By Allie Elvington
The Pee Dee Baptist Association has collected more items for their upcoming mission trip to West Virginia than they have in the last 15 years, Missions Director said today.
The Pee Dee Baptist Association will be taking a mission trip to the Mountain Marketplace Mission in the rural area of Bolair in Webster County, West Virginia on April 26, 27, and 28. Over the last fifteen years the association has visited the mission anywhere from twice to five times a year, said Ron Taylor Director of Missions for the Pee Dee Baptist Association.
Taylor said this year 19 members from the Pee Dee Baptist Association are attending the trip. In past years the Association has sent as few as two members and as many as 21 members. The members attending this year are from six churches in the Pee Dee Area, and even more churches in the area have collected donations.
The emphasis for the spring trip is seeds and jars, said Taylor. The seeds and jars will be distributed to residents so they can plant a small garden to provide some extra food for their families.
Taylor explained that the association was not going to a city in West Virginia, “if you went to a city in West Virginia you wouldn’t notice much difference in the way people live here and the way people live there.”
“If you get off the beaten path where this mission is, back in the holler and so forth where the coal mines have closed down and about the only industry is logging, people are very poor, and their poorly nourished. You often see people in their thirties that look like they’re in their sixties,” said Taylor.
The resident’s will line up Friday, April 27, to get jars and seeds to start their gardens. The gardens residents plant are very small, about the size of the average American bedroom said Taylor.
“Their gardens are very small because the mountains are so close together there’s not a lot of flat land, plus most of them own a very small piece of land,” said Taylor.
“Some residents who have extra produce after they harvest the crops take the food and give it back to the mission to be redistributed. There is a very different mentality about helping your neighbor, and that’s how these folks survive. If it wasn’t for churches, and church related missions I imagine some of them would starve,” said Taylor.
Taylor said residents basically help one and other survive, relatives help relatives, and neighbors help neighbors. Churches in our area often have food banks and clothes closets to help those experiencing hardship, said Taylor. In the rural areas around Mountain Marketplace Mission the churches are poor and can offer little assistance to residents, so the Mission relies on missions trips by others from outside the area.
“I often tell people we hunt and fish for recreation in South Carolina, in West Virginia back in the holler they hunt and fish to put meat on the table,” said Taylor.
Taylor cites the road conditions as a larger part of the resident’s problems. The roads are bad and industry won’t locate there. The mission is an hour and a half from the nearest decent highway, said Taylor.
“They don’t have enough money to move to an area with more jobs, and they lack the support system to move,” said Taylor.
Some families do receive government assistance but often it’s only enough to feed a family for 10 to 12 days, said Taylor, and they have to have something to fill the gaps. Folks can come once a week and get a bag of groceries, and clothes for their families. The mission even gives away some furniture for families. The mission’s biggest problem is keeping can goods. In each bag given to residents there are 11 cans of food and some type of devotional material.
The Mountain Marketplace Mission gives away over 400 bags of food a week, and they serve approximately 1,100 families a month, said Garry Melton, the director of Mountain Marketplace Mission.
Once the Members of arrive they will help pass out the can goods, and witness to the people who have come to the mission. The Association Members will also cut the grass around the mission and patch a section of roof on the main building.
The Mountain Marketplace Mission was started in 1995 by Gary and Lilly Melton. Since the beginning they’ve grown the mission from one home to three buildings with a fourth building on the way that will serve as a dormitory for mission groups.
Gary Melton said “there is still more work to be done here if others would see the need and give to the mission.”