After adopting two children from Ethiopia, physicians Andrea and Andrew Janssen decide to leave their small town in eastern Oregon and move their family across the world to teach at Addis Ababa University. Here, they will train some of the first doctors in Ethiopia to specialize in family medicine.

As a college freshman at Westmont I had never experienced rural medicine. Leaving Santa Barbara for rural Zambia to work with Dr. Rob Congdon opened my eyes to malaria, malnutrition and mongu. (Mongu —fried caterpillars — are crunchy and akin to bacon, a good protein source in rural Zambia.) Although I suffered from a bout of cerebral malaria during my four-month trip to Luampa Mission Hospital, it was the suffering of one malnourished girl that indelibly changed my future.

Mbambi was 18 months old, 11 pounds and came to the hospital with “kwashiorkor,” or protein calorie malnutrition. She had been brought by her uncle, her closest living relative. Her muscles were so wasted she still couldn’t muster sitting or smiling. Diligently, I fed her millet cereal with peanut butter, long before the creation of Plumpy’Nut — the peanut-based paste now commonly used to treat severe malnutrition. I learned to carry Mbambi on my back African-style. I taught the uncle how to bathe her and soon all the patients in the male hospital ward began to care for her. I was filled with joy when, after several months, Mbambi was able to sit up and play a few small games. God birthed the idea of adoption in my heart through that one small child in Zambia. I returned inspired, challenged and changed.