| Wake Up Barbara! And Help Me Find This Snake! Barbara Watson |
My Salkehatchie Experience 2002 by Paul Fasig [Salkehatchie is a program of the United Methodist Church, traveling to low income neighborhoods to make repairs that would otherwise not be made.] I enjoyed two camps this year; Penn Center (June 15-22) and Lake City (June 29- July 6). They both were filled with very exceptional youth. If you think America's youth are self centered, comfort loving, overweight, couch potatoes – then come with me to Salkehatchie. You will find selfless angels working very hard under very difficult conditions and emotional distractions. I am honored to be allowed to work with them. You may question my calling them angles, but that is what some of the homeowners call them. They are an answer to their prayers, and God has sent them to help. There can be no question about God's calling them. How else do you get teenagers to give up a week of vacation, pay $180 to come, live in a group setting, work like a dog 12 hours a day under worse conditions then they ever believed existed, and enjoy every minute of it? At Penn Center it rained parts of four out of five working days. We had a roof to replace. And I can remember three teens nailing shingles on a roof in the rain and singing and laughing at the same time. The home also needed insulation in the area above the ceiling. The space was too low to kneel and the access opening too small for me to enter. I asked for volunteers to put in the insulation. Two young, thin ladies responded and would let no one else help them -- "it was their job & they will finish it without help; thank you." This, in spite of temperatures high enough to drive most people out. (They did come down one afternoon when it was well over 100 degrees.) One evening, during vespers, when we told of the day's events a young teen (I think it was her first time at Salkehatchie) related this experience: "Today I worked on providing a room for a girl. It reminded me of an argument I had with my parents about my room a few weeks before coming here. When I saw how happy the little girl was for the small improvements we could make for her, I realized how much I had and how little I had to complain about. I was ashamed. When I go home I'll not complain ever again about my plenty." (That's not an exact quote it's as best as I remember.) At Lake City, the home site was listed as needing a roof, a soft floor in one bedroom, a hole in that ceiling, and a soft floor in one bathroom along with some minor problems. We found, in addition to that, the dining room floor required complete replacement, with support for all the joists. On Thursday the owner mentioned that the other bathroom also had a soft spot. The first bath had a valve to isolate the toilet, but the second did not and the valve from the city water main served three houses. After fixing the first bath floor, I asked the two young men who did it to look under the floor at the second bath to see the extent of work needed. They reported that they could fix it in a day after isolating the toilet. We didn't have a day because the city could not get the o.k. to shut off the other two houses long enough to install an isolation valve and still allow us a day to work. The question then arose, could we reinforce the floor from below without moving the toilet. No! The young men didn't have the room to get in from the crawl space without removing the floor. Two short thin young women immediately volunteered to try. They crawled in through the cobwebs, spiders, and the unknown. Working with a flashlight they did what they could and did stiffen the soft spot. There was a young man at the camp who came from Los Angles. He spoke at Vespers one evening, telling us that he was surprised to find the fellowship, cooperation, and sincerity he found at Salkehatchie. Where he came from, that never happened. All these experiences were normal for a week at a camp and there are over thirty Salkehatchie camps in South Carolina this year. Can you doubt that I was honored to be allowed to work with angels this summer? If you want to experience this, come with me next summer. It will only cost $180 and a week of your time. You will receive memories to last a lifetime. Paul Fasig Woodenshoefarm@aol.com |