A Trip to Appalachia Service Project

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A Trip to Appalachia Service Project

It was back in the summer of 2004 when all was calm. The trees filled w/ dry green leaves, the grass barely green as patches of yellowness overcame its dried burned look, dandelions arose in monstrous amounts as the white cotton-like blooms of a dandelion flutter in the midst of an arid breeze, and visions of heat waves could clearly be noticed along a paved street on a clear afternoon. Yep, this truly was mid summer. But I do prefer summer over winter any day of the year. Around the hottest time of the year, a.k.a. middle of July, my church travels on a mission trip over to the Appalachia Mountains to help people in poverty rebuild their homes. I, among 14 other youths and leaders enjoy this yearly mission trip. Only to leave one week after my birthday the ASP (Appalachia Service Project) crew fled the town of Glen Ellyn and headed east towards the mountainous Appalachia Mountains. The mission had not only been to help people in distress but to also give an insight on personal faith, life, love, friendship, and a better understanding on why we are really here and why we have chosen to come here, as certain personality traits that we possess are revealed throughout the trip. I do remember last year's trip very clearly, and we've had just a few major dilemmas, but this year just clearly out does last year in every way, shape and form.

The drive to cross the Kentucky border had taken hours and hours of strenuous patience to finally arrive in another state. The view was by far country like as hints of cow manure could be smelled far from a distance. We drive through small towns, half the size of our hometown of Glen Ellyn had been the biggest town we've seen if not smaller. The scenery had overwhelmed us, as lumps of Earth from a great distance turned to perfectly molded hills, but as we got closer and closer to our destination the hills no longer were hills anymore, instead the hills had transformed to massive mountains of various sizes. These mountains surrounded our every view as if we had sunken into a great big deep hole of green pastures. Our path of direction was seen, as the trails of our road that had followed for numerous hours ended up winding up the mountainous mountains in a corkscrew dizzy-like matter.

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