Kellee Gentry and Jill Burch are going back to Africa this summer.

This time, they will have two more people coming with them.

Cassie Hasekamp and Juanita Hadden will join Gentry and Burch on the 10-day trip, which is scheduled for June 1. Burch and Gentry will make their second and third trips to the continent, respectively. Hasekamp and Hadden will make their first trips. All of them are Montgomery County residents.

“I think it’s going to be really awesome,” Hadden said. “I think it’s one thing to be involved in your own community and see the impact of their lives change, but to go across the world to a whole new place and culture and people, it’s going to be pretty awesome to see how us here makes a difference and impact across the world.”

Gentry, Burch, Hasekamp and Burch are members of High Hill Christian Church. Gentry is the spiritual formation director, Burch works as an executive assistant and Hasekamp is the communications director and discipleship ministry administrator.

All four are holding fundraisers to help pay for their trip. They need to raise $40,000, which equates to $10,000 for each person. Anyone who wants to donate can go to Gentry’s VENMO account (@Kellee-Gentry).

Their next fundraiser is scheduled for March 7 at the Montgomery County Senior Center. The event is scheduled for 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and includes a $15 pork steak lunch, live music by Hadden and a silent auction.

A fundraiser was held on Feb. 14, which was a Valentine’s Day Childcare Mission Trip Fundraiser at HHCC. There was also a stromboli fundraiser in January.

In last year’s African trip, Gentry and Bunch went to Uganda and learned how World Help, a Christian humanitarian organization, changed lives through child sponsorship. They also went to Rwanda.

Burch said one of the best moments of the trip was visiting the Village of Reconciliation.

“It’s a village that was formed after the Genocide,” Burch said. “You have the two tribes trying to kill each other and coming together and they made this Village of Reconciliation. We actually got to meet two men on our trip. They talked to us and they were very vocal and they were dramatic about what they were saying.”

Gentry took plenty of photos and did video diaries of the 2025 trip, which lasted nine days.

“Part of the trip also is World Help, which is the organization we’re going with,” said Gentry, who went to Uganda with her husband and two other people in 2011. “They have a photographer and a videographer who go on the trip with you, so when we got home, we got all of our photos and all of the videos. That was really cool and special.”
Hadden, who graduated from Montgomery County High School in 2022, said she is looking forward to going to Africa with her grandmother, who is Burch.

“I prayed about it for a long time and Grandma reached out to me and said they were going again this coming year,” Hadden said. “They wanted to know if I was interested. I signed up, waited a couple of weeks and got an email that I got accepted.”

Hasekamp applied for the African trip at the Leading and Loving It Conference in Las Vegas.

“I’m super excited,” Hasekamp said. “As I kind of reflect on the trip, I think about how I’m going to hang out with kids who are the same age as my child and hopefully sponsor. I think it will be really cool to have a sponsor child who is the same age as my son so that they can grow up together.”

Hasekamp said she is excited about going on her first mission trip outside of the United States.

“I have a huge humanities background,” she said. “My degree is in emergency disaster management, so I’ve done a lot of mission work out of the church. I’ve only done it in the United States, especially with tornadoes and flooding and disaster situations. I did a lot of recovery projects for that, but I never went out of the country for a mission trip. This is my first time doing a mission trip that focused on sharing the love of Jesus.”