This Saturday, a dozen volunteers from Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn will get on a plane for 20 hours in order to spend two weeks helping out one of the regions that was hardest-hit by December's tsunami.
"It's not going to be easy," said Pastor Eric Johnson. "It's going to be difficult emotionally."
Johnson, the church's outreach director, arranges missions around the world several times a year. This trip will take him and the volunteers to Galle, Sri Lanka, a coastal city of 40,000 that was devastated by the tsunami. Johnson arranged the trip through Outreach to Asian Nationals. Each volunteer has paid his own way — a cost of $2,700 — with the help of friends, coworkers and members of the congregation.
The congregation has already been generous with tsunami relief.
"As soon as the news broke, people were asking, 'Are we going to do anything?'" Johnson said. The congregation quickly gathered $5,000 to send to Outreach to Asian Nationals.
For some members of the congregation, the desire to do more was still there, and the mission to Sri Lanka was born. Originally, the group was supposed to help with food distribution, but it's not needed because the region is actually a step ahead of where aid workers thought it would be by now. Instead, the group will help construct three homes from the scattered cinder blocks swept away from homes during the tsunami.
"We both have given to charity monetarily," said Gary Fisher, who is going to Sri Lanka with his wife. "This is a chance to go there and directly help people."
For Micah Meckstroth, the trip to Sri Lanka will be his third such outreach expedition — he's also been to Jamaica and Mexico.
"You realize that we're very blessed and there's more important things in life than just money," Meckstroth said. "You see people that are so poor they don't have a single pair of shoes and they're happier than the average American."