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The Trip, The Look, The Return
by Lois Corbett

The Trip:
Thirty years ago, I was searching for a meaningful, interesting way to spend the summer before my last year of nursing school. I was content and pleased with my future plans to become a nurse and marry Tom Corbett, a current Roberts Wesleyan student. As a fairly new Christian, I also had an urge to present myself to God for an experience of His choosing during this last summer of unstructured freedom.

A brief chat with my future in-laws led me to a phone conversation with Appalachian missionaries supported by their church. Located in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky, Cutshin Bible Mission included a clinic which served the medical needs of the rural population, a very small church made completely of knotty pine, and four women totally devoted to serving God in what most of us would refer to as the “middle of nowhere.”

I was invited to “come-on-down” to help in the clinic and also to assist with Vacation Bible School. I accepted the offer and began to fret about how these folks would find me at the airport. Having grown up a mile from the Buffalo International airport it seemed a daunting challenge to find strangers in such a bustling place. My concerns abated as the plane taxied into what appeared to be a McDonalds-type facility. The airport consisted of one small building and a “car port” large enough for a plane to slide up next to!   

The road to Cutshin Bible Mission was unforgettable. Most of the trip consisted of narrow roads with a vertical rock wall on one side and a sheer drop on the other side. There were no comforting guardrails and an abundance of coal trucks barreling towards us and taking up far more than their share of the curving road. I am quite sure I did not look like a mature, faithful Christian happily fulfilling God’s will for the summer.

My time in Cutshin Creek changed my life. The days were filled with new experiences – picking berries with a shot gun handy for the rattlesnakes, traveling with Barb, the nurse, in a Jeep to see patients who could not (or would not) come to the clinic, accepting the fact that I was viewed as a foreigner, and learning how to balance on swinging bridges over the creeks. I was fascinated by the small homes with bathtubs or washers on the front porch and relished my time with the Vacation Bible School students who thought I “talked mighty funny.”

Most meaningfully, I explained to the preacher at the little knotty pine church that I wanted to be baptized like Jesus was baptized. He said that if I would like to give my testimony after the sermon, he would be honored to baptize a new Christian and that the members of the church would join us in the celebration, a ritual they had witnessed many times. I was baptized like those before me in the deepest part of the creek, with a large flat rock as the back drop and the congregation of Cutshin Bible Church singing Amazing Grace on the banks.

The Look:
Thirty years later, my experiences at Cutshin Creek remained among my fondest. In a casual conversation at a retirement party I mentioned my time at the mission to Sam Brzoza, the Director of the Modular RN to BS Program. As the recruiter for this program I am very familiar with “The Look” that comes to Sam’s face when she has a great idea that she will find a way to facilitate! Apparently, Sam had been looking for an opportunity to take Modular RN to BS Program students to a remote location, thereby providing trans-cultural credits towards the bachelor’s degree the students are seeking. I knew instantly that Sam and I would be leading an expedition to the land of rattlesnakes, coal mines and a few remaining moonshine stills! “The Look” is never denied!

The Return:
On April 24, 2005, Sam and I and my husband Tom (recruited for his unflappable driving skills), left Roberts Wesleyan College at 5:30 a.m. with nine adventurous nurses in two college vans. Fourteen hours later we arrived by the same roads that had so terrified me in 1975, at Cutshin Bible Mission. The roads were unchanged; narrow and curving with many speeding coal trucks. For drama, a coal truck rested on its side, contents strewn down the embankment, just before we reached our destination!

The staff of The Cutshin Bible Mission is essentially the same as it was thirty years ago. Barb, the nurse practitioner, still sees patients in the clinic as well as directing the emergency services for the region. Evelyn, at the age of 82, helps run the clinic and is retired from doing character teaching in the schools. Clara, also a nurse practitioner, works for a Christian clinic in the town of Hyden, rounds on the patients in the nursing home and helps out at Cutshin Clinic.

The nine nurses we brought to Kentucky rotated through opportunities to observe in the various clinics and also taught health-related topics in either the schools or the senior center. In each setting, the nurses affirmed the similar frailties of humans everywhere and developed a deep appreciation for the challenges of life in the mountains.

Throughout our journey and in the class time that preceded our trip, we all had opportunities to learn about the rich history of the Appalachian area. One of the highlights of our trip included an overnight stay at Frontier Nursing Service, home of Mary Breckinridge, a nursing pioneer and also the founder of the first school of midwifery in the United States.

The purpose of this trip was education. The hope and plan was that each participant would leave the journey with a deeper understanding of the history, the health care challenges, and the changing culture of a unique area of the United States.  I suspected from the inception of this journey that each participant, including the leaders, would be able to reflect on something even deeper by journey’s end.

There is something profound about the lives of those who must trust that their needs will be met each day by faith alone. We were moved by the life stories of the women who have given between thirty-five and fifty years of their lives to the people of Cutshin Creek, Kentucky because God has led them to do so. The fee for care at the Cutshin Bible Clinic is five dollars – sometimes less if more than one family member is in need. During one conversation with Evelyn, I foolishly asked how the bills get paid. The simple answer came without hesitation, “God provides; we have never had a bill we could not pay.”

The seventy-five members of Cutshin Bible church believe that God has more for them to do than their small church facilities allowed. They have therefore built a new, beautiful, much larger church, and they have done so without debt. This lovely facility was home to the Roberts travelers for four days. More than a few of us snuck up from the Sunday School “dorm rooms” at night to contemplate the rough-hewn, jagged-bottomed cross that hangs softly lit in the front of the church. Made from a fallen tree in the area, the simple beauty of the cross was enhanced by the tiny, carved inscription: “For you are bought with a price.”

We may return with another group of students someday. I think we would be welcome although we have not asked yet if it would be possible. We tried to express our appreciation for the opportunity by leaving Cutshin Bible Clinic with an EKG machine that is far more useable than the one that was used prior to our arrival. I think all of those who participated in the trip would agree that what we took away was far more valuable than what we left behind.