Mission Trip
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Mission Trip
My 15yo went with a group from church to Kentucky yesterday, to help fix up houses. On the way down, they got to stop at Six Flags in Gurnee, IL, to go to the new water park, then went to a church in Indiana to spend the night. They actually drove to Kentucky today.
I'm hoping she saw some thoroughbred farms and got some pics for her younger, horsenut, sister.
She will work hard and sweat a lot, but I hope it gives her a different perspective on her life. They are going to be working on making a few homes warmer and dryer for some people.
Is it through an organized program? My DH usually takes our youth to do the same type of thing through World Changers. This year, however, they are doing a different progam---Global Encounter, which is VBS with inner-city kids in Houston. He goes in August and then 2 weeks later we head to Nicaragua for another mission trip. I have to pick and choose the ones that I go on, so we don't leave the kids too often, so I usually just go on one per year. Can't wait!!
What a great thing that these kids are doing to help others!! ^5 to all of them!
Appalachia Service Project
http://www.asphome.org
In the county where she is, according to some old data we found, 36% of people live at or below the poverty level. For the county where we live in Wisconsin, it was only 5% for the same time period. It will probably be an eye-opening experience for her.
Median income for that county in KY, is $19,000 and for us is $43,000.
That's wonderful, Dawn! It's how she'll learn empathy and compassion, up close and personal. It sounds like a wonderful opportunity! (Ok, I think I need to get our rear to church! I'd love my DD to experience something like that!)
We are having a mission right here in our town with a youth group from Fairfield, Ohio. We were so damaged by hurricane Ivan that our youth in town and theirs are joining forces to help repair homes here. My girls are both involved and we are housing 4 other girls in our home.
It has been fun, but we eat bagels with butter or cream cheese so I had a lesson on lox this morning. I am not sure they have that at Piggly Wiggly. LOL.
that is so great that your dd is willing to help others, and she will get to see six flag new water park.
Ilovetom, that is nice that the kids are helping rebuild some of that hurricane damage. I was a mother's helper one summer, in a suburb north of Chicago. My sister and I did it together, for two sisters. They were Jewish and ate lox and bagels on Sunday mornings. Yummy! I haven't had lox in years!
What a wonderful experience for her. Sounds like lots of hard work, but lots of fun too.
My daughter called me tonight (group leader borrowed his mom's cellphone with nationwide long distance!)
She is having a great time. They are working to shore up the foundation on someone's house. She sounded happy enough, on the phone.
They had just gotten back from Dairy Queen, too. The group leader said they were going to go out for ice cream, every day!)
It was sure nice to hear from her!
Here's a question: Do you pronounce "Appalachia"
ap-uh-lay-chuh or ap-uh-la(as in cat)-chuh?
I'm from Kansas, and the first one was always the way, but I heard someone from Indiana say it the other way. Just curious.
Janet, it is pronounced both ways depending on where you are in the country. It's a regional thing. I live in SW Virginia in the Appalachian mountains, and there is a town called Appalachia about a half hour from me. Here, Appalachia is pronounced like "cat", with the short "a" sound.
The Appalachian mountains are also pronounced either ap-uh-lay-shun or ap-uh-la(as in cat)-chun.
Dawn, it sounds like a wonderful trip!! I'm glad your DD is enjoying herself, and doing some good for others! Janet, I'm from the North East, we say it with a long A sound, ap-uh-lay-sha, or ap-uh-lay-shun.
I say it with a "lay" sound. I'm from WI.
I'm from CA and we say it with a "lay" sound also. Dawn, I did several mission trips as a high schooler and it is such a powerful experience. They are a great way to remind young people just how blessed we are.
Here is Sarah's synopsis of her week in Kentucky! (LONG!)
Oh wow it was sooo much fun. If any of you have a chance to go on a ASP trip, you should go. I met so many new people. I miss them now lol. Sorry this is really long lol.
We went to the Six Flags in Gurnee, IL first for about half a day. It was really fun. I spent the whole time we were there at Hurricane Harbor. I love the wave pool . The van I was in for the whole trip, the two crew leaders in it, got their XM radio in the van so we got to listen to that all week. . Its really clear all the time and we only lost the signal a few places in the mountains.
