Willow Grove Church Sends Youth and Adults to Appalachia Service Project

Twenty-three members of the Willow Grove United Methodist Church recently spent a week in West Virginia, from July 24 to 30, helping to repair homes for families in need.

The team, comprising 10 adults and 13 youth congregants, continued a trip that has been a tradition of the church since the early 1970s.

Sue Mathers, a 2011 ASP Team member, said her father helped to introduce the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) to the Willow Grove United Metodist Church.

ASP is a faith-based, interdenominational organization, which serves families in a 24-county area of the Appalachia region.

When ASP was first introduced to the Willow Grove United Methodist Church, Mathers and her sisters were teenagers.

“We had a fabulous time as youth. We learned carpentry, using tools we didn’t know how to use, putting drywall up,” Mathers said.  “Whatever needed to be done, men my fathers age taught us how.”

Thirty years later, Mathers is now the adult teaching a third generation of Willow Grove United Methodist youth how to repair homes through ASP.

According to the ASP website, today, 15,000 volunteers from around the country go to the Appalachia.

This year, the Willow Grove United Methodist ASP team took the nearly 10-hour trip to West Virginia, where they spent the week in over 90-degree weather repairing homes, many of which did not have basic amenities such as plumbing, kitchens or bathrooms.

“It’s definitely something I think every teenager should experience,” Jeanette McKelvey, a 2011 ASP team member, said.

McKelvey, now a junior at Delaware County Community College, has attended the ASP trip since high school. She said that the experience teaches volunteers to be grateful for what they have, but the most gratifying part of the trip was getting to know the people they get to serve.

“I think it would be really hard to calculate who benefits more with this trip: the people whose houses are improved or those that go on the trip,” Rev. Cynthia Skripak, Willow Grove United Methodist pastor, said. “It’s a completely mind-opening experience, and heart-opening experience.”

Skripak, whose family went on this year’s trip, said that the whole church community supports the ASP team. She said that the congregation helps raise funds all year round along with the youth, who are willing to give up some of their summer vacation for community service.

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