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Appalachia Service Project (ASP) is a Christian ministry, open to all people, that inspires hope and service through volunteer home repair in Central Appalachia, specifically in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. ASP provides one of the most rewarding structured service opportunities in the nation — bringing thousands of volunteers from around the country to rural Central Appalachia to repair homes for low-income families, elderly, and disabled.  Every year more than 13,00 teens in youth groups travel to Appalachia to make homes warmer, safer, drier. ASP helps to teach new skills, create friendships, build confidence and deepen faith lives. We stay in a local school or community center for the week and spend the days working alongside one another. In the evening there is time to hang out with friends, worship, sing, play games and learn a little about the Appalachian culture. ASP helps to make homes more livable but it is also a time of relationship building. Each day offers opportunities to interact with the family you’ve been assigned to serve. Working alongside your crew members forges abiding friendships.  Serving others opens you to God working within you.

Volunteers will:

• Make one family’s home warmer, safer, and drier
• Repair roofs, install insulation, fix floors, shore up foundations, build handicapped ramps, and perform a host of other improvements and repairs 
• Worship, bond, and pull together as a group
• Lift an Appalachian family’s spirits and remind them that God’s   love knows no boundaries

The benefits will be:

• Develop a heart for Christian service
• Discover what you’re really made of
• Help you make a dent in poverty right here in America
• Give you new appreciation for what you have
• Draw your group of church closer together
• Come home more on fire for your faith and more involved in your church or community

The ASP theme of 2013 is “Radical Reversal: as followers of Christ, we are to model Christ’s teaching and lifestyle as those who think of others before thinking of themselves.” This theme is based on Mark 10:43-45 “…Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

For more information on ASP:  www.asphome.org.