Someone's praying, Kumbaya

The small bus filled with high school students pulls up to an old clapboard house on a narrow dirt road on Wadmalaw Island.

They are greeted by Earthalee Fields, a great-grandmother who lives with eight family members in a 700-square-foot house in dire need of repair. The roof leaks. The windows are rotted.

The students are from Heathwood Hall, an affluent Episcopal private school in Columbia. They're getting their first look at some of the projects they'll be working on.

Leading them on this journey is Anderson Mack Jr., the heart and soul behind much of the work done by the Rural Mission, a nonprofit that's been fixing people and places on the Sea Islands for 40 years.

The look on these young faces when they see these conditions speaks volumes of the gap between their relative worlds.

Colleen Francis, president of the senior class, bravely said, "This is the culmination of all our work. It represents our morals, our abilities and our friendship all in one."

Making memories

This group of young people is just one in a caravan of volunteers who make the pilgrimage each summer to help the Rural Mission achieve its many goals: teaching the children of migrant workers; helping neighbors in crisis; erecting houses; providing fire wood for folks who need it during the winter.

From as far away as Maine and Minnesota, they arrive in buses, maybe 70 such groups this summer, eager to lend their minds and muscle to help those less fortunate.

For many groups, it's a traditional trek, introducing new generations to the joy of giving and the warmth of sharing. From churches and schools they come for weeklong visits to work and laugh and make memories for a lifetime.

After working all day in the South Carolina sun, fixing roofs and painting porches, they spend their nights bunked down in the communal housing Rural Mission provides along the banks of the Bohicket Creek.

It is all as idyllic as it is inspirational.

But like most things we take for granted in our world, it faces economic peril.

Moss-covered poverty

While the Rural Mission (ruralmission.org and 768-1720) is faith-based and faces each day with a smile, the long-standing charity is living week to week, struggling to keep the doors open.

Home repairs cost money and the need is greater today than it was yesterday and the day before. The entire nonprofit world knows the story.

As much as we all love the breath-taking beauty of our barrier islands, we must admit that what we're often observing is moss-covered poverty.

So bleak are conditions down some of those shady lanes that programs like this are never without a waiting list of projects to complete.

Fortunately, there are hands willing to help. Young people. Old people. People from Andover, Mass., and Grafton, Wis. People sitting by campfires at night, singing "Kumbaya," hoping the sweat they leave behind will make a difference.

Meanwhile, the folks at Rural Mission keep writing for government grants and sending up prayers, hoping both will be answered as quickly as possible.

Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com or 937-5598. To read previous columns, go to postandcourier.com/burger/.