John Raudat is a lifelong resident of Connecticut who grew up in Middletown and, six years ago, moved to Madison. However, for two weeks in March, John chose to forgo the comforts of the Nutmeg State and travel to Impfondo, Republic of the Congo in an effort to not only build a hospital, but a new state of mind as well.

John, a managing member at Canoga Wealth Management and father of two, traveled to Impfondo with a group of five from the Christ Chapel in Madison to work on the Pioneer Christian Hospital founded by two Global Outreach missionaries, Joe and Rebecca Harvey. The Harveys, doctors out of Long Island, New York, had built the hospital on a site previously created for a communist camp and, although John didn't have a strong reason to say "Yes" to the trip, he also didn't have a reason to say "No."

"I didn't have an overall God call or any enormous pull. What I had, actually, was an absence of reasons to not go: The kids will be okay, the business will be okay, everything will be okay. I wanted to experience something completely different, and it was," says John.

The group flew from Brazzaville, the capital of Congo, to Impfondo. This allowed John to experience the most frightening moment of the trip early on.

"You go to meetings and stuff and it's very clear you can die there, but the scariest part for me wasn't being out and about in Impfondo. It was from Brazzaville to Impfondo...These planes were older than me. It was like, 'Am I going to live through this?'" says John.

When in Impfondo, John would start his day with church from

7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and then work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a half-hour lunch break.

"Our mission was to go there and build a building out of their indigenous blocks...to house two generators to supply power to the hospital. You know how the power goes out here from time to time?" he asks. "Well it's the opposite in Africa. The power goes on from time to time."

The two generators powered a machine that would compress air for patients in the hospital who were suffering from either malaria or malnutrition who needed oxygen.

"It really hit home when they came and woke us up in the middle of the night to turn on the generators because people were dying," says John.

The children touched him the most, John explains as he opens up his iPad to scroll through photos of them for a visitor.

"The kids made an impression on me more than anything," he says.

He opens up to one picture of a young girl dressed in a stained white shirt with her hair in pigtails.

"This little girl would come and sit on our steps. She was staying in the hospital and she would come and sit on our steps. She would wait for food or candy. She was so cute. I just loved this kid," he says. "You know you pick up these kids and they don't eat anything. They weigh nothing. It's like picking up air."

The lack of nutrition of the people of Impfondo stays with John even five months after the trip.

"[When I tell people] I went to Africa they're like, 'Oh did you go on one of those safaris?'" a question followed up by "Did you see any animals?"

John's response: "No. There's no animals there. They ate them all. There's none there."

John not only felt a bond with the people of Impfondo, but also with the other members of his group. "I was truly touched at one point when we were working very hard and we came back to our house and I had this tremendous feeling of family."

As John reflects on the trip he sees a bigger picture rooted in his newfound sensitivity towards selfishness.

"The takeaway is that these people are getting by with such little and they're still happy, their world is still turning, they still have a smile on their face," says John.

The experience had such an impact on John that he hopes to continue to contribute.

"I want to go back and help out. Truthfully, I don't work construction and the extreme heat made it really hard to do. I would like to find something in my skill set, whatever that looks like. I would love to help out in other way," says John.

He caps off his reflection with something he told his congregation after returning, "My big story was anything is better than working construction in Africa. That's what I always go back to."