A Hazard-less Trip to Hazard

Well, we’ve officially become Kentuckians! We’re now settled into our church home for the week in Hazard, Ky. We had a great breakfast and sendoff at FCC Jeff this morning. We stopped for lunch in London, Ky. (no sign of Big Ben or Parliament), then arrived in Hazard just after 1 p.m. local time. The roads most of the way were hilly but four-lane. Only about one four-mile stretch was really windy and two-lane, but we made it just fine.

The church were we are staying is quaint, which is the Christian way to say “small,” but we all fit very well. I think Bev and Pip are wishing the kitchen was about four times bigger, but those are a couple of resilient ladies, so I know they will make do. This church is very gracious to host a group of 18 people for the week.

Tim and Sean scoped out the church where we’ll be working. It took a little longer than they thought, so they didn’t get back to home base until around 4 p.m. At that point, Bev and Pip still needed to shop for food ($288 spent at Super Wal-Mart!) and Sean needed to make a Lowes run, so we decided to rest for tonight and hit the ground running tomorrow.

I asked Sean if the church had enough work to keep us busy all week. He smiled and said, “Enough for three or four weeks.” I guess there are parts of the building which literally haven’t been touched for decades. We definitely will have our work cut out for us! The cool thing is that with this kind of work, by the end of the week you can definitely tell you’ve made a difference. We hope the members of the church will also be able to see what we’ve done.

We just finished up a great dinner of pasta and salad with garlic bread. Conversation around the dinner table ranged from our least favorite words (“crusty” and “moist” were at the top of the list) to the description of falafel to onomatopoeias (a word that sounds like what it describes, like “buzz” or “whack”). There was a fiery debate over whether or not “harrumph!” was an onomatopoeia. Aren’t you impressed with the deep theological discussion of our mission trips?

A quick techno-note: The cell phone reception here at home base is pretty bad, so we may not be able to check in with you in the evenings. The reception at the church where we are working is much better, so we’re telling the youth to make calls during lunchtime. You can also send them text messages if you’d prefer (if you don’t know how to txt msg, your kids are LOLing at you).

Also, the internet here is pretty hit and miss, so I may or may not get pictures posted on a regular basis. The internet has already cut out on me twice – Harrumph! – but I’ll keep at it. If I don’t get pictures up today, I’ll try again tomorrow.

Tim and I are once again completely overwhelmed and humbled to share this experience with this amazing group of people, and we realize how blessed we are to serve a church that is so supportive of this kind of work. We hope to make you proud, and we hope to bring God glory this week. We miss and love you all!

6-16-08