July 2011

Volume 23 Issue  7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our High School kids traveled to Beattyville, Kentucky for the annual mission trip. I am incredibly proud of their achievements.  They installed siding on a home, demolished a bathroom, installed a new kitchen floor and painted a bedroom.  This was done for a Co-op called the Kentucky Small Farms Project.  St. Paul’s Church provided the funds for the building materials.  KSFP screened the applicants based on need and gave us our project assignments.

 

The eleven participants were: Dustin Adkins, Rebecca Babington-Baptist, Sarah Board, Zach Burns, Tyler Deye, Nicole Gagnet, Gabrielle Gwin, Lydia Lawrence, Emily Milauc, Jennifer Repka, and Morgan Sample.

 

We installed siding on a house deep in the back hills of Appalachian country.  The owners of the home were JB and Myrtle, 85 and 83 years olds.  They have been married and lived in the same small house for fifty years.  Our teenagers were immediately startled as there was no indoor plumbing in the house.  Their water supply came from a spring on the side of the mountain.  The outhouse was as real as it gets.

 

We all had difficultly understanding the heavy Kentucky dialect of JB and Myrtle.  We truly could not understand them and they could not understand us.  I picked up about one word in five.  Their dialect was the result of a lifetime of Appalachia isolation.

 

The attic of the house was infested with bats.  We were present one evening at dusk when the bats immerged from the cracks in the roof and soffits.    A bat flew out every three or four seconds for over ten minutes.  JB was hoping the new siding would solve his bat problem.  We tried to explain the bats were coming from the roof, but he couldn’t understand our words.   From our perspective, the siding and insulation we installed was meant to reduce the winter draft in the house.  The house had a single coal furnace.  While the house might be toasty from the coal burner, I am trying to imagine the fifty-foot walk to the outhouse in the dead of winter.

                                                                                                                  Continued on page 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

 

 

2011 Sr. High Mission Trip