Trinity Church youth group helps families in Maine
By:Kemper Diehl
In Maine we never ate any lobster, never saw any moose, never spent any time at the shore.
But although our trip to Maine was not typical, it was certainly one that most of us will never forget. Our group to Maine consisted of 18 high school students, and for the most part we hardly knew one another.
We were all associated with Trinity Church in Princeton, which sends a group of high schoolers on a trip every other year to help less fortunate communities along the East Coast. We were traveling to a small farming community in Maine where we were to spend the week repairing houses for people who could not afford to bring in professionals.
We left Princeton driving north toward Farmington, Maine, early on a Saturday morning. Our retinue of three vans didn’t pull into the parking lot behind a University of Maine dorm until late that night. We drowsily found our rooms and went to bed without much idea of what the morning or even the upcoming week might hold in store for us.
The next morning we met Stu, with whom we were to spend the week working. Stu is the coordinator of a Farmington housing program that is a part of M.A.T.E, which stands for Mission At The Eastward. During the same time period, the youth group from Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton worked on house repairs 15 miles north from where we were. While we did not work together, we met over dinner several times.
Stu is a warm-hearted, optimistic man who has devoted his life to serving his community. Stu debriefed us on our mission, answering four of the five "W" questions – where we would be working, what we would be doing, when we would be doing it, and with whom we would be working.
Stu left us to answer the fifth question of "Why?" for ourselves.
It was important to Stu that we attend church with him at the small chapel to which he belonged. Stu’s church was beautiful in its modesty. It was the typical New England style church with plain white walls, long elegant windows along the sides, and a bell tower above the door.
After church, we had our first sample of western Maine gourmet, which consisted of red hot dogs, Silver Spring cola and Black Fly ice cream. We then spent the rest of Sunday swimming in the freezing water of a river that runs through Farmington. We topped off the cool Maine day with a couple of pizzas from Mama’s, a local joint.
While eating dinner we held a meeting and discussed the potential difficulties that we would face when going to our work sites. We were unsure of how we would be received by the owners of the houses, and were nervous that the owners would be upset by the fact that we were doing them charity.
We decided that the only way to avoid this potential hazard would be to always make the extra effort to be friendly; we wanted our work and presence in their homes to be well received. We knew that it was a delicate issue, and did not want our work to be a constant reminder to the home owners of some rich Princeton kids who came because they needed help.
With this in mind, we woke up bright and early Monday morning, and divided ourselves into four work groups, each team going to a different house. I went off to the home of an elderly couple with seven fellow workers. Stu informed us that we were to be painting their house, which hadn’t had a fresh coat of paint put on since it was built in the late 70s. Another group was going to repair a roof, and two were going to rebuild decks that had rotted through.
The people whose house we were painting, the Luces, were not the hostile, poverty-stricken people that I had expected after our preparation the night before. They were quiet, gentle people who spoke with thick Maine accents.
Like many of the Maine folk we met, the Luces neglected to pronounce their R’s, saying, for example, "fam" instead of "farm." The two of them lived in a small, cozy house that Mr. Luce had built himself after their other house burned down.
Mr. Luce had a beautiful piece of land, probably about five or six acres, and a large garden that we always found him working in when we drove up in the morning. Meandering around his property, Mr. Luce had two cows, a mother and calf, and four or five dogs that stayed around back. Mr. Luce also had a couple of sheds that he had used for machinery when he was still farming his land.
By the end of our week with Mr. and Mrs. Luce, our relationships with them had progressed a great deal. On the first day Mr. and Mrs. Luce did not talk to us too much, and just let us do the work. But, by the end of our week with them, they had become very open; sharing with us their life stories and bringing us into their house for treats.
In the middle of the afternoon on Thursday, Mrs. Luce came outside and informed us that she had a surprise waiting for us in the kitchen. We all reported to the kitchen immediately, predominately to get out of the heat. As we crowded into the house, we discovered that Mrs. Luce had prepared individual glasses of warm, homemade pudding, with heavy whipped cream on top. Mrs. Luce knew how to spoil a bunch of high schoolers.
In the middle of the week, Stu came by the dorm with his wife after we had eaten dinner to inform us about the culture and history of Farmington. During the session, Stu told us of a picture he had of the view from his house 50 or 60 years before he moved in. The picture showed miles upon miles of corn fields, but now, looking out on Farmington from the same spot, those cornfields no longer exist.
Farmington, as a community, has suffered from the decline of farming, and most of its citizens suffer from poverty because they can no longer survive off of their land.
On the last day of our work at Mr. Luce’s house, he told us how he had once owned more than 50 acres of land that he farmed to make his living. But as huge companies moved in and he couldn’t compete, he was forced to sell most of what he had.
Many of the farmers, like Mr. Luce, were forced to leave their business and find other jobs. People in Farmington are beginning to recover from the collapse of their industry, but still do not have money for things like another coat of paint, or a new roof. We were there to help in that way.
Other groups were able to finish their projects before the week was over and move on to new projects. In total, our team repaired 10 houses during the week. We added an access ramp, put on one roof and repaired another, painted two houses, tore down and rebuilt decks, and fixed porches.
The people of Maine were warm, friendly and glad to have our company. At the end of the week, our group held a dinner for all of the people whose houses we had spent the week working on. We were able to meet other families and people of Farmington, who were all delightful, and talk to them about our experiences in Maine.
Not only was Maine a paradise of wonderful weather, it was filled with wonderful people we were lucky to have come into contact with.