"It really is quite simple to do what Jesus told us, as His followers, to do," points out Wayne Higgins, a layman who heads up the Mountain State Fair Ministry Task Force. "It may not always be easy, but it's not complicated."

In this case, he says, it is simply effective.

"We are here to help two groups," said Ray Kiser, director of congregational development for the Buncombe Country Association. "The fair goers and the fair workers."

The first group is targeted for traditional, up-front evangelism. The association pays the going rate to rent a space for the missions booth where volunteers from local churches and Ray Jenkins, a full-time evangelist from Georgia, pass out tracts, give copies of the Jesus video to adults and distribute salvation bracelets to youth and older children as well as teddy bears to preschoolers, Kiser said.

Materials - and personal testimony - are available in Spanish and English.

The Baptist Men's medical/dental van is the leading show-and-tell effort and the host spot for live drama productions, and the blood pressure tests offer another opportunity for believers to come into contact with a random sample of Carolina humanity.

"Every year people leave the fair changed for all eternity because someone shared Christ with them," Higgins says. "And the man or woman or boy or girl who showed them how to be saved also are changed in deep and lasting ways."

But it is the work with the fair workers that is highly unusual and generates tears and big smiles among the volunteers.

"Carneys are on the road from mid-April to mid-November and moving all the time," said David Haynes, a member of West Asheville Baptist Church who was co-coordinator of the Break Tent ministry this year. "What opportunities do they have to build relationships? They get off work about the time the rest of the world is going to bed. Who do they talk to about a troubled marriage or problems with a co-worker or concerns over a teenage child being raised by grandparents?"

Likewise, their opportunities to find adequate health care are limited by time and finances.

"One couple here lives in a tent with four young sons and, until recently, their only income was the father's salary of $185 a week," Kiser said. "Another man I met operates a concession stand on commission - and recently worked all day and only earned two dollars."

This year produced more medical emergencies than usual.

A 71-year-old man spent a couple of days in the hospital after his blood pressure checked out at 233 over 150. A female worker who thought she had an intestinal infection had a heart attack as a Baptist volunteer rushed her to a hospital - and two more after she was admitted. A 25-year-old, who had ignored a large black growth on his arm, had it checked at the medical van and the malignant tumor discovered was removed just before it attacked his lymph glands.

Yet surprisingly, and embarrassingly for these Christian workers, the carneys say none of the other sites where they work have ministries like the Baptists have at the Mountain State Fair. "There is a church group that had a break tent where we can get sandwiches in the daytime in Gray, Tenn., but otherwise no one treats us nice like this anywhere else, " said Lila, an 11-year veteran of the fair circuit.

No one else treats their illnesses and provides free prescriptions.

No one else gives them new blankets as winter sets in, coats for themselves and their children, good dresses and slacks and new underwear.

Becky Wykle, a member of Little Cove Baptist Church in Transylvania County who coordinated the clothes closet, was so frustrated she could not find clothes to fit a very large woman that she bought two pairs of jeans and gave them to her.

The woman told her, "I've never had new jeans that fit. This is the best Christmas present I've ever had."

No one else sets up a beauty/barber shop that is open when the carneys are off work.

No one else makes late night runs to fast food restaurants, an expanded option this year thanks to a $1,000 grant from North American Mission Board hunger funds, so the fair workers can have a hamburger or hot biscuit while they visit with a new friend who is genuinely concerned for them.

No one else provides a shower packet of soap and razors and wash cloths and other personal items, then gives the leftover packets to Greg, a carney for 33 years, to distribute to new workers who join the group at the next stop.

No one else takes a $15,000 budget and "at least doubles that with contributions of money and goods from churches and businesses and interested individuals" to make an often-neglected, practically unseen people group feel the love of Christian grace.

Wayne Rober, foreground, works in the Baptist Ministry tent with long-time associate Charlie McAbee.

"We really wish folks in other places would look at what God is doing here even more closely," said Wayne Roper, a veteran of the late night work at the fair. "I wish they could have the wonderful feeling of seeing a woman raise her hand to receive Christ like I did Sunday. That's why we're here, isn't it?"

Roper almost wasn't here. Last April he was devastated by illness, clinically dying twice in the hospital. Other fair volunteers contacted the carneys in Augusta, Ga., and they besieged Roper and other Baptist friends with phone calls, cards and letters.

"They even got together and had a prayer meeting for me," he said.

Though he has not been able to work for the past five months, Roper spent as much time as he could - including his 12th wedding anniversary - at the fair and with his friends.

"Every Christian ought to do things like this," he insists. "It will get them up out of the pews and enjoying life as a Christian."

Norma Melton, Buncombe Association's director of church and community ministries, sees the fair ministry as "a way to do missions right where you live."

"A lot of these people have Asheville connections, often because they started working for the fair when they were living in homeless shelters here," she said. "But this also is a way to do missions all over the world since there are workers from Australia, Canada, Mexico and all over the United States."

Melton believes the ministry should be done "because it is a good thing to do and because it feels good - but mostly we should do it because Jesus told us to."

The volunteers intend to keep casting their leavened bread upon the fair waters as long as they can. Already some of that bread has returned to them.

Several years ago, the carneys began taking up collections for the ministry. This year the gifts totaled almost $800.

"There is a widow's mite quality to these folks - some of whom sleep under these big trucks - giving back," Higgins said. "Jesus said God will honor that.

"And all of us feel honored just to be a part of what He is doing here."