THE FORGOTTEN
CHILDREN OF
APPALACHIA
by Mrs. Clyde Ussery
T h e A m e r ic an Sunday School Union is opening up avenues to a spiritual ministry by minis tering to the physical needs of the people of Appalachia, a moun tain land wedged between the prosperous Eastern seaboard and the industrial Middle West. Miss Betty Clover, a registered nurse with Bible school training, was assigned to the rural Appalachian area in East Tennesse in 1958. While Miss Clover dispensed needed vitamins, cared for nu merous physical ailments, and distributed food and clothing, she also provided spiritual guidance. Three other nurses now serve with her. Medicine and tender loving care are opening doors and making an impact for Christ in Appalachia. The services provided by the nurses are not merely bribes to induce men to listen to the gospel; but the service they provide is an outgrowth o f that humanity
hip deformities, placed in Shriner Hospital for Lexington, Ky., by missionary nurses . and lived, for a Christian witness. The Christ-like, faithful, loving service of these open doors four nurses touches many hearts.
Mountain girls with Children in which Christ taught The ministry itself is and God has used it to
While ministering to the physi cal needs of the mountain people, the workers have carried out the Union’s original purpose of or ganizing Sunday schools. As a re sult of their dedicated work, Sun day schools are now meeting in abandoned school buildings . . . abandoned movie theaters . . . and even abandoned churches. To the Amer ican Sunday School Union the closed church — and there are some ten thousand in our country — is always a clue to the need for a Sunday school. Friends o f the American Sun day School Union have done much to aid the dedicated staff of mis- THE KING'S BUSINESS
A typical Appalachian home.
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