Ghana home not forgotten by local doctor

"Our main focus is education and health," he said. "We try to help them spiritually and physically." Borquaye and his group have five schools they take care of and they work with an orphanage, where they are trying to build a school. The children in the orphanage range in age from a year and a half to almost 20 years old.

"It is difficult to place the orphans," he said.

Many of the orphans aren't from Ghana. They come from neighboring countries such as Ivory Coast and Liberia, West African nations that have been ripped apart by war.

At the orphanage, Borquaye said he eats what the villagers eat and plays with the children as well.

"I call it a labor of love," he said.

Borquaye is a native of Accra, the capital of Ghana. With an estimated population of 20 million, Ghana has been relatively peaceful for the last 12 years. But other countries nearby have been immersed in bloody civil wars.

One of the United Nations' largest refugee camps, Budumburam, is in Ghana.

"We've been blessed," he said. "It's really a peaceful, stable government. But we are surrounded by countries with all this strife. The country is full of refugees,"

Borquaye came to Hinesville five years ago and has been in the U.S. for 23 years. He had been making the trip by himself for years, until a couple of years ago. He wants to be able to take some of his fellow church members at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church with him on the 5,500-mile trip to Ghana.

His decision to move to Hinesville was part of God's plan for him, Borquaye said.

"God had been telling me to come to Hinesville. God has given me so much," he said. "I have to give back."