“They hear a lot in Appalachia of, ‘Oh I want to help you,’ and then people show up for a week and never come back, and that is where a lot of disappointment and reluctance to open up comes from. So we have gone back consistently three to four times a year over the last 10 years.”

Many Knoxville area churches participate in Mission of Hope’s Christmas and Back to School drives, but Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church takes its service one step further.

CCPC members spent the week of June 6-10 in Kenvir, Ky., a small town in Harlan County, where they spent their mornings cleaning the local elementary school and their evenings teaching life skills classes to the community.

Ginger Forbes, CCPC’s Director of Children’s Ministry, said the church instituted its Hope Academy under the umbrella of Mission of Hope as a way to make their service to the people of Kenvir a year-round ministry.

“We were partnered with this school, Black Mountain Elementary, through Mission of Hope in 2000,” Forbes said.

“In 2007 we talked about some things we could do over the summertime. I met with the Parent Council at the school and asked them what types of activities they would like to have and they said, ‘We have lots of small churches in this community and we really don’t need another vacation Bible school.’ They said, ‘We need you to teach us. We need you to teach us basic life skills or things that would help us better ourselves,’” she added.

What began as a small project has grown in the last four years to a week-long mission and this year involved a team of more than 35 CCPC members and their families.

“We began very small the first year. We began with teaching some very basic classes, such as introduction to computers, basic finance, health and hygiene, budget cooking and those types of things and it was very well received in the community,” Forbes said.

This year, to help make the trip more family oriented, the group began cleaning the school, which helped incorporate younger children.

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