House to House and Heart to Heart

The roads in Cantón Virginia are as dusty as they usually are at the end of the dry season in March--the dust billows up from truck tires and footsteps alike.  The group stirred up plenty of it as we made our way from home to home.

We were received with great joy and indeed, the new chairs were most often set out and we were entreated to sit!, sit!  Our visits were necessarily short--we have 112 families to visit in two days and many of them live up or down from the road, strewn along (I'm guessing) four miles of the mountainside.  But each visit meant so much to both us and our brothers and sisters here in Virginia.

We had to form two groups in order to make it to as many homes as possible on our first day.  The group I was with asked each family how they were doing and over and over again we heard the words "gone" and "finished".  Sadly they were describing their corn crop this year:

And that is exactly what we saw as we moved from house to house.  The corn is withered and in many places totally gone.  All we could do was express our sadness at their loss, and to promise to pray for rain to come soon. 
We asked if we could photograph the families we met.  It is so important to us to share these images because these truly are our brothers and sisters, people we love who matter so much.  We were welcomed into their family pictures and we hope the photos speak for the love we have for each other.

We were able to visit half of the community today--and will continue house to house and heart to heart tomorrow.