First Presbyterian Church of Sturgis, Michigan, Volunteer Work Team serves in Ohio
August 2011
Hot, exhausted, and happy..... the Mission Work Trip Team from the Sturgis First Presbyterian Church returned home on Saturday, August 6, 2011, after a week in Salt Creek Township in Hocking County, Ohio. The 26 member mission team was comprised of 12 women, 8 men, and 6 high school youth volunteers, ages 14 through 78.
The five families who were helped by the Sturgis Presbyterian team all live in abject poverty in Hocking County, and seem to be outcasts that the rest of the county does not interact with. All five families were headed by disabled individuals, and their lives have been devastated by the flood that hit them in May. The worst flooding the area had seen since 1960 eroded the creek banks, stopped the flow of the creeks with deposits of rock and debris, and ruined the small private access bridges to the local road, leaving residents isolated.
Some of the work the Presbyterians completed included:
- insulating and reskirting a mobile home and sealing the roof
- building 7 retaining walls along the banks of streams and backfilling the walls with rocks that they shoveled out of the blocked creeks
- moving large boulders that had blocked the river flow back to the banks so the water was flowing again
- repairing and reshingling a portion of a roof
- drywalling a bedroom and bathroom that had been ruined by the rain leaking through the hole in the roof they repaired
- building new steps
- digging a drainage trench to redirect the water overflow away from a house
The members of the First Presbyterian Church support their mission team each summer by donating money for the gas, food, and supplies to aid in areas that have been hit by tornados or flooding in the Midwest. This was the eleventh consecutive mission trip, and the first one the team had taken to Ohio. Other trips have been to Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Mississippi, and Iowa. The Sturgis team was directed by the Hocking County Emergency Management Agency Director Ryan Berry and was housed for the week in the Laurelville Ohio Church of God.
Karen Yoder