Fear not though if you missed that opportunity; and keep an eye out for 
Moving on with a little update on the family; my youngest boy who is 16 has been helping out volunteering at the church quite a bit lately and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the people running the church. Each summer the church has a summer work group trip that the high school youth group kids can go on. I am all for the youth group volunteering to help others who are in need, but the people running the church need their heads examined in my opinion when it comes to this.
We had a hurricane late last summer and there are hundreds of families still that aren’t back in their homes in the Houston area 10 months after the storm. So it would make perfect sense to volunteer right here in the area and help people who are pretty much your neighbors. To me that is just common sense but it seems that common sense isn’t common any longer, no it isn’t. The church group is going all the way up to Charleston, West Virginia to do some volunteer work there.
I don’t know that there have been any major natural disasters up in that area of West Virginia recently, if there has been than I flat missed it. I can tell you we had one hell of a natural disaster last year here and things are still not back to normal in a lot of areas along the Gulf Coast of Texas.
The kids on the trip will be doing painting, plumbing and concrete work. I wonder if this work is associated with moon shining? For all I know they might be helping build new stills up in the mountains for making moon shine. That would involve plumbing, and painting to camouflage it, and a good concrete foundation for it so set level on so they won’t spill a drop while they are making that shine would be a good thing.
In my talking with my son about this trip I think I may have uncovered the real reason West Virginia needs the help so desperately and I don’t think it has a thing to do with actually helping people in need. As much as I hate to say it, I think the youth pastors have something else in mind and the whole reason for West Virginia being chosen as the place that needs help so badly has to do with a vacation more than anything else.
It turns out that the kids will work Monday through Thursday the week they are gone doing their volunteer work but Friday and Saturday is where the devil is in the details. It turns out that this part of West Virginia has a river that is well known for its white water rafting and that just happens to be on the agenda along with some fancy water park. With sixty kids going on the trip; half will white water raft while the other half hits the water park and then the next day they will do the opposite, so both groups get to do both things. My guess is the youth ministers either like white water rafting or they sure want to try it and what better way than to have the youth group fund their little vacation.
Yes, you heard me right, the youth group to fund it. The cost for each kid to go volunteer to help the people in West Virginia get their moon shine operations up and running is $800, that doesn’t include the water park or the rafting, those cost the kids an additional $150 combined. Some of the meals are taken care of from what I am told but the meals while they are traveling to West Virginia and then back to Texas are not; so figure about another $80 to $100 in food the kid has to pony up if they want to eat while they travel.
When he approached me with this a couple months ago I didn’t tell him no, I told him “hell no”. I am fast losing what little respect I had for the people running the church. This trip isn’t about helping people in need, it is nothing more than a white water rafting vacation for the youth ministers disguised to look like a community outreach project or whatever you want call it. If truly helping people in need was the purpose there is no need to look any farther than the southwest part of Houston or over in the Bear Creek area where homes had flood water all the way up to the roof shingles.
Needless to say he was disappointed but he understood where I was coming from. If each kid’s parents took and donated even half of the $800 they are going to spend to send their kids to West Virginia that would be damn near $25,000 that could be used to fix the sheet rock in some houses here in our own area. Twenty five grand would buy a lot of sheetrock and paint. Sure the kids would like to go on trip, I get that, but if that is the case just make it a fun trip somewhere and quit the shenanigans of making it look like something it isn’t ,like helping people in need.
When you start doing things like that you are teaching the kids that there needs to be something in it for them when they should be concerned with how they can make things better for people in need.
I would much rather see them volunteer right here in Houston and then take the kids on a weekend trip over to San Antonio or down to Padre Island for a weekend at the beach. San Antonio has some great water parks at Sea World and at Fiesta Texas. Padre Island has the national sea shore and great beaches so they can get their fill of water, either fresh or saltwater between those places.
Now that I have said all that and laid out how I feel about it, he is going on the trip to West Virginia but not on my dime.
The wife got a call on Saturday from the lady who is in charge of organizing the trip, it turns out that one of the kids who was scheduled and paid to go on the trip to West Virginia isn’t able to make the trip, and there are no refunds, so the spot became available for someone to go with the $800 ticket that has been paid. Because he has been doing so much volunteer work this summer up at the church with VBS and the food pantry they offered that ticket for the trip to my son.
He really has worked hard up at the church so far this summer; he has averaged close to 30 hours a week each week in June. So I reluctantly agreed for him to go on his dime not mine, so he is using some money he has saved to go. He said he was willing to do that, and that’s good, so I know he won’t be blowing his money when it is his own. He doesn’t know that when he gets back the wife and I are going to deposit back into his account what he spends on the trip, so don’t tell him if you happen across him.
I told him if he really wanted to get the most out of this trip that he should take his poker game set with him. I have taught him how to play poker since he was eight and he is a pretty good poker player, he could probably make a $1,000 just playing poker at night with these kids in their dorm rooms.
So, I would wager he will take it with him and if he ends up making his money back the wife and I will have to think that over again on reimbursing him for his expenses. There is no need in me paying his way if he can earn it on his own during the trip.
I am still not happy that this trip is happening for the simple fact that there are people close to home that need the help. The church surely knows this, the food pantry has plenty of people still needing assistance and I just think it would be a better use of the money to save the expense of traveling over a couple thousand miles round trip.
Thanks again to all of you who helped with the SBI for
