Day one of the Appalachian mission trip

On Sunday morning we left on our mission adventure to McDowell County, West Virginia. A group of eleven of us piled into two vans and headed off down West Main Street. Of course we didn’t get very far. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts to give us that boost that would get us going. Then promptly at 6:00 a.m. we left there and set sail for the 750 mile drive. There were four from Central Baptist ( Ellie Eccleston, Michelle Madsen-Bibeau, Doreen and Roger Mainville) and seven from First Baptist ( Rachel Bober, Carol Calkins, Erica Corbett, Taylor Chaffee, June Deptulski, Connie Hayward and me) in our crew and we were enrolled as short term missionaries for the Mustard Seeds and Mountains ministry.

Sunday was our travel day and we hoped to arrive in McDowell County by eight o’clock that evening. We passed through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and then finally cheered as we crossed the state line into our final destination… West Virginia. If you are wondering why I mentioned West Virginia twice, look at your road atlas and check out Route 81 south through PA and Virginia.

Trips like this can be quite boring but we had a bit of adventure. About seventy miles from our destination the church van started to shimmy a bit and we pulled over. It felt like we had a flat tire. I stepped out and at first glance it looked like nothing was wrong. Then I noticed the tread on the rear tire was coming apart from the tire.

Roger Mainville and I unloaded the back of the van and started changing the tire. We had a couple of tense moments. We couldn’t free up the spare tire. We didn’t have a star shaped screwdriver to release the latch. Eventually we broke the lock so we could get at the tire. It was also a little unnerving trying to change the tire with the highway traffic going by at 60 plus miles an hour.

A Virginia State Policeman stopped and he helped us out. He radioed in another trooper to move the cars over to give us a little room. He was a super nice guy and immediately made several new friends from Connecticut.

We got going again and noticed the spare tire was soft so we pulled off the highway to find an air pump. That was a challenge in the small town we visited. Roger and I let the girls off at Dairy Queen for dinner and went off to find what we needed. When we found an air hose we took a good look at the tire and saw several small cracks in the outer wall. The tire was filled with dry rot. Thankfully it got us to our destination and in the morning I went into town and bought two new tires and kept the best of the others as our spare.

We arrived in Northfork at 8:40 p.m. and were met by my parents, Clayton and Michelle Lord, and my nephew Chris. They came in from Elizabethtown, Kentucky to join us for a couple of days bringing our crew up to fourteen people. After a brief orientation we were led to our house and settled in for the night. It was a good day and we were thankful that we arrived safely.

Cal