Today was the mission team’s third (of five) work day, and the second and final work day for the girls and me. Anne, Bob and Ginny left this morning. Anne and Ginny’s tasty cooking and loving hospitality will be sorely missed! Bob was a big help on site, and I hear on Monday he got a tour of the area from Pastor Cab, who has been Arden’s contact for mission trips in this area for years.
Rick and John continued working with Deacon Johnny on the room addition on the back of the trailer. The addition was requested by the home owners because Pastor Cab’s redesign of the interior called for turning the second bedroom into the laundry and storage room.
Inside, we cleaned the floor in preparation for laying the vinyl flooring. The morning was mostly cleaning (sweeping and shop vac—which Anna helped with) and then laying a thin foam pad, I guess to add at least a bit of padding between the vinyl and the plywood floor. I actually got to help today, and gave Brittany a break from kneeling to staple the foam. She ended up getting her face painted by the girls during that time, so I’m not sure it was a fair trade, but I’m glad to at least have helped with SOMETHING while here!
The girls and I headed out after having lunch with the team at Pastor Cab’s church (there are no restrooms at the work site, so heading over to the church for lunch allows not just a break, but a chance to freshen up!).
The girls did pretty well today, and I’m just so grateful for the care and hospitality our Arden folks have shown to them!
This evening at devotions, we got to talking about some of the cultural differences (between here and Martinsburg) and the economic challenges this area has been and willing continue to face.
So one of the cool developments is they’re building a new four lane highway to replace I guess parts of both 10 and 80 (basically the length of our one hour drive). This is needed on a practical level because large dump trucks loaded with coal (though fewer, the team says, than they’ve seen on previous trips) run these two lane mountain roads with cars. There’s a pretty heavy traffic load on the road, and parts of the road have washed out. An entire lane. So imagine a two lane road tucked against a hillside with a steep drop below it, but the hillside has trees. At the bottom of some of these hills are rivers or creeks, and at some, towns. Now imagine on of the big trees right along the road, which is itself ringed by guard rail, falls or topples over? Yep, the road goes with it. Some places the settling is minor. One place along our route, it has forced them to put a temporary traffic light because the road is now one way and they’ve coned off the one lane.
So they’re putting in this super highway. For this area it’s a super highway. The thing is, as you drive the current road, so see these shops which have closed. Lots of them. And you’ve got to wonder…once the highway bypasses ALL of it, what then? Then again, I doubt many of them are getting much business from people passing through, but still.
The entire economic foundation of the area continues to be based on mining. And people’s lives continue to be shaped by it. The couple who owns the trailer we’ve been working on includes a man who now has COPD, which probably wasn’t helped by the condition the home was in, but also he worked in the mines, and well, the mines are good pay for a reason. The health risks of working in the mines are immense, not to mention the safety risks. Beyond all that, this entire area is econonimcally dependent on mining, and yet coal is a resource that will not replenish. There may be political and economic debates about what to do about the coal industry, but here’s the thing. It will not last forever. That’s not because of any political party, any economic policies, or any person. The coal will run out. How and when that industry finally collapses, no one knows. But it will. And what then? Pretending it won’t or that it can be staved off to be someone else’s problem is ridiculous. So what for these people?
But changing an entire culture and an entire area’s way of life is terribly difficult. So much of life and culture here…not to mention history and people’s stories are tied up in this way of life. It is hard to change your way of life. And it is scary. How can you bring in new industries if there are not trained persons ready to take jobs? But how can you take time off work to train for a new job that isn’t assured? Perhaps the highway will help with that.
Here as in so many places, we’re confronted with the reality that that little we do does seemingly little to change the actual problems here. The vast differences in wealth. The lack of opportunity. The economic dependence on a single industry. The physical isolation of the area. I almost feel like we need to get involvedin helping make more major shifts in the culture and economy. Or we’ll just keep coming back and patching drywall and installing flooring in dilapidated trailers.
And yet, this is what God calls us to do. Misty and her husband are not cogs in someone else’s story. They are part of God’s story. They are God’s people. And while I am absolutely confident that God cares about the systemic inequalities and challenges of this area, I also believe God cares about the conditions this couples lives in.
It’s like the story of the old man throwing starfish back into the ocean off the beach, who is asked by the child/young man/whoever, “Why do you bother? You can never save them all?’ To which the old man replies, “It mattered to that one,” as he tosses another starfish back in the ocean.
I know, I know we’re all tired of that story. But it’s true. God doesn’t call us to do great things. God calls us to be faithful. Sometimes being faithful looks like stapling down vinyl flooring. Sometimes it looks like a child giving a homeowner a watercolor painting as a team works to restore the woman’s house. Sometimes being faithful does look like advocating for and pushing for systemic change that will mean where are less dilapidated trailers to have to be fixed by mission teams.
I pray for the day we won’t need to come to Wyoming or Logan counties or any of the areas here. A time when the community and leaders will have seen a way forward as times change and the coal disappears (or as manufacturers and energy companies try to stay ahead of dwindling resources and change their energy sources). I hope someday there won’t be such a smooth and coordinated system of mission teams coming in because it just isn’t needed. And I hope someday teams from this area are going other places who need both small and tangible help, but also major and systemic change.
For now, we staple, cut, sand, paint (watercolor and interior) and discuss the systemic challenges and try to ponder how we can be part of making things better, more in line with God’s vision for these people and this area. And what lessons we learn here that we can take back to apply to the big and little challenges we will find at home.
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