First Baptist Church volunteers serve families in Kentucky

Southeastern Kentucky, part of which is located within the Cumberland Plateau section of the Appalachain Mountains, contains some of the most beautiful scenery in the American Southeast, including Cumberland Falls State Resort Park.

“Cumberland Falls is a pretty big deal down in that part of the country,” said Dave Snyder of Holton, who recently visited the area as part of a five-member team from Holton’s First Baptist Church.

Another member of the team, Jill Bleier, agreed.

“They call it the Niagara Falls of the South,” Bleier said.

That part of the country, unfortunately, is also home to some of the most impoverished people in the land. McCreary County, which borders Tennessee, reportedly has an overall poverty rate of about 36.4 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — more than double the national and state averages.

Two years ago, a group of people from First Baptist Church traveled to the area after hearing about the Christian Appalachian Project (CAP), a charitable organization that offers help for the region’s impoverished residents, said Snyder, who noted that groups from the church had been on mission trips in the past and were looking to resume them after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’d done a lot of mission trips in the last 15 years,” he said. “We went to Biloxi, we went to Houston, we went to New York and then this came up. We thought it would be a good idea.”

It’s a long trip to get to McCreary County, Bleier said, but in the end, it’s worth it.

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