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Knott County, Kentucky
by Willie VanDoren
From the August Perspective,
the newsletter of the Church of Our Saviour:
Before going on our mission trip to Kentucky this year, I promised the youth that it would be nothing short of a life changing experience. A big claim — but having led two youth mission trips before this one, I had seen how a week of intensive service could challenge, teach, strengthen, and change everyone who participated in ways that we don’t normally experience in our daily lives. Not least of all, it could deepen and expand our faith. Our trip to Knott County, Kentucky was a powerful experience in all of these respects.
Upon arriving in Kentucky, the first thing many of us noticed was a wall of heat. The humidity — our constant companion through the week — could push the “heat index” (or “real feel”) as much as 20 degrees above the actual temperature, which hovered in the 90’s. We were a far way from Marin! We spent our first night in a pretty hotel in Lexington, reminiscent of a Southern mansion. It was full of pictures of horses; Lexington is the horse racing capital of the country. Many people in the area seem to own large, rolling plots of land (some with horses) and big houses.
The next day, we headed southeast into the mountains, a three hour journey to our Center. The mountains are the beautiful lush, green, rolling Appalachians. We also began to see a very different side of Kentucky. Little shacks and trailers were scattered on the side of the highway, often with people sitting on a front porch, staring at us as we raced by in our air conditioned comfort. I wondered if any of them had air conditioning.
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