West Asheville, NC – Aug. 3-9, 2025

I have camped under the stars in a lot of places over my 76 years, from the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas, to the shores of Lake Guri in Venezuela and up near timberline in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains of Colorado.  When waking up outdoors, the promise of a new day begins at first light, and becomes fully revealed as dawn arrives. It is an awesome experience.

Lance Takamiya, an amazing “slack-string” Hawaiian guitar master, composed a song, The Promise of Dawn, that captures that experience.  Without any words, Takamiya tells the story of those moments when night becomes day.

While working in West Asheville, North Carolina, we’ve had some slow times and difficulties over the months.  Lately though, as permits are finally issued and more work is being done, I feel like I am watching a new day dawning.  With permits issued, there is a lot of new energy.

Our partners and landlords, RSAA, played a major role in avoiding a work shutdown last week.  When I first received news of the Stop Work Order, I was in a very dark place. However, by the end of the day, Torre of RSAA, the City of Asheville, and the NC State Anthropologist had reached a resolution of the complaint and work was free to move ahead.

The non-permit work is going well as we enter our third week of scheduled volunteers.  We’ve been blessed to have people from Ohio, Kansas City, and nearby Raleigh, NC take up the work of cleaning, painting, removing old carpeting, installing ceiling panels and upgrading light fixtures.  The amount of work done each week has exceeded my expectations.

At 22 Virginia Avenue, the installation of the sewer and water utilities for RVs and bunk trailers got started last Thursday, and is ready for inspection after only three working days.  The electrical work will begin on Wednesday.  Weather permitting, we expect to have five spots with full hook-ups ready sometime next week.  Up to 20 volunteers will sleep there and go out to re-build bridges or houses destroyed by Helene last September.

With the final permit for building alterations issued today, we can finally upgrade the electrical system in the kitchen.  The walls and ceiling there have been cleaned and painted, and after the electrical work is complete, new vinyl flooring will be installed.  Once the cabinets arrive from the MDS Kansas shop in Goessel, we’ll be ready to set them in place and put new countertops on them.  That also means making decisions on new appliances, sink and work tables. There is lots of enthusiasm and energy for those choices, much like deciding where your feet or fishing poles might take you while on a camping trip.

There are a lot more details than I can write about at this time, but be assured, the energy in West Asheville is much like the energy when facing a new day.  Takamiya’s fingers pluck all the right strings in his songs.  May our hands be as skillful as we perform the work that God has placed in front of us here in Western North Carolina.

From the future MDS West Asheville base facility on Haywood Road.