we in America would consider to be mundane, everyday medical care is pretty much non-existent for those who call Sierra Leone their home.

Allie Wallace traveled to Sierra Leone in West Africa and worked with a medical team in an orphanage.

Amputees are a common sight in the colorful, yet complicated country of Sierra Leone. A decade-long civil war led by rebel groups ravaged Sierra Leone. Its neighbor, Liberia, suffered even longer. The rebels killed hundreds of thousands and enslaved children to be their soldiers in their destructive ways, often after first making them father and motherless.

“Long sleeves or short sleeves?” the rebels and child soldiers would ask their victims before they would raise their machetes and cut off the limb to the length the victim declared, if there was any answer at all.

The war has been over since 2002, but the fresh footprint of tragic loss and fear is still stamped all across Sierra Leone. You see it in their tired and weary eyes, collapsing concrete schools, roofless abandoned houses and bone shaking red clay roads.

I went to Sierra Leone with a team comprised of people from New Community Church and the non-profit known as The Bridge, both of which are based in Maple Valley. We went to the interior of Sierra Leone, Africa, to provide medical care to the poorest, most desperate people in the world.

Being an economics major, a law-firm administrator and currently serving as Miss Auburn, I have spent my life worlds apart from the human condition experienced daily by my new friends, the people of Sierra Leone. However, despite my naivety to their situation, and inexperience in the medical field, I dedicated myself to experiencing the human condition that they endure constantly. Through those efforts my eyes were opened to the heartache and desperation embodied by the people of Sierra Leone.

After my first day I thought I could easily write a book. At the end of my first week I was struggling to come up with enough words and emotions to transcribe my experiences into a pamphlet. Now it has become difficult to write even just a single word. This is not due to some repetitive strain injury resulting from overuse of a heavy thesaurus. Rather, it is a paralysis of another kind.

Babies came through our arms that later died at night in the government-run hospital. Children stood in line in the rich heat of the sun with large bloated bellies full of gases, the cruel effects of malnutrition. Nevertheless, they patiently waited for hours for the rare chance to be seen by a doctor. More medical emergencies and mishaps were seen by our team of nurses and doctors than is possible to tell you about in a book, let alone this brief article. At times, the needs were so overwhelming my body kicked into emergency mode and I became action-oriented and emotionless.

At 22, Joseph is anything but emotionless. At the age of 9 he and his family were chased out of their burning home by the rebels. Orphaned and alone, he made his way across Liberia to Sierra Leone, scrambling away from the ever expanding and manipulative arms of rebel groups.

Four mud walls and a thatched roof at a refugee camp outside of Freetown are what Joseph calls home for now. “I am not ready to return to my home, I can’t go back with my life like this. I need to build a foundation first.” Once a member of a successful family of five, Joseph has lost everything. He started school at a training center in Freetown but eventually had to drop out when the funds he worked long and hard for dried up. Full of hope and life, Joseph lives each day praying his life will turn around and he will be able to distance himself from the starvation and fear that have become his familiar companions for the last 13 years.

Now that I am home, I realize that our media-driven culture has desensitized us. We have become used to seeing the images of children on TV. Their penetrating, needy eyes and filthy clothing pull at us as some respectable looking gentleman asks us to become their sponsor. We see the images, think “Ah, that’s so sad” and then turn around and continue on with our daily routine of buying coffee, expensive clothing and a long list of unnecessary goods. All the while we tell ourselves that it’s not our problem.

The truth is, it’s all too easy for us to not to think about the situation because it’s not directly impacting or affecting our daily lives. What I was confronted with while in Sierra Leone is that we are the ones who have the capacity to help change the future of devastated lives of the people in countries like Sierra Leone, and yet we don’t even know the first thing about them or the challenges they face every moment of their existence.

Tom Tate is my hero. During his first trip to Sierra Leone four years ago, his heart was changed. Giving his all to understand the human condition and befriend the people of Sierra Leone, Tom has become known as “Chief” to the Africans that New Community Church and The Bridge work with.

The Africans cling to his humble nature and connect with him realizing he is no different from the personalities and people that live in Sierra Leone. This is a hard thing to accomplish when many white people come through the country and act like they are superior or different from the Africans. But Tom was successful. I often heard them say, “You’re our black brother with white skin”. Tom’s efforts are rewarded by lasting friendships with his brothers of black skin.

Tom has found support throughout Maple Valley to sponsor refugee soccer teams. Most recently, Tom started an orphanage deep in the heart of the country where the refugees have settled. I met the twenty-six wide-eyed orphans who find refuge there. By the end of the first day I spent with them my name was no longer “Allie” but “Hokey Pokey”.

