Friday Photos

Sunday,  August 10, 2025 - Old Union Mission Trip 2025

    This is Clark writing to you, along with my faithful assistant Sally.  When I first mentioned I was going on a mission trip with the local Presbyterian Churches to Canton, my friends and family said, "Oh, to Canton, Ohio."  I said, "Oh, no, not the home of the Pro-Football Hall of Fame but to Canton, NC."  They asked "Where is that?  Is it near the beach?"  I said, "Oh no, it's in the mountains, only a few miles west of Asheville, NC." Now Asheville is a place everyone has heard about from last year's numerous news reports about hurricane Helene that hit the southeast USA in late September.  There was massive flooding in and around Asheville and this was on the news quite bit.  From the pictures I saw on TV I got the impression that it was just a small city.   Asheville is a lot bigger than what I saw on TV.  Canton, however, is a smaller town.    

   The trip started with a wonderful outside worship service with Pastor Peter in the outside shelter.  The weather was very beautiful, warm and sunny.  Right after the service we packed the 3 vehicles and a trailer pulled by Bob Y's Suburban.  We pulled out of the church parking lot around 11:30 a.m.   The weather for traveling was also sunny and warm.  We had good traveling weather until we reached NC.  We reached our first lunch break place at 3:15 p.m. at Flatwood, WV.  It is a busy truck stop where our mission group chose Arby's,  McDonalds, Subway, or KFC.  After eating, we continued on our way.  Our next stop was not until 6:30 p.m. at another truck stop, at the intersection of Route 81 and Interstate 77.  Soon after, we saw a road sign mentioning  Bristol, TN.  So of course Peter played the song "The Bristol Stomp" on his phone.  During what was another long leg of our trip, we drove through two tunnels, briefly through some mountains in TN, into NC, where we encountered rain and saw a rainbow.  And then a double rainbow appeared.  It was a beautiful sights to see as we drove through the rain.  Watch for pictures of the rainbow later in this blog.  (The same thing happened last year as we neared Buckhorn, KY!  Hopefully it was a sign from  God that the flooding was over.)  At dusk, we drove along the South Indian Creek where we saw the first signs of flooding in that area with overturned trees and rock piles near the shore of the stream  Now on this last last part of the trip Joe (Cassandra's grandfather) and Dave found out they both have a love of antique cars, and talked about them even as we finally entered Canton. By the way Dave B. has a real funny story about why you can't fight City Hall.  

   We arrived at the Canton Presbyterian Church around 9:30 p.m. We unloaded the vehicles, the ladies put the kitchen together for breakfast Monday morning.  Upon arriving, we were met by Greg Z and his daughter, Sarah, who gave us the lay of the land.  Greg and Sarah did the initial shopping for us since they could not join us for the actual work week.  They live in eastern NC, and spent the night with us.  (You may recall these two both joined us on the other NC mission trip, to Fayetteville in 2019, which is in the central part of NC.  And Greg has been on many other mission trips with our group.)  Most of us went straight to bed.  

Monday - August 11, 2025

   Our day started with rain.  When I looked out the window, it was rather foggy first thing in the morning.  I thought, "this reminded me of our mornings at Buckhorn, KY, last year's mission trip site."  Breakfast started at 6:00 a.m. as we were leaving at 7:00 a.m. to go to Hendersonville.   We initially had the possibility of going to two work sites.  One at Hendersonville and one at Mill Spring.  Since it rained throughout the night and early morning, it was too wet for the one group to go to Mill Spring since it was in a remote area and would be too muddy to be outside.  We all went to Hendersonville, which is SW of Asheville, and was an hour long commute.   There we met three men from Habitat for Humanity who told us what we would be doing at two houses on the same street. (How convenient.) They split us up into two teams.  The house and team where I worked was led by Jeff B and consisted of Pastor Peter, Mary Rae, Dave B., Carl W., Joe S., Bob Y . and myself, (Clark).  At our house, Pastor Peter and I did baseboard trim work,  Carl and Jeff installed several doors inside the house and also put the trim work around the door frames.  Bob Y., Dave B., Mary Rae, and Joe S. were outside working the saws under a portable tent in the driveway because of the rain.  We did those jobs all day.  The Habitat work crew were busy installing the front entrance door, as well as installing new cabinets in the kitchen.

   The second group worked on another house (very near my house on the same street.) The second group was led by Bob G. and included Lorene W., Sally P., Cassandra R., Judy M., Mark A. and Geoff A.  This team did sanding, caulking, spackling, sweeping, and wiping wood work.  Everyone on this team did a little bit of everything before lunch.  For our lunch the Habitat For Humanity crew treated us all to pizza!  After lunch, Bob G., Mark, Geoff A. and Judy M. went to the Habitat for Humanity Warehouse in Hendersonville.  The building is huge.  They kept busy making joists and rafters for the house at Mill Spring.  Sally, Lorene, and Cassandra met the owner of their house.  The gentleman, named James, is very appreciative of what we are doing to repair his house.  We ended our workday around 4:00 p.m.  While traveling back to the church, we ran into very heavy and slow traffic.  It took us a lot longer than what it should have taken for us to drive back to Canton. Mary Rae did a little shopping before dinner and ran into a young fellow at the store who recognized her as a mission worker and was very appreciative of our time here We all arrived safely back where we had a delicious dinner of ham BBQs, pasta salad, watermelon, chips and cookies.  After dinner we had devotions led by Mary Rae.  She read Hebrews 2 and how that reflected our day.  During the group's time together, before we separated to do our own thing (here it is 10 PM and I am still typing,) we talked about the accident at the Pittsburgh steel plant, which I am sure you readers of this blog have all heard about by now as well.  Mary Rae said how she grew up in that area.  She and the other school students would all bring a rag with them to wipe down the desk and chair before their classes began, as there was so much soot in the air.  To them it was just a normal thing of working in a steel town.  Nobody wore white clothing either.

  Did I already mention how late it is?  Let me just finish by saying hello to my good friend Laurie, may God Bless You as you continue to pray for our team.  And thanks everyone who prayed for me that my little health scare on Friday did not stop me from having fun here in Canton.  Another name to lift up is Chris Ann,  Bob G's wife, that had recent surgery and is now recovering.  Signing off, this is Clark and Sally.  May God Bless You All!!!