A recent mission trip taught some of the members of a Simms church that love truly has no language or boundaries.

Ten members of Siloam Baptist Church traveled to villages in the Ntcheu District, a region in the small African country of Malawi.

“We said, ‘God, wherever you want to send us that’s where we’re going to go,’” Justin King, pastor of Siloam Baptist Church said. “We were told we have an opportunity to go into some of these villages where they have never heard of Jesus Christ, they have never heard the gospel of Jesus. We knew this was definitely something we would be interested in.” Justin King and his wife Kaysi have ten years experience doing mission trips. This was the fourth trip for many in the Siloam community.

The trip was paid either in full or part by those who attended.

“We asked all of our people to pay what they can … But we also have, because we are a mission-oriented church, we have an account set up that a portion of our general budget goes into a mission escrow account. The whole purpose is to do missions. So if some of the people that feel led to go are unable to raise all of the money, we try to scholarship a portion of that. We also use that money for building wells and for doing the mission work while we’re there,” Justin King said.

Church members held group ministry for men, women and children.

“Every morning, we would go into the village. When we would show up … that would start drawing some people, they’ll just start singing and you’ll see kids and grownups start coming from different areas of the village,” said Justin King.

The children of the village would teach missionaries the games they played during vacation bible school.

“They taught us hyena and goat, which is like their duck, duck, goose,” said Kaysi King.

The mission saw about 70 salvations, Justin King said.

The ministry was a partnership with Twelve 9 Ministries based in Paris, Texas. Twelve 9 operates a year-round ministry with a feeding program three days a week for women and children.

“A major problem there is food,” said Justin King, The city of Ntcheu is fairly densely populated with about 25,000 people, but outside the city there are many small villages that don’t have access to many conveniences.

“You go 10 minutes outside of the city of Ntcheu, it turns into a totally different world,” said Justin King. “You have these isolated villages that have very little contact with other villages and even the 25,000 person city right down the road. They’re very isolated and they’re very dependent on what they grow. What they grow is what they have to eat.”

The church also sponsored the construction of wells in two villages.

The residents of the villages have no access vehicles. The women travel on foot multiple times a day, usually five or more miles, to get water for drinking, bathing and watering crops.

Teens Jaycee and Brayden Eaves were among the mission group.

Brayden, 17, and Jaycee, 19, had participated in three previous mission trips to Mexico with the church. But they said the experience in Mexico had not quite prepared them for what they would see in the African villages.

“I think a lot of us expected it to be a lot similar to Mexico, but when we got there it was just completely different, it was so much worse than what we had seen so it was a huge shock … It was eye opening,” Brayden said.

Jaycee agreed. To her, seeing houses constructed from homemade bricks was a shocker.

“They make all their own bricks. You could see them laid out on the ground, making their bricks from the dirt,” Jaycee said.

To the Kings, it was the lack of food in the village that left them wanting to do more.

“We have served in four different countries and we have never experienced the type of poverty,” said Justin King. “They are solely a crop based people group. If they can’t grow it, and their primary crop is maize, they don’t eat. They base everything off their rainy season. They try to grow as much as they can and then they harvest in May.

They had a short rainy season so they had a bad harvest. The pastors were telling us that probably by the end of July, they would get into the hungry season. And their next harvest isn’t until next May.”

Because of the lack of their primary crop, when the wild mangoes would start to blossom, the villagers would pick and eat unripened mangoes for food.

“A lot of the kids would start getting sores on their mouth because the mangoes aren’t ripe enough and are very acidic. They are hungry and they’ll eat them anyway … Things like that just break your heart. Knowing that we throw away more food here than we could ever possibly eat. So we’re trying to raise money through our church and adopt one of these villages,” Justin King said.

One fifty pound bag of maize will provide food for a family of five for one month, Justin King said.

The church is working to purchase 300 bags of maize to provide to the village.

The Kings said this year’s mission trip to Malawi will not be their last. And they will continue the partnership with Twelve 9 to make return trips in the future.