Three students from Southern Adventist University are heading to Lesotho -- a landlocked nation in the middle of South Africa -- to spend the next year documenting the lives of medical missionaries.

The video project features the lives of two medical missionary families, plus the experiences of the videographers themselves.

The new reality series is sponsored by the Hope Channel, the Seventh-day Adventist Church's television network, and will run for 13 episodes.

"I'd like to bring to the screen the things God is doing in Lesotho, and put a face on the reality of medical missionary work through the families we're filming," said Derek Taylor, a junior film production major at Southern and current video student missionary.

The video student missionary program is a collaborative effort of Hope Channel and Southern Adventist University, located in Collegedale, Tennessee, United States. During their assignment, students will shadow medical personnel working at Maluti Adventist Hospital in Lesotho.

Taylor and two fellow students, Carolyn Taylor and Xavier Hazen, left for Lesotho in July. Carolyn Taylor is a biology major whose tasks, she said, include creating storylines for the episodes and appearing on camera. Hazen, a graphic design major, said he plans to help with production as well as design.

The three-person crew plans to wrap up the series in summer 2010.