Mission Work Team - Mebane UMC

A team of four, Ted and Linda Zeller, Brenda Davis, and Ben Saunders, traveled to Kinston on Monday morning, October 22, to work with the Kinston Area Recovery Efforts (K.A.R.E.), an agency working with the North Carolina Conference United Methodist Disaster Response to continue the flood relief efforts. We were greeted by Brad McBride, Director of K.A.R.E., and by our work team coordinator, Harrison Smith.

The K.A.R.E. administrative offices are housed in the old Kinston armory, which also is used to store building materials, tools, supplies, etc. for the work to be done by the volunteer teams and to provide sleeping and cooking facilities for the work teams for $5.00 per head per night. The four of us rattled around in the huge building which has housed as many as 100 youth at one time! After storing our gear we meet with Brad and Harrison to learn about the work they had planned for us to do.

On Monday afternoon we traveled into an adjoining county to finish the work on the mobile home of Mr. Potter, a paraplegic. There we cut, stained and installed molding to finish the living room ceiling and cut away a metal threshold and replaced it with a wheelchair-friendly wooden one so Mr. Potter could go out on his front porch.

Beginning Tuesday morning we started work on a home located on Reed Street in Kinston. This home is one of a very few in an entire neighborhood that is being salvaged. The whole area was under about six feet of water for nearly three weeks and is almost totally abandoned. There is no water, sewer, or electricity in the house so we had to use a generator to run the electric tools. Our work included putting down a sub-floor with a luan covering in the living room to ready it for carpet installation. We also replaced a bathroom ceiling and a portion of the kitchen ceiling that was sagging from water leakage from the roof. We cut, painted and put up window casings in three rooms and assembled kitchen cabinets. On Wednesday a member of the family who owns the house came by to say thank you. Ted was left as a team of one for Thursday and Friday but got a lot accomplished working with Harrison Smith, the work team coordinator.

We had a really good experience with shared work, meals, and devotions. The prayer of Jabez (I Chronicles 4:10) turned out to be our theme for the week, and by coincidence was posted on the office door of Brad McBride, the K.A.R.E. director, whose territory has been expanded to more than six counties and who has just been given additional charge of a mercy mission to the poor of the area through the United Methodist Church. There are still 200 families waiting for recovery of their homes from the flood and many more are in poverty brought about by the loss of businesses and jobs directly caused by the flood. There is still much to do.

Work Team Goes to Kinston