Patty Appel couldn’t understand the people she talked to in Cairo, Egypt. And most of those people couldn’t understand — or, often, even hear — her.

But the messages were always clear.

“Some of them kissed my hand,” Appel said. “Many of them would pound their fists on their hearts. One guy wrote down, ‘Thank you. God bless you.’”

All Appel, a fourth-grade school teacher from North Mankato, had to do to elicit such a response was to fit each of them with free hearing aids.

Appel and her husband, Randy, were among more than 30 people in Cairo with the Starkey Hearing Foundation’s So the World May Hear initiative, which has distributed more than 305,000 hearing instruments to people in need around the world since 2000.

During their weeklong stay in Cairo, they helped fit about 3,000 people with 6,000 hearing aids.

“When we got them fitted right so that they could hear, their reactions were just amazing,” Randy Appel said. “Their eyes were so bright. Some would cry, and some were scared. Some had never been able to hear before.”

The experience, the Appels agreed, was humbling. Hundreds of people sat waiting for their bus to arrive each morning at the open courtyard in Cairo where the fittings took place; most lived in poverty. All of them were grateful for the opportunity to hear.

“It was incredible how little they had, and how happy they were with what we could give them,” Patty Appel said. “We gave each of them a little ribbon with a tiny medal on it when we finished the fitting, and they were all so excited. Even the adults. They’d come back if they didn’t get one and ask for it.”

The trip to Cairo was the first So the World May Hear mission for the Appels; it was the fourth for Glen and Becky Taylor, who have also traveled to Guatemala, South Africa and Turkey with the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

But even for the Taylors, the intensity of the reaction is still amazing. “I worked with one woman who had a baby who was maybe a year and a half old,” Becky Taylor said. “When we put the hearing in for the mom, she just started crying — it was the first time she had ever heard her baby’s voice.”

The Taylors became involved with the Starkey Hearing Foundation almost four years ago after meeting with the owners of Starkey, which designs, develops and distributes hearing instruments. Their first trip was to Guatemala.

“It was heart wrenching,” Taylor said. “So many of the children didn’t even know what their mother sounded like.”

The experience was so moving the Taylors decided to continue volunteering on the missions — and to invite their family members, including Becky’s sister Patty — along on the trips.

“Family is number one for both of us,” Taylor said. “We felt strongly that we wanted our families to be involved in this. We wanted it to be something that we could do together.”