Theirs is a story of love, not just for one another, but for a group of people a world away that are hurting and in need. Gloucester residents Samuel and Lauren Lunsford, along with their 4-month-old son Elijah, will travel this summer to Togo, West Africa, to care for students at the Village of Light School for the Blind in that region.

The couple’s relationship began in the mission field and that’s where it will continue. He was working as an accountant at a Togolese hospital and she was serving as a nurse at the same facility back in 2012. “We both fell in love with the Togolese people and felt we could help them in many different ways,” Samuel said.

Neither Samuel, 29, nor Lauren, 25, had the mission field on their radar growing up. A Mathews County native, Samuel heard of some friends talking about their long-term mission work and remembered stories of a missionary who worked through Macedonia Baptist, his home church in Mathews, which sparked his interes...