Then we drove through Indiana. We drove through Indianpolis. That was cool. First time I've seen it at night lol. We drove to Columbus, Indiana and stayed at a church there for the night. It was about 10:30pm when we got there. The church we stayed at was called Asbury United Methodist Church. That was a pretty cool church. In the morning, our youth paster went and got Krispy Kreme donuts. yay . We also had to go to the church's service that morning too. We couldn't stop yawning during the sermon tho. We are all so tired haha.
Then right after the service we left to drive to Salyersville, KY in Magoffin County. On the way there, we stopped at Walmart so Marnie could get an air mattress. I stopped in and got the Sisterhood soundtrack <3333. Thats where we we would be staying for the next week. We went through Louisville which was cool. First time I'd seen it in the daylight haha. I was so excited to be going right through horse country in Kentucky. There were lots of pretty horses. My sister, who loves horses, would have been in heaven. We stopped at a Fazoli's for lunch at like 3:30 lol. It was okay food. Later that evening we learned that we would be working on this lady named Patty's house. The main guy in our crew went up to her house and said she was really sweet. We would be working on her foundation.
The next day they woke us up at 6:30am by turning the lights on in the gym and playing the music. We had to get dressed for devotions at 7am.
Wow the mountains are so pretty. Once we entered the mountain parkway I couldn't stop looking at them lol. Finally at like 6:00pm we finally got to Magoffin County High School, which is where we stayed for the whole week. The 2 other churches from Indianapolis and Gallatin, TN were there already. Once we got all our stuff into the sleeping quarters in the gym, we ate supper. None of us could eat tho cause we still full from our late lunch.
At about 9:00am we left for Patty's house. It took us 15 mins to get there. What really shocked me is there would be a really nice house and just down aways there would be a house in need of much repair. There were also a lot of family cementarys. When we got there, Patty was sitting on her porch in front of her house. She is so sweet . She has two dogs named Chopper and Grinder. They're brothers and just the sweetest dogs you'll ever met. Soon the other crew came up. We would be working on Patty's house with one of the crews from Indy. They're such cool people.
Patty was 58. Her husband was emotionally abusive. She was glad when he died. The bad thing is tho is her younger son picked up those bad traits. . She did get a job tho this past week. Thats really good because she has a really low income.
Bascially the whole week we worked from 10:00-4:00pm by digging holes in the dirt under one side of her house. She had a crawl space under her house. We had to dig holes 8 inches dip 20 inches squared. Then we poured that with concrete. After that each time we placed a cinder block on we had to fill the holes with concrete. My gloves are full of concrete. lol. The indy crew was working on digging a trench that went behind her house to this little crick. The water was coming down from the hills and not having anyplace to go.
On Tuesday, this local Appalachia artist, Tom Whittaker, came over to the high school. He was a very cool guy. One thing he said was that all work was honorable. He sang some cool songs too. Also, he paints a lot. He had this free copies of two of his paintings that you could just take. I had him sign both.
Every night and a little bit after supper, everyone went out to Dairy Queen. The DQ is probably going to get more business this summer than it usually does lol. 3 DQ. On Thursday, you could invite your family to come out with you to Paintsville Lake State Park for a picnic. Thats a really pretty park. The funny thing was this guy was trying to get his boat in the water. He must have left his truck and his boat just by the ramp but didn't put the brake in. We got to watch crews tow his truck out of the lake. It was completely submerged!!
I became so close to the Indy crew we worked with. They were from North United Methodist Church. I hope we can possibly arrange to do some things with them in the future. It was so sad leaving everyone . This trip really made me grateful for all the things I have. One thing tho is that even some people didn't have much, they were still very happy.
We didn't stay at a church going home. We left the High School at about 7:30am and got back to WI around 6:30pm. We were gonna drive through Chicago but the radio said there were tons of accidents and ppl were going a whopping 2 miles a hour in some spots! We drove around it but I still got to see the skyline from a distance. I was so glad to see Lake Michigan. I missed it. I'll post my pictures later.
Sounds like a great experience for her! Can't wait for pics.
How exciting! Can't wait for the pics
DH and Sarah put the pictures into the wrong box at Walmart. In the correct box, they would have been done today, but they put them in the "send-out" box, so they won't be done until tomorrow after 2pm.
On the first mission trip that I went on, I intended to save the world and do so much for other people. What actually happened was that I was humbled and blessed by the open arms and love from the people I thought that I was serving. It's just too cool!
Awwww, imamommyx4. That's so sweet!
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