Poker paid for her Christian medical mission to Africa

Kayle White paid for her Africa medical mission by staging a poker tournament at a local pub.

It may seem ironic that the youngest member of Lighthouse Medical Mission outreach to West Africa would resort to gambling and drinking to fund her Christian charity work this week.

"It's kind of funny, but it worked," said the 13-year-old's mom, Tammy, 36, from Ventura. "Poker paid for her trip."

Being nice, paid for by vice. Sweet!

Both mother and daughter raised $6,500 from poker and from letters soliciting family and friends. Theirs is perhaps the most unconventional fund-raising of the 45 volunteers heading to Africa on the 2014 trip to Guinea Bissau and Gambia.

One of the most extraordinary things about the 22 medical teams to Africa Lighthouse Medical ( http://lighthousemedicalmissions.com )'s inception in 1998 is not the willingness of volunteers to leave behind amenities of the United States and endure raw Third World poverty. It is that volunteers pay their own way.

And many of them foot the $3,250 airfare, food, housing, and transportation price tag time after time as they are drawn back to Africa by compassion. Missions leader Dr. Robert Hamilton, a Santa Monica pediatrician, has paid his way 90% of the time, he said. Cedars Sinai Medical Center Cardiologist Lawrence Czer likewise has paid most of his expenses the 16 times he's gone.

Tammy and Kayle's unusual fundraiser comes in part because of the church they attend. Catalyst in Santa Paula started two years ago handing out shot glasses at local bars imprinted with the words: "Give Catalyst a shot," Tammy said. By deliberately breaking the church mold, they were reaching out to "people far from God."

Now they are far from America.

Kayle had originally planned for three years to go to Washington, D.C. During spring break, but when she found out about the medical mission at the same time for about the same price, she switched trips. She gave up fun and education -- in nice hotels -- for altruism.

"I'd rather spend my week doing something to benefit other people, instead of spending a week doing something that would only benefit me, said Kayle, who pretty much organized and the ran the poker tournament herself. Participants paid $50 a piece.

Africa downed Washington D.C. also because Kayle wants to figure out whether she wants to be a missionary or a doctor.  

If she opts for being a missionary, maybe she can find some pub to pay for her mission.

This is entry #4 in my chronicles of an African medical mission. To read entry #5, click entry #5.

Or to go to entry #1, go here.