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The privilege of giving
(by Karen F. Mrnarevic - September 22, 2008)
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Photos courtesy of Rodney Haveman
Some of the group of 17 teenagers and 9 adults who spent a week this June on a work mission in Blaine, Ky. doing cleanup and house maintenance for the residents of the small, economically depressed town. Pictured, from left, back row: Jennifer Haveman, George Tomko, Jackie Sheriff, Eddie Shipman, Anthony Rivera, David Cassirer, Ryan Bohan, Josh Shulman, John Hager, Greg White, Alex Buchta, Kevin Benny, Sean Croal, Eric Croal, Rodney Haveman, Jim Lomicky; front row: Carole Shipman, Diane Lomicky, Victoria Giacalone, Molly McKendry, Jennifer Volosin, Stephanie Rivera, Terri Hager, Nicole Rivera, Erin Abrams.
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It isn’t every day that over a dozen teenagers pick up and take a work trip to
Kentucky with the only certainties being a hectic schedule of manual labor and uncomfortable sleeping quarters. But this past June, that’s exactly what Pastor Rodney Haveman of
Parkside
Community
Church in Westwood convinced 16 local students to do. At the end of a week spent cleaning up the community, building roofs, repairing porches and replacing siding, the teen volunteers, along with nine adult volunteers, left Kentucky with more than just sore muscles and farmers’ tans. They left with a renewed gratefulness for the lives they live here and the desire to do more to help those less fortunate.
“We are a small Protestant church in Westwood, but the trip was nondenominational,” says Rodney. Although some who attended the trip were members of his church, there were also Catholics, Jews, and some who don’t hold any particular religious beliefs. Rodney made no distinctions; he told them, “If you want to serve, then come. And they were all great.”
It all started seven years ago when Rodney came to the
Parkside
Community
Church with a dream to make missions and community service a priority of the church. His first Sunday on the job, incidentally, was one week before Sept. 11, 2001. Rodney’s job as community spiritual leader quickly became complicated and emotionally draining. He was up to the task, but it was a while before he was able to focus on the kind of mission work he had previously desired to organize through the church.
Getting a trip off the ground wasn’t as simple as Rodney had initially hoped, either. A
Michigan pastor who had been Rodney’s mentor while he was in seminary tried to help him plan a mission trip; but that fell through. Then, in the winter of this year, a second plan didn’t quite work out when the organization he had hoped would provide professional assistance was unable to coordinate with Parkside. Luckily, says Rodney, he had a group of dedicated church parishioners who plugged away to make the trip a reality. “Every time a door closed, I presented them with another option that required more work from them, and they said yes every time,” says Rodney.
While Rodney had some luck recruiting teens from the church to join the trip, it was his wife, Jen, a teacher at
Emerson
Junior-Senior
High School , who had the most luck getting kids excited about the mission. Upon mentioning the trip to her students, she received an enthusiastic response. After that, interest in the trip snowballed, as the teens who had agreed to go encouraged their friends to go as well.
Eventually, they decided to travel to
Blaine, Ky. , with nothing but sleeping bags and a will to help people. The group completed its mission without the aid of a church with experience in work trips or a professional building crew. In total, the trip and all the work performed cost the group about $20,000, much of which was raised through fundraising and about $5,000 of which was donated by the Reform Church of America. The group slept on the floor of an elementary school in
Blaine , and ate meals at a local community center, all to keep costs to an absolute minimum.
Despite the lean budget and all that was working against them, the group was extremely productive. Blaine, a small Appalachian town with a population of about 400, was in desperate need of assistance. “One house we cleaned up and painted half of, they had chickens in the front yard,” says Rodney, recalling that the experience was quite a shock to a crew of people from the affluent suburbs of
New York City .
“Going into it I had no idea what to expect, but in the end I think that's what made it so memorable,” says Molly McKendry, an Emerson High School Sophomore. “Every day we woke up without knowing what jobs were going to be handed to us that day, but everyone accepted them with a smile.”
When they first arrived, says Rodney, “some of the kids were scared. Those same kids were the ones who, at the end of the week, said, ‘We don’t want to leave.’ That was worth making the trip.”
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During the trip, the group slept on air mattresses on the floor of a local elementary school. They ate their meals at a local community center.
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One student who was reluctant to make the trip in the first place was Nicole Rivera, an 18-year-old from Westwood. “I graduated on June 19 and the trip was June 22,” explains Nicole. “In my mind, if I went I’d miss all the graduation parties my friends would be having.” In the end, Nicole says, “I think if I didn’t end up going I would’ve regretted it because we all had a great time and learned so much.”
She relates the story of a man named Bob whose house, which she describes as “smaller than small,” the group helped to repair by replacing the roof over his porch. After finishing the project, Bob told them to wait outside, and he ran in the house to get something. “He came back with his Bible, opened it up and handed us a pen and said, ‘Could you please sign it?’ We all signed it and above our names were the names of everyone else that was on our trip. All those signatures were all the people that made a difference to him within one week,” Nicole says. “That really touched my heart. It was so sweet that we made a difference in someone’s life so fast.”
Rodney believes that this story is a perfect example of how the trip enriched the lives of both the students and adults who attended and the people whose living conditions they worked to improve. “Part of the work was just doing the work and another part was just meeting people in the community. You get to meet people, hear about their lives, get to know them a little.” In the end, Rodney says, “the kids walk away feeling like they have really made an impact, helped somebody in need, and the person they helped feels like somebody really cares.”
Rodney is thrilled not only with the work of those who went on the trip, but also with the members of community who helped support the effort by providing donations of time, money and encouragement. For instance, without the help of Ed and Karen White, who took care of Rodney and Jen’s two young children while they were away, and whose son Greg was on the trip, Rodney and his wife would not have been able to spend a week away from home.
Also among those who provided a foundation for the trip were the parents and adult church members who put together “encouragement bags” to remind the kids of home while they were away. The bags, given to the kids on each day of the trip, included a note of well-wishing and thanks from home. Upon their return, the kids got to meet the church members who sent the encouragement bags. After meeting the group of teens, says Rodney, “one of our adult leaders said, ‘If the future is in their hands, then we’re gonna be ok.’”
Rodney says that the trip and the teens’ willingness and dedication is a testament to the evolution of spirituality among young people in . “The young people of today don’t want to sit around in a circle and talk about their faith,” he