A Kentucky Church Mission

(That is Chain Rock above Pineville on the left).
Well, (My church, Sparta Presbyterian ... went to PINEVILLE, KY to help the LIGHTHOUSE MISSION there to get an old building refurbished to serve as a halfway house for addicts. All the time, going, coming and while there, I was thinking of my own kin serving God in these hills.... Rob and Bev Donnell in Whitesburg, KY (Pastor at Bible Baptist Church) and Waylon and Carol Jenkins in Kingsport, TN and their son, Allan ... music/youth pastor somewhere in the woods up (down) there. Wish I could have visited y'all but it was a challenging trip of mission work and we pretty much had to stay on task. (Alex (age 14 and Me and about 26 others). See the draft video from this trip HERE. The finished video is HERE.
I was a bit torn about whether to cancel and go to Pensacola (area) and help my "Eye of Dennis' Family of Hurricane Veterans" at http://www.chumuckla.com/and in Mulat, but we stuck with plan "A" and went to the Lighthouse Mission. They'd only had about a week to recover at this point and experience with Ivan (10 mos earlier) told me it was yet premature to come planning much repair help as power is not yet up ... still out in some areas as of this date ... I will be going in September for two weeks- wish for longer, but it is not in the cards this time). If you go too soon expecting to repair much, you find without power, it is not very efficient, and you wind up just one more mouth for the FEMA people to feed or house. Thank God, things were fairly stable within days of Dennis. People mostly are in homes and managing ok. However, let me say this about the decision: ... Seems the mission Alex and I went to in KY had helped out in FL when Ivan came through last year.
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This note is from WE CARE AMERICA ... "Group Plans Mission Trip to Florida » post date: 11/9/2004
PINEVILLE - A local faith-based group is taking initiative and making plans for a mission trip to storm-ravaged Florida. Lighthouse Mission and Kentucky Coal Mine Mission have joined together to collect money and goods to take to hurricane victims in Florida.
"We were in a flood in '77 and lost everything, so we know what it's like," said Sharon Teaney of Lighthouse Mission. "The Lord put it on my husband's heart, so we began planning for the trip."
James Teaney contacted some missions and service groups that the Teaneys had worked with before in order to help organize where the supplies and people would go. Two separate locations in Florida were chosen. The first location will be receiving food and cleaning supplies. At the second location, a mission group from the area will be taking building supplies to work on someone's home for about a week. "
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So ... You see, I have no problems now with my decision to go help out at Pineville on our church mission trip. Besides, Alex had a good time working with kids his age and learning to paint ... and we had a motel with air conditioning and a pool, unlike the probable housing we would have experienced in "Ivan/Dennis Country". The heat would not affect me, you understand, but Alex would have suffered.

A recent letter came from Frank Creech (who I taped singing and playing his guitar... and he IS a real performer)...to our church: See This. I'm going to put at least one of Frank's songs on This Blog which is a channel of Eggzono.tv (SOON, I hope). I hope to have a short video of our work in KY to post here soon as well. Will also add a performance by Leonard Luckadoo who has a music ministry for prisons and nursing homes. Nice country. Seems Daniel Boone liked it.

I also ran into a fellow NAVOCS graduate from Navy OCS at Newport RI while enroute to KY. This was Rev David C. Stancil, Ph.D. Pastor of Bristol, VA, First Baptist Church. I talked with him and his wife. We found it quite interesting that we were both Navy OCS grads from the same time period. I was class of 7108 and he was, I think 7206 - and was in his first half of the program in 71 when I was in my last half of NAVOCS. We both served in Tin Cans, He on East Coast, and I was West Coast. He struck up a conversation at a McDonald's where we stopped to eat. I was wearing my "NAVY VETERAN" cap that Alex gave me for Father's Day last year. Nice guy, for a Baptist. heh heh heh. I don’t' recall ever having run into another NAVOCS graduate since I left the Navy in 1974. I wondered if Carol and Waylon or if Alan might know him. Bristol VA is a short step from Kingsport, TN.