2005
Schedule
of Services
The
Eagle
Friends,
Your kids are all well fed, exhausted, and asleep.
The train trip was, I am told, uneventful...though 50 minutes longer
than scheduled. They arrived in Hinton, West Virginia at 8.40pm and
were transported to the Parish House at Saint Luke's in the vans we
will be using during our time here. Dinner was warm in the oven, and it
took about seven minutes for them to devour a considerable amount of
pasta, salad, and bread; wash up; and disappear into their sleeping
quarters. There was a considerable lack of amusement when I asked if
they wished to arise at 6.30 or 6.45. They will be left to sleep until
they arise of their own accord (within reason). We don't really plan to
get to the work site until 10.30 which ought to allow everyone to get a
decent night's sleep.
Tomorrow, they will be painting at the Learning
Center at Premier Settlement...a place about 5 miles from here in which
the Federal Emergency Management Agency placed about 100 trailers right
after floods essentially destroyed McDowell County in 2001. Over these
last four years, there has come to be a deepening sense of community
there, and Highland Education Project is working very hard to support
and strengthen that sense and to find ways to make it a concrete
reality. The Learning Center is the focus of much that HEP is doing. It
was built three years ago by Mennonite Missionaries, and, in fact, a
significant portion of it was painted by the group from Saint John's
that was here in 2003. It is now a center in which men and women are
offered training in skills that will begin to give them the means to
find work in an economy that really doesn't any longer need the skills
which the inhabitants of the hollows here have possessed for 200
years...mainly that is the ability to dig coal out of the ground. There
is so much use of the Center's facilities that it is getting a bit
threadbare on the edges. Your children will spend tomorrow brightening
it up. I find that I am quite touched to realize that they will be
painting over the same walls first painted, in some cases, by their
older siblings as well as those who were then the "big kids" in the
Youth Group. To have the young people from Trinity, Torrington now join
in this work makes it even more compelling to me as a symbol of one
layer building upon the work of another...on and on and on...in the
effort to help those in need. All the while recognizing that the work
will never truly be done, for there will always be human need...and,
prayerfully, those who will seek to give of themselves to alleviate
that need.
Thank you for arising as early as you must have had
to arise in order to have your children at the appointed locations this
morning. Please do keep us in your prayers as we begin our work here.
You are very much in ours.
Faithfully,
Bob
Arriving
Tucker on the train.