Dave n Lisa Honeymoon II Day 6 Manchester

We arose and dined in the limitless continental breakfast nook at the hotel, and set off immediately to meet John, whom they call the 'Media Pastor'.  The Community Church is in a mini mall a few blocks from the hotel, just down from the landmark McDonalds.  When we arrived John was talking with a visitor, another pastor on a trek through this now well acclaimed region.  On a quest, perhaps.  As we waited for John, we mused on the brochures on the tables, the art on the walls, all telling the story in one way or another, of the heart songs of those who contend here for the faith.  Recurring themes of achieving the impossible, dreaming and attaining, daring to believe.  The framed photos capturing wondrous beauties of nature...waterfalls, craggy cliffs, rolling green hills, magnificent sunsets...perhaps the way God sees Clay County, minus the power lines, mountain shacks, and discarded furniture.  After spending the next six hours listening to John's stories, I concluded that when God looks at John, he must see a composite of  Rambo with wings or something.

His  point to us was that it wasn't a super spirituality that had driven them into God's presence.  Instead, it was drugs.  The simple version is that so many families, crippled by grief at the loss of their children, and without the heart to go on, came to one another and joined their voices together crying to God.  Simple and stark.  And God came.

What followed was a massive spiritual, economic, and ecological rebirth.  The documentation can be found in their Appalachian Dawn video documentary, and in the records of the Department of Natural Resources, and the documentation of the legal and political systems of the past seven years.  Truly remarkable.

We visited their men's rehabilitation center called Chad's Hope, run by Teen Challenge. I found the trip  symbolic of the path that must be followed by all who are helped there:  a long, arduous, upward, winding, and narrow path leads deep into those hills...just to get there. The same long and narrow path leads back to civilization. Either journey would be impossible at night.

The first film seen by the residents of this nine month program is The Cross and the Switchblade with Pat Boone. It recounts the true story of David Wilkerson's first journey to the inner city to seek out the young people who were dying on the streets. The students who survive in this program are sold out and dead serious, having had an encounter with God.  And they pass it on.

Making it out of those hills before dark became our new goal (our original plan of a morning coffee hour with John and then off to Indy for our final honeymoon evening was not to be!) Although we were enraptured with the fact that Black Bear and other wildlife have been miraculously restored to their natural habitat in those hills, we had no desire to encounter any personally, especially after dark.

We finally arrived at our so-called four star hotel (did I mention that Hot Wire needs a visit with the Better Business Bureau?) around 11 p.m.  The day in Manchester was so worth it (and hurrying off to the worst-hotel-in-my-adult-life experience at University Place would have been so NOT worth it).  Very glad we spent the time in Kentucky, leaving us only a few hours at the distasteful Hotel of Infamy.  I now believe that the Bad Clowns of Asheville may very well have found new jobs at Hotwire.  Glad we were, however, for a decent night's sleep after all, and pumped we were for the pendulum swing back into idyllic honeymoon dreamscape the following morning.  More later.

The Church in Manchester is regrouping for the next long haul.  We join our prayers to theirs to contend for the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.