Members of Integrity Worldwide recently returned home to Selma after spending a week in Kenya, Africa on a mission to help poverty-stricken villages.

Averee and Alan Hicks, along with six other team members spent July 29 through Aug. 8 offering basic medical care in two Kenyan villages.

“It is such an honor to get to be involved in something that is so life-giving, literally, and it’s not … me and Janet [Atchison],” said Integrity Worldwide co-founder Averee Hicks. “It is so many people in Selma who have invested and committed time and energy and finances to give this really human light of water and medical care.”

The Integrity Worldwide team was made up of Janet Atchison, a registered nurse, Pat Davis, a nurse at Vaughan Regional Medical Center, Gillian Greer, a medical doctor from Texas, Meghan Stewart, Ryan Bergeron and Inge Bergeron.

“It was as successful as you can be with a clinic that only comes once or twice a year. We were able to have clinic in Meto and Olepolos,” Atchison said. “We saw hundreds of people, maybe 300 or 400. We of course didn’t count them, but it was a very large number.”

While the team couldn’t treat every issue that came through the clinic, they did say a prayer for them, hoping its power would heal them.

“Even though we can’t treat everything like we could here in America, one of the things we do is that every single person that comes into the clinic we pray for,” Hicks said.

“And so we’re just kind of trusting that the medicine is the drawing part for them to come get healing prayer. Where they are with the limited medical facilities and resources, [prayer] is really the answer.”

Integrity Worldwide’s medical work in Kenya has inspired them to build a clinic that can treat the people of Meto on a regular basis.

“We’re actually hoping to provide them with something better very soon. We’re hoping that we’re going to be able to start work shortly on a clinic,” Atchison said. “This is really what they deserve.”

Hicks said the idea has been in the works for a while, but they finally decided to go for it.

“It has been a goal and dream of ours for a while now, but now it seems like kind of a fullness of time, and we’re going for it,” Hicks said.

“We are hitting the ground running for the design and development and beginning of genuine medical care where there will be a full-time nurse and a full-time physician where they can really be treated on an on-going basis.”

Hundreds of people in Meto ran a 5K for Selma during the weeklong trip, but Hicks is hoping hundreds in Selma will run for Meto on Oct. 17 to raise money for the clinic.

“We are doing a 10K, a 5K and a one-mile, and we are taking it downtown this year. We’ve been at Memorial Stadium every year … and it is going to be a happening, so we’re trying to get outside runners in to come in,” Hicks said.

“The course is going to be certified by a course certifier, so it is going to attract some true runners that care about their times, so we’re trying to take it up a notch.”

Registration for the run is already open on Integrity’s website, www.integrityworldwide.com.