Mission Trips, Poverty, Coal, etc.

I’ve been involved in several “Mission Trips” over the years, including some recent trips to the Appalachian region to help make people’s homes “safer, warmer and drier”. Every trip has been rewarding for me in many ways and has also raised many questions, both from others and in my own mind: why travel somewhere across the country when there are needs here, do these people deserve it, etc. And in the Appalachians there is also the omnipresent issue of coal, with all its global environmental problems pitted against its local economic importance.

Why do we go?

If one is a Christian it is pretty clear that Christ expects us to help others, but it’s certainly not confined to the religious. Maybe it is genetics, maybe it is how we are raised, but doing something good for someone I may not know just makes me feel better about myself. (So it may just be “all about me”, and you do come across some “look what a wonderful person I am” attitudes once in a while). Also, in my case of terminal shyness, being tossed out of my comfort zone has also been good for me in many ways.

Why go somewhere else when there are needs here?

I’ve pondered this also, and I’ve decided to answer that question with “why not do both?”. Trips like this have benefits to the participants as well as those we are helping – building a community, getting to really know people you may otherwise just see in church once in a while, helping to build on or amplify the service focus of a church, far and near. So if we send a group to Kentucky while at the same time a South Dakota church sends a group to the Quad Cities, both communities and both church communities benefit.

A recent modification of that question which I’ve heard recently is: “I’m glad you are doing something in this country rather than someplace else.” I’ve done a couple of mission trips outside the country too, and, from a purely economic standpoint it would probably make more sense to send the money that we would have spent on the trip, but I think these trips can also be valuable, especially to the participants, in getting a more in-depth view of other cultures than you would ever get traveling as a tourist. And hopefully your work also benefits the recipients and your money contributes to the local economy.

Do the people that we are helping deserve it?

Does a Boy Scout check the little old lady’s credentials before helping her across the street? On every trip I’ve been on there have always been instances when I am working in a house with seemingly able bodied people and I wonder why they aren’t helping (some do), are they really disabled, could they get a job if they wanted to, etc. But I have to realize that I am not going to understand their lives in a few hours or a few days, and leave it in the hands of the local service organization to decide who most needs the help. I’ve also attended a couple of Habitat for Humanity workshops on poverty and learned that it is impossible for me to really understand a life of poverty and all its ramifications – behavioral, mental, social, educational…, including decisions made that don’t always make sense to us. And Appalachian poverty in particular has its own dynamics, including geographical isolation of the communities, and family dependence which seems to make it difficult for people to leave for better opportunities.

Coal

I consider myself a fairly strong environmentalist (I say fairly because I am sometimes not opposed to some anti-environmentalist things like the Keystone pipeline). I believe that global warming is serious, that human activity has contributed to it, and that coal is a major factor. I remember when my hometown of Chattanooga was called the dirtiest city in America and you couldn’t see across town due to the pollution (who knows, maybe it’s why I grew up with asthma). Clean air initiatives and a progressive attitude by the community have since made a huge difference.

I also believe that coal, which until recently has been by far our cheapest source of energy, also remains our dirtiest and probably most dangerous, even though environmental regulations mitigating air and water pollution, strip mining and health and safety concerns of miners have improved things over the last century.

Even with the regulatory costs, coal has remained an economical and primary source of energy in the United States and is being exported to other countries. But overall employment in coal mining has been dropping since the 1920’s as mechanization has improved, and, while coal production nationwide is expected to keep increasing, coal production in Central Appalachia has been declining since the 1990’s, and that decline is expected to continue. Reasons include productivity decreases as the “easy coal” has already been mined, competition from cheaper coal sources in Northern Appalachia and Wyoming, and the dramatic drop in natural gas prices as a result of the recent “fracking” boom and the resulting conversion of power plants from coal to gas.

The locals tend to blame Obama for all the coal problems (we were even told that all the national parks are now owned and operated by the Chinese because of Obama’s debt), but the handwriting has been on the wall for a long time, and the states’ elected officials seem to prefer casting blame rather than trying to prepare for the inevitable continued decline in coal production in the region, with or without new carbon regulations. Coal production generates millions in taxes, including a special coal severance tax, yet the coal producing communities remain the poorest in the country, with no apparent plans for a future without coal jobs.

Statewide, coal employment in Kentucky and West Virginia is not very significant, with only about 38,000 coal miners employed in the entire Central Appalachian region. But in the small rural communities in the region, including some that we have worked in, coal employment can be as much as 40% of the population. This was evident in the West Virginia community where we served on last fall’s trip. It seemed that everyone we talked to, if they had a job, worked in the mines or had a spouse or other family member who worked in the mines, and there seemed to be no other large businesses in the area. Add to that reports of increasing drug dependency in some areas (meth has apparently been superseded by prescription drugs) and it is hard to see much hope for these areas, and the many fine people we have met there, in the coming years.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.