Enjoy the Slideshow of our Trip!

What an Adventure!

It was great to go on this trip and good to be home! Thank you for your prayers and support. We had a wonderful time being together and serving. We were a blessing, and we received blessings. God was at work in us and through us. My desire is to post to this blog about this trip one more time with a link to a video that I will create about our time in Appalachia.

 

More About Saturday and Sunday

The house where we are staying:

 

SATURDAY AFTERNOON & EVENING: We went to two tourist attractions in this area: the Webb General Store, preserved to look like how general stores appeared decades ago, and also to the childhood home of country music star, Loretta Lynn.

 

 

 

In the evening we played a couple of group games. In addition to talking with each other, it's also great to laugh together. Brett & Elijah led a game about saying each other's names and getting wacked with an empty paper towel roll if you are not quick enough. We also played "Families". Our devotions were on Acts 14:24-28. Our small groups focused on prayer. Groups of 4-5 students spent 30 plus minutes in prayer.

SUNDAY: We enjoyed a more leisurely start to the day. We attended the 11:00am worship service at the Rockhouse Freewill Baptist Church. This is where Larry, our new friend from the Good Neighbors ministry, attends. The congregation was excited about our presence (and mentioned this fact numerous times during the service). We sang up-beat, spirited hymns, ones that were not familiar to us. The pastor, Richard Williams, was 86 years old. He invited me to the pulpit to introduce our group and explain our service projects.

 

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we went to the Paintsville Lake State Park area for hiking in the afternoon. After a pulled-pork dinner, we enjoyed some Appalachian music with a local singer/song writer/guitar player. He was accompanied by Jason on the harmonica and our very own Elijah on the drum. Our devotional passages were Romans 15:1-7 and Ephesians 4:1-6. We then spent 20 minutes sharing specific words of encouragement with each other. We ended with a personal time of reflection on how God is working in us/challenging us. Our reflection was accomplished by writing ourselves a letter. I am bringing the letters to school and will hand them back to the students in May.

 

Sunday

Worship service at Rockhouse Freewill Baptist Church

 

Hiking at the Paintsville State Park area in front of Hemlock trees

 

Some Fun & Work Projects Continue

FRIDAY EVENING: Our special activity of the night was bowling in Prestonsburg, a nearby town. We played three games. Curtis had the high score and the best student score was from Josh W.  Most importantly though, everyone had a great time. Our devotions focused on Luke 7:11-17. We discussed the passage in small groups and then as a whole group. There were lots of comments on this small, often overlooked, story about Jesus.

 

THURSDAY: It's getting a little harder to wake up in the morning. We left our house before 9:00 to go to our work sites. The group led by Mr. Rink is working at a mobile home. The deck by the front door was in very bad shape. So the first order of business was deck demolition. Today they finished digging post holes and started work on constructing the new deck. Yesterday the homeowner invited them inside and had made vegetable soup for them. The work is a blessing, but it is also a blessing to build relationships.

Today was just a half work day. This afternoon we are going to the Paintsville State Park area (I wanted our group to get a little closer to area trees and spend time in the forest). We did some exploring and went on a 1+ mile hike among rolling forested hills and a big lake.

 

 

 

The photo above is in the office of Good Neighbors Inc. where we gather each morning before going to the work sites.

Great Devotions & Hard Work

THURSDAY EVENING: After a delicious dinner featuring homemade poppyseed chicken over rice, we had a little music time with drum, guitar and harmonica. The Good Neighbor's director, Jason, is amazing on the "mouth harp".

For group time, the work groups planned and acted out a 2 minute skit of what they did...without words. After the "performances", groups used words to describe their day. This time turned into a lengthy share time about how we see God at work and what God is teaching us. Curtis, our Joshua Expeditions director, then led a devotional time on Ephesians 2:1-10. Both he and the students contributed to an insightful Biblical discussion–very encouraging. Again, this time turned into a lengthy time of sharing. Our group time was over 2 1/2 hours long!

FRIDAY: Unseasonably cold here: high temperature of 22º and windchill of 13º. We split up into our work groups again. I visited each site to see what they were up to. Everyone was working with great attitudes. I will focus on the "weather-proofing a mobile home" group. Yesterday and today they laid plastic sheeting under the house to provide a "vapor shield" so the house could hold heat better. This group deserves an extra shout out for their amazing work under a house! It was fun getting into their work space to get some good photos.

 

 

3 Work Projects

I am impressed with the punctuality of our group. This morning was a breeze with wake-up, breakfast and making lunches (this is probably how the students always are!). 

We split into three works groups. 1. Deck demolition on a mobile home. 2. Weather-proofing a mobile home 3. Organizing lots of donated housing supplies at the Good Neighbor warehouse. 

Some photos from group three:

 

 

Our First Group Photo

 

Appalachia 2017–Our First Day

We ended up leaving TC at 6:30am. The temperature w/ wind chill was zero degrees. The three vans were steered by Rink, McNeil & Wiener. We stopped twice and arrived at the Wal-Mart in Paintsville, KY at 4:30. We met up with our JE guide, Curtis. After some brief shopping for munchies, we headed out to our lodging place/house. We drove on a windy road in hill country. The picturesque scenery was combined with a mixture of run down houses along with 3 car garage brick homes.

We moved into our house. No doors on our rooms, just curtains. The boys have especially close quarters. We had pizza and salad for dinner. Jason, the director of the Good Neighbors organization, gave us a brief orientation about the area and the ministry. Curtis then led us in a fun mixer game. It involved a person in the middle, doing a motion that the rest of a copied, and then he or she shared something they liked. If others liked what they did, they had to switch seats. Let's just say, I'm glad no one was injured.

Then each person shared four things about themselves: name, favorite color (as specific as possible), interesting/quirky hobby/something you really like to do, and why did you come on this trip. The time was filled with laughter but also some very meaningful moments as students shared from their heart the "why' question.

Curtis then shared about his life and how God has worked. After a closing prayer, we ended the evening with free time that was filled with games and talking. Today was a great start to the trip!