The story
Rich Young returned from Lusaka on August 30, 1999. On the evening of August 20 a two-year-old named Juliet had run into her cousin carrying a pot of boiling water and was burned across her face, shoulders and arms. His mission partners Jennie and Sandra drove her to the hospital and came back an hour later searching the house for burn medication, because the hospital had none, no IV and nothing for pain, and the pharmacy would not open until morning. What Rich had was a small tube of Neosporin in a toilet bag and about ten aspirin in a computer bag. On the Monday the family was short the cab fare home, which came to less than two US dollars. The team bought a mosquito net, and Mike Mealey, a double amputee who knew wound care, washed the burns with cooled water. By September 10 Juliet was recovering. Rich's full account is on the home page.
From that trip on, medical supplies became the focus. Rich wrote that medicine would go in bulk through MAP International to hospitals and crisis nurseries in Zambia. The founder's letter describes the first project, the George Young Memorial, a Zambia container project, which for less than US$15,000 delivered more than US$140,000 worth of medical equipment and supplies to Zambian missions, and the Abba Father Medical Brigade and Concerts in 2002, which for less than US$15,000 delivered more than US$1.1 million worth of wholesale medicine.
The project pages pick up in 2013. That August the Rich Young Band played concerts in Zambia built on the "Only 1" idea: each church member commits to bring one person they know to an event, and to walk with them afterwards. In Livingstone, Kimberly Marsh, Tiffany Price and Rich Young taught a praise and worship seminar called "Who Am I?", including a requested session on sound engineering, followed by a Sunday morning celebration. Two humanitarian elements ran alongside the music: treating orphans, widows and other vulnerable people with medicine, and further educating local medical personnel.
In June 2014 a medical team from Sacramento known as Operation iDream held a medical brigade at Hope Fellowship Community near Ndola, reaching more than 200 orphans. In October 2015 the focus was four cities, Kitwe, Livingstone, Lusaka and Ndola, with medical missions meant to reach more than 1,000 women and children. Kitwe received its medicine and completed its brigade first, and a MAP International receipt from August 2015 shows a sample of the medicine that went. In April 2016 a medical mission was held at Pastor Faustin Soneka's church in Ndola. On October 17, 2017, seven boxes of school supplies went to Jabulani Village, a community of thirty orphans.
The 2018 brief, "Medical Brigades and Worship Missions", set out the shape of the work for July 12 to 29, 2018: three doctors and about twelve volunteers, musicians and singers among them, travelling to Kitwe, Ndola, Lusaka and Livingstone with medicine valued at more than US$100,000 wholesale, eight mornings of medical seminars for local doctors and nurses and eight afternoons of free treatment, and leadership training in planning, evaluation and stewardship that Zambian pastors had asked for. The project was coordinated with the Zambia Pastors Association, under the covering of Foursquare CBAY and Abundant Life Christian Fellowship. The 2019 brief carried the same plan. Rich's film "Zambia Missions" (2018) is from that year.
