Students witness hardships of medicine in Togo, learn from missionaries about the call to serve

As an educator with a heart for helping the hurting, Liberty University biology and chemistry professor Dr. Kimberly Mitchell has made multiple trips to Togo, Africa, over the years. She has taught in two nursing schools and assisted mission hospitals. Her first trip was in 2011, when she taught there over the summer and returned over winter break to lead a team of Liberty students.

Ten years later, Mitchell is still taking students on trips where they gain valuable experience and a unique perspective on healthcare. This past summer, she took eight students from the School of Nursing and School of Health Sciences for three weeks, from May 21-June 14. Over the course of the trip, which was facilitated by LU Send, students shadowed healthcare providers in an outpatient clinic and a hospital. They helped in a pharmacy and observed surgeries and labs. One student spent time at a dental clinic.

“It gave them an idea of what medicine in a Third World country can look like, the positives and the limitations,” Mitchell explained. “They saw some disorders that we either don’t have (in the U.S.) or that aren’t a big deal here because we treat them easier. Preventative medicine isn’t as much of a thing there, so a lot of the people are coming into the hospital with things we’d never see in the U.S. or things we’d never see to that extreme, and that was eye-opening for some of the students.”

Before each journey to Togo, Mitchell, who has served on many of her trips there through the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), guides the students through 50 to 60 hours of training that involves cultural intelligence, the benefits and shortcomings of short-term mission trips, and how to best share the Gospel in a way that translates well into different cultures.

Peyton Mayes, a senior studying biomedical sciences, shared about a miraculous moment he witnessed while shadowing a physician in the ICU in which a baby in the NICU had stopped breathing. The doctor performed compressions and was able to restore the infant’s breathing after close to a minute.

“In the corner was the mother who had this cry of desperation and hopelessness that was easy to understand even though it was in a language I didn’t speak,” Mayes said. “Seeing the look on the mother’s face and the reality that the baby then went home a couple days later, that experience (showed) that the hours studying in school and the time and effort that goes into that is all worth it if I get a moment like that.”

Serving in the medical field, especially in a place of limited resources and staff, comes with times of heartbreak as well, as junior exercise science student Charis Brown saw firsthand on the trip. A woman who was deemed by a doctor to be in less urgent condition than other patients had been waiting outside the hospital to be treated along with others, some of whom had been there for weeks. She stopped breathing and passed away at the gate before the staff could reach her.

“Seeing the face of the doctor who I was shadowing, she was so saddened,” Brown said. “I saw the trust (the doctor) had in God and her belief in His sovereignty in terms of continuing to care knowing that there are wrong or inaccurate decisions she may make and all she can do is walk in the faithfulness that God has given her each day. We have to trust God even if it’s a big or small thing, knowing that we are humanly fallible but He is sovereign and He’ll call and heal who He will.”

In the other times, students conducted service projects for the missionaries there, including an inventory of their supply room, organizing files, leading worship and church services, and taking care of missionaries’ children while their parents worked in the hospital.

“We planned a Vacation Bible School for three days, and it gave the parents a break, but the kids also had so much fun because with COVID they hadn’t had any groups from the U.S. in over a year,” Mitchell said. “My team did a phenomenal job of planning the activities, helping the kids learn Bible verses and songs, doing crafts, and playing games.”

In her time spent with the missionary kids, Brown said she was encouraged to change her worldview of serving God regardless of where He leads.

“They are seeing death, they’re seeing their parents live a life of obedience to the Lord, and they have a bigger picture of the eternal perspective and cares for the world that I am just starting to walk into as a college student. I was really impacted by those times of learning verses together, playing together, and serving them in any way.”

Mitchell said the students learned from the missionaries, who told stories about the call each of them received from God to serve Him in long-term mission work.

“We also heard from the workers there about how God called them to where they are, what it’s like to be missionary doctors, what it’s like as a single person or as someone who is trying to raise their kids in Africa,” she said. “I think the interactions with the missionaries was one of the biggest aspects of the trip.”

During a group dinner at a missionary’s house, Mayes asked the host why she chose to go into missions and relocate to a country on the other side of the world, and she gave a simple but poignant response: “We’re just normal people that have said yes to Jesus.”

“I think that’s such a powerful statement that it’s not because they’re some incredibly talented, unique, specially designed people who went into missions when no one else could, (it’s because) they’re people who are following the Lord and have said yes to where Jesus has called them. That really allowed us to understand that going into missions isn’t (exclusive), anyone can do it. I saw that the need for spiritual help was even greater than the physical needs, there are so many people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ before …  and many people won’t hear the name of Jesus unless people go and share the Gospel with them.