Blanket Appalachia

(...or Blanket America, as it's known otherwise.) This was a great weekend. Three of my fellow UNC-Asheville campus crusade people met up with 14 others from Western Carolina Univ to go to Manchester, KY. This is located in Clay County and is known as the "City of Hope." To make a long story short, this city was once nothing but a drug trafficking festival. It was all turned around when a group of local pastors met to pray weekly. Eventually, this led to a "revival," people started getting saved and turning from drugs. Even the local officials (mayor, etc.) were somehow linked to the drug dealing that was going on. Since then new officials have been elected and the city is turned around. It's still a very poor city with very high unemployment.

We got up early on Saturday morning to distribute new coats, blankets, bibles, socks and other necessities for the winter month. The town is stricken with much poverty and so our help gave families a little more comfort for the upcoming season.

Part of our time there, we were to simply talk to people before they collected their goods. I talked with a guy, Dewey. He shared his story with me. He told me how he used to be a drug addict along with other things. He was delivered from the addictions about 7 years ago. Praise God for this man. It was a blessing to hear from him. I lost track of time during our conversation, and was told that it was almost an hour before we parted ways. It was a great weekend. We got to bless people and we were blessed as well. One final thing, I saw my one of my friends lead a guy to Christ. It was an awesome thing. Jesus is good...gloria a Dios!