Teens Share Love of God With Poor Community
Saturday, July 11, 2009, ten missionaries from the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Palmyra returned from a week long mission trip to New Tazewell, Tennessee. For the fifth year in a row, a team was sent to a center in Harrogate, Tennessee to be assigned to an Appalachian community.
While many people complain about the work ethic of today’s teenagers, six teens from this church volunteer one week of their summer to help others. Four sacrificed a week of their summer salaries to do this mission. All raised funds throughout the year to pay their expenses on the trip.
One missionary, John Sims-Jones, has just completed his fifth year as a missionary to this site. The first year, he was assigned to a community center where he cleaned up broken glass, dead animals, and insects. Two years ago, the team was assigned a site in a park. They learned that any food thrown into the trash would be pulled out after they left and eaten by the children in the community. So they provided meals to those children in addition to the activities provided. Sims-Jones said, “Every year I go, someone from Clarksville feels obligated to tell me ‘there’s so much work that can be done right here in our own city,’ yet when I ask them to direct me to the nearest child eating from a trash can, they never can. The level of poverty in some of these areas is nearly unfathomable, and to be able to help these kids even for a week is an overwhelmingly powerful experience.”
Most of the team, with the exception of one leader, have made the journey to Harrogate for at least two years, with two attending for four years in a row. This year, they were assigned to a community center in New Tazewell, Tennessee, a center surrounded by subsidized housing. Each day, they provided breakfast and a teaching program that included Biblical lessons and sports lessons. Children were taught the basics of soccer, basketball, volleyball and cross country running.
When asked what brings them back year after year, most of them say, “It’s the children.” While they also work on their church’s Vacation Bible School, they find themselves drawn back to the children in Appalachia each year. Team leader, Lanette White, adds, “It’s incredible to see the relationships that have been forged between the children and the teachers this week. We should all be very proud of these teens and the work they have done within the New Tazewell community.”
This article appears here as a courtesy of the organization listed.
