Why would you find Mike Roose lying under a pew pounding? Or Ethan Stanton and Josh Roose in a creek pulling a pair of pants out of the mud bank? And did you notice Breanna Gerhardt spraying those thousands of termites in the bathroom? We never had termites before! Ruth Velesquez and Rachel Minor, did you ever love as deeply a child so needy?
Eleven of us traveled to a holler in Kentucky to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Although Johnstown Christian School is located in a Pennsylvania hollow, along Soap Hollow Road, our Kentucky holler differs greatly. Caney Creek holler is a road that proceeds from a mouth to a head through mountains that ascend steeply on either side of the narrow precarious one-lane road that runs parallel to Caney Creek. Whatever flat space the holler allows is taken up by homes, which are inhabited by people we love.
About a third of the way in from the mouth to the head lies the Caney Creek Mennonite Church which was home for us for four days. We lived in the Sunday School rooms, ate in the fellowship hall and served in the gym and yard of the church. The lone, never-before-used shower, soon filled the bathroom with thousands of termites from the wood beneath it. The sagging pews needed to be braced up. The cleaning up of the creek? Well, we’ll work on that for another ten years!
We played games, climbed the muddy mountain, and served families supper. We made a campfire and taught people to roast a marshmallow and make s’mores. We painted the stones in their cemetery white upon their request, so they could read the names and dates. We were Jesus with skin on to a community. Although Berkey Church has served there for more than a decade, this time the adults trusted us enough to share with us their laughter and their pains. We came and lived among them, and we loved them deeply with His love. The poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and health concerns for our good friends who happen to live there weighed heavy on our hearts as we left.
—Sharon Crissman
