RV Servants on Wheels

Last year, residents of Wenden, Arizona got the shock of their lives…TWICE. Wenden is just a little bump in the desert. Most of the people who call it home live in either trailers or RVs. One typically arid day, while Wendenites went about their business, rain pounded against a mountain twenty miles away. The deluge formed a flash flood that snaked its way through the desert and roared through Wenden, bowling over trailers and washing through homes.

As the residents dealt with the shock by cleaning up the best they could, a similar type of flood steamrolled the town again a week later.

When Canadian retirees Jake and Phyllis Epp got word of the incidents, they packed up their RV and headed south to roll up their sleeves and give the town’s residents – who are mostly lower income people who have either retired to the area or live in trailers out of economic necessity – a hand getting their homes on proper footing again and cleaning up the water damage.

Servants on wheels

Jake and Phyllis get around. They are active with the Mennonite Disaster Relief Organization and are also part of Servants on Wheels Ever Ready (Sowers), a dedicated group of RV enthusiasts who, among other things, spring to action when nature causes chaos in places like Wenden. When the Epps are journeying through North America, they usually  have a trailer in tow, but since Jake (62) took an early retirement package from the telecommunications company he worked for, they’ve also traveled to Bolivia with their church’s youth group and got back in touch with their roots on a Mennonite heritage tour through Russia and the Ukraine.

The Epps enjoy being part of a diverse network of RVers who twin their love of travel with a chance to lend their time and talents to projects that make an immediate difference in people’s lives. “There’s such a need everywhere,” says Phyllis. “Right on our doorstep and far away.” In their case, that ‘doorstep’ can be in Los Angeles one week and Pennsylvania, interior British Columbia or the southern United States, a month or two later. At the time of this writing, the Epps were planning a trip that would eventually take them to Columbus, Mississippi to help rebuild some structures that were downed by a tornado last year.

Quake wake

The highlight of their ten years of travel – they’re gone from their home in Abbotsford, BC roughly three to six months a year – was helping fix houses affected by the January 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles. “People were traumatized even a year later when we went down,” says Jake. “When you’re suffering from trauma you can’t think, can’t make decisions properly.”

The Epps were working with people who had figuratively “fallen through the cracks” from social service agencies, mostly women with slight handicaps. Phyllis fondly recalls taking some of the women to hardware stores to choose paint colors for their revamped homes. It was a small, but fun way to make a difference in that situation.

Jake says the house damage and subsequent repairs can be seen as analogies for the bigger spiritual component that affected people. “When you’re putting together houses it’s interesting to watch the change take place in a person. Their whole self worth comes up,” he says. “For people who aren’t Christians their home is their castle. When it crumbles, they crumble.”

Have purpose, will travel

Because they are known in their church as travelers with a purpose, the Epps were approached by a youth leader to accompany a group of young people to Bolivia, where they built a basketball court and soccer pitch. Because they were accustomed to working and traveling with other retirees, the Epps had reservations and nearly bowed out of the trip. However, they reconsidered. “We almost canceled,” remembers Jake. “But God gave us peace about it. We needed to go with them.” In the end, the Epps, who both have a working knowledge of low German, were able to witness to groups of unsaved Bolivians of Mennonite heritage who speak the language.

“RV enthusiasts are a breed of people who generally like to help each other out wherever they go,” say the Epps. “They are a group of society that values camaraderie and adventure. Because of this, they are a force that can be mobilized to help out wherever they go.” The Epps hope this trend will continue among retirees who are still fortunate enough to be healthy and willing to hit the road.

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