Advertisement
Published: October 19th 2010
Edit Blog Post
This semi load of donations
at Red Bird Missions will be sorted, washed, ironed, mended and distributed within three weeks! And they had another room that they had just emptied. It's overwhelming that there's that much need in this one area. (Oakdale Christian Academy)
October finds us in Kentucky, outside the small town of Jackson. We’re in a mountain pass deep in the Appalachians. This is coal country~~some open pit, but mostly underground mining. There’s also logging, and some tobacco grown, but not much. We’re about 1200 miles southeast of Grand Rapids, MN.
We had a quick trip down here, as we drove from Mankato to just south of Cincinnati in two days. We wanted to spend a day at the Creation Museum near there, and it was certainly worth pushing hard at the beginning of the trip. It’s 7000 square feet that bring the Bible to life; with over 160 interactive exhibits, I saw creation like I’ve never thought of it before. The museum is built with what appear to be stone walls walking you from the planetarium to the Garden of Eden, to the ark! They had a special effects theater that had rumbling seats, and when it rained on Noah, it rained on us! Very fun! It’s the first time we’d been in a creation museum, and even though we spent the whole day there, we’d go back again if we had the chance. While
Our new Kentucky home.
We live at the yellow dot! we were there, we found out that the Dinosaur Museum in Glendive (MT) is a creation museum….all the years we lived in Sidney, and we’d never heard that. One of the curators we visited with said he was on a dinosaur dig near Glendive, and he volunteered some time in that museum. We’ve driven past it a hundred times and never stopped.
We’re working at a boarding school~~they have about 45 students, grades 7-12, and only three of them are day students. 25% of the kids are from other countries~~South Korea, New Guinea, Nigeria, China, Japan, Ethiopia, just to name a few. We usually eat dinner in the dining room, which gives us a chance to sit among the kids and get to know them. The student to staff ratio is 2:1; now that’s not teachers, it includes all the staff, but the staff and their families eat in the dining room also, so they’re very involved. We’re parked very close together, in the front yard of a group of three duplexes (the men are working on the interior of the third one), and there’s a three plex behind us! The campus is about half a mile long
Most of the trees have changed colors,
and many have lost their leaves. It was really dry here this summer, so the leaves aren't as brilliant as they were in Minnesota. (remember my description of the mountain pass!) and about as wide as a city block. There are 22 kids here under 12 years old! Most of those kids go to a private school ten miles away, until they’re old enough to attend school here. One more thing about the staff~~68% of them have a college degree! And of the teaching staff, one has a BA, and the rest of them have Master’s or above. It’s a remarkable place.
We have six couples on our team, including one couple who is on their first project. We knew two of the couples, but the other three are new to us. Or they were new, but a week into the project and now they’re friends!
Last Friday we toured Red Bird Mission, a mission deep in the hills/mountains; it was started as a boarding school (and operated as such until last spring) to educate the children of the area, and those back in the hollows. Since 1921 they’ve added a clothing m ministry, as well as healthcare~~they have first class medical, dental and vision clinics. Their primary purpose is raising the children up to be educated, so their schooling begins at
age 3 and continues through grade 12. They go deep into the isolated locations looking for people that need assistance, and in this area, that’s an extremely dangerous job. Our drive there took us through some of the poorer backwoods locations, and it certainly was an eye opener for me. I guess I’m ignorant to how poor our poor people really are. God bless the people who live and work at that mission. It’s supported by United Methodist Church.
Friday evening we asked if any of us would like to entertain some of the students in our homes, and we said YES! We had two girls, and discovered that we’ve forgotten how much teenage girls can talk!! We played Mexican Train, and learned, again, what a difficult life some kids have. Most of us plan on doing it again this coming Friday, although Bob hopes we get boys this time!
Sunday night eight of us went to a Bluegrass Jam session~~bad choice! It was held in a smoke-filled room (clean, and light, but smelly) and the music was so whiny it made me want to slap someone. Sometimes you go to those out-of-the way places and it’s a
Our new neighborhood!
There are five big rigs parked on this lawn, and another across the sidewalk to Bob's left. The house behind us has three staff apartments, and there are three duplexes in the area in front of the rigs on the lawn. We're a tight knit group! hoot, and sometimes not! This was definitely a not, but we all a good time laughing about it.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.358s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 15; qc: 56; dbt: 0.2478s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Sharon Wackerle
non-member comment
Pictures
I love your picture of no sitting. Your right who would want to.