A group of 23 Texans, including 16 Disciples from the Houston area, spent a week sprucing up homes, restoring a church that is more than a century old, and hauling away trash during a mission trip to rural west Texas recently.
Disciples from Memorial Drive Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Houston joined with seven members of First United Christian Church, a United Church of Christ, in Weimar, Texas, for the Aug. 1-7 mission trip.
At the start of the trip, the group from Weimar split off to help repair the roof of a home in Marathon, where a woman and her three children lived. At the same time, members of Memorial Drive helped dispose of trash in an area called the Davis Mountain Resort, although "the area was more akin to Appalachia than a "resort," said Mary Williams, a member of Memorial Drive who helped organize the trip.
"This was a mission trip to do repairs and yard work for fire safety in this remote area where it is not easy to get help," said Williams. The church members from Weimar had never gone on a mission excursion before Williams convinced them to go along.
Some of the group then helped to oil the wood on the inside of the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Alpine, which was built in the 1880s. The missioners weeded, cleaned up trash and dug a water line for a home in the Fort Davis area.
"It was just an extremely interesting area," said Williams. "It has 8,000 acres and there are 75 miles of unpaved roads. You can’t see your neighbor because they are living on minimum five-acre tracts of land; it’s really very remote." The members of Memorial Drive raised $4,500 and paid $200 each to help finance the trip.
On Thursday night and Friday morning of that week, the group attended Bloys -Camp Meeting, an annual gathering near Fort Davis that was started in 1890. It is a week of Bible studies and worship services attended by Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Disciples.
By James Patterson
