Though they attended over Fall break, the learning didn’t stop for the eight EMU students and the EMU staff member who participated in Y-Serve’s trip to Kimball, West Virginia, in collaboration with the organization Sharing With Appalachian People (SWAP.) “We learned so many new skills!” shared senior Y-Serve Co-President Laurel Evans. “I learned how to hang drywall and conquered my fear of ladders to help paint a house.”
The Y-Serve Trip attendees—Evans, junior and member of Y-Serve Leadership Ruth Abera, junior Caleb Chupp, junior Grant Leichty, junior Eli Ours, junior Ivan Betancourt, senior Evan Kauffman, Seminary student Luis Padilla and EMU Network Engineer Daniel Zook—volunteered for this trip, formed in collaboration with EMU’s Y-Serve and Sharing With Appalachian People (SWAP) and held from Wednesday, Oct. 18 to Sunday, Oct. 22.
SWAP, a program of Mennonite Central committee, “works with homeowners in Kentucky and West Virginia to make their homes warm, safe, and dry,” Kauffman explained. Groups of volunteers come to either of the locations to stay and work with the teams onsite and with the local residents themselves. SWAP provides food, lodging, and building materials for volunteers and organizes evening worship and learning sessions. The priorities for this trip were making the home warm and dry in preparation for winter. “At any one time, there were several jobs going on, including drywall work, painting, and roof work.” Junior Evan Kauffman added.
Though the hardest part may have been waking up at 6 a.m. to make it out to the home sites, as Evans shared, for Abera, planning the trip itself was difficult: “this was my first time organizing a service trip, and [I] did not fully understand what was expected of me.” Luckily, University Chaplain and Director for the Office of Faith and Spiritual Life, Brian Martin Burkholder, did a significant chunk of the planning beforehand, and Evans and Abera met with the group prior to departure to review information shared by West Virginia SWAP leaders Peg and Lee Martin.
In addition to the onsite leaders, the group also worked with James and Patty Palmer, the residents of the house they worked on. “It was really cool to talk with each of them, learning more about their stories and what makes home special for them,” shared Kauffman. As building relationships with homeowners is a priority in the SWAP program, post-workday activities included, as Evans explained, “getting to know people in the town, enjoying their hospitality, and hearing their stories,” in addition to devotionals and reflections.
One of the Kimball residents the group met was the owner of “the town’s only restaurant, who was an incredible storyteller and told us about how her dad came to America as an indentured servant,” Evans remembered. The owner’s stories about experiencing two “hundred-year floods,” a fire, and the rebuilding process were especially memorable. Meeting the restaurant’s owner was also a highlight for Abera, who shared that a highlight from the trip was “the interaction [she] had with the people in the community… All of them welcomed us with such an open arm and were excited to engage with us in many different forms and tell us about their life and also eager to hear about our lives.”
While the highlights were plentiful, the trip was difficult as well: “One of the more challenging aspects was encountering the high levels of poverty and decline,” Kauffman explained. “Many residents of the area are barely able to get by and must make hard decisions about what to prioritize, job opportunities are limited, and the low population density makes supporting many services very difficult.”
Similarly, Abera shared that “seeing the living conditions of the homeowners [they] worked with and wrapping [her] head around this side of the United States was something that was challenging for [her],” as was avoiding feelings of hopelessness on behalf of the people they met.
However, for Abera, that disparity was part of the motivation to attend: “I was raised and fully believe in being grateful for the opportunities I have and extending those opportunities to the community I am a part of as a form of gratitude. Doing service work in different communities also helps me not only give/share what I have but also experience different perspectives of life….”
Evans agreed, sharing, “Something that I’m trying to learn to live up to is that living a Christian life means living a life of service, not just going on a 4-day trip. I’m involved with Y-Serve because I’m grateful to get the chance to go to college, and I want to make sure we all have opportunities to give back and make ourselves useful even while we’re still students.”
EMU Students have the opportunity to do just that by participating in Y-Serve’s annual fall service trips, held over Fall Break. Kauffman noted his experiences through Y-Serve as highlights of his time at EMU: “Everyone should consider getting involved because it’s a great way to be involved in Christian service and because you will build valuable relationships.”
Evans encourages students to go so that they can “meet deeply kind people, experience a different American culture, learn new skills, and make a really visible difference in peoples’ lives!” Spending just three days working on the property to prepare it for the winter, the group made a lasting impact with the people in the community, just as the population’s hope and resilience left an impression on them.
To this end, Abera shared a conversation she had with one of the homeowners, asking if he was feeling better, since the previous day he was under the weather: “His response was ‘I am doing good today, today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today.’” Students interested in making an impact through future trips can learn more by emailing y-serve@emu.edu. More information about SWAP can be found at https://mcc.org/get-involved/volunteer/swap or by emailing AppalachiaAdmin@mcc.org.