I thought the orphanage would be the most heart breaking part of my time in Sierra Leone. I wondered how I could communicate love and affirmation to children whose parents have either passed on or abandoned them. However, it wasn’t the orphanage children that broke my heart. The children there are fed, clothed and have a place to sleep. It’s the children outside the walls of the orphanage who are dirty, hungry and alone that made me weep. Unfortunately that’s the sad story for most Sierra Leone children.

The people of Sierra Leone need our hearts to break for their condition. They desperately need people like Tom Tate, Dale Mar, Mike and Geri Jeffery, Sean Celli, Bill Borland, and the countless other members of New Community Church and The Bridge who have committed themselves to not only “count their blessings” each day, but also to seek out ways in which they can use those blessings for the benefit of others. Each of them has returned from Africa with hope, inspiration and ideas to put into action in order to bring about a rebirth for the country of Sierra Leone and its people.

I too have come home with the intent to not only to count my blessings but also to count how much I have to offer to this desperate nation. We all have something to give and we all can make a difference in the lives of those who need us. First we must allow ourselves to be made aware of the situation and to acknowledge that not only is it real, but also to believe that someday it will be left behind in history. With that we can step out and offer ourselves to a great cause to change the human condition of those victimized by poverty.

New Community Church and The Bridge have recognized the spiritual and physical needs of the most voiceless people in the world and are going to great lengths towards improving their future, and along with them the country of Sierra Leone.

New Community Church and The Bridge send teams to Sierra Leone twice yearly to do an impressive diverse variety of humanitarian aid work. Together, they provide medical clinics, work with amputee families to establish loans to start farms, have started and funded numerous schools and churches, opened an orphanage, bought shoes for hundreds of school aged children, sponsored soccer teams, and are currently working on many other social and development projects.

If you would like to learn more about changing the lives of the people in Sierra Leone, please email Allie Wallace at wallaa@spu.edu or Geri Jeffery of The Bridge at www.thebridgeofhope.us.

Allie Wallace would like to thank Dale Mar for his contribution and assistance with this article.

Sponsor Meets Child…

This is one of 3 outfits that Sandy has to wear

As I have watched various child-sponsor programs over the years I always felt it would be more credible, for lack of a better word, if I could be assured that the child I was “sponsoring” was actually the child I was sponsoring, not just a figurehead to get money into a pot that would be distributed.  I understand and believe that it is best to manage a program that meets the needs of all the children equally, but I wanted a personal connection.
So I selected a face from the crowd that I was told was in the village we were planning to visit.  I taped the picture of my sponsor child to my mirror and prayed for him daily, every time I looked in the mirror, well, almost every time.  My sponsor child’s name is Sandy, so I prayed for him by name and studied his face so that I might pick him out of a crowd.  Then I trusted the Lord.
As we first arrived in Makambo we were so busy with the welcome and getting familiar with everything that I didn’t focus on finding Sandy…until the morning of the third day.  I had gotten out of the vehicle and was mobbed by the kids, the vehicles had turned to leave already, and in a flash I saw his face just as they all turned to run across the compound at the Headmaster’s order.  Later that morning with the help of our host and interpreter, I found Sandy and spent the rest of the time there getting to know him and his family, seeing their living conditions and understanding more about their lives, culture, and needs.
Sandy is not starving but he does have a bit of a swollen belly.  As I understand it, they get a cup of rice each day at dinner, nothing for breakfast or lunch.  We would like to change that.  I think he has only three changes of clothes one of which is just an adults button-down long sleeve shirt, which you can see in the attached photo.  He has a very sweet and unpretentious spirit and is happy most of the time despite the conditions he lives in, except when I was preparing to leave…he teared up and cried a bit.  I’ve made a friend there in Sierra Leone, and of course he hopes that I can do something to help their war-torn village.  I’ve also made a good friend of his grandfather who would love to see his grandson grow up with a better future than he had.  I don’t know how much I can actually do, but at the very least I can sponsor a couple children from this village and help feed, clothe and educate them.
These people are not the stereo type we’ve all been led to believe.  They have sharp minds, are creative, and very resilient and can achieve much.   The people of Sierra Leone have been abused and oppressed (by the whites) for centuries.  It’s time to change that.  You can help us help them by sponsoring as many children as you can afford.  Consider it an investment in eternity.

—-Dennis, Bridge Sponsor

Sign up to sponsor a child by clicking here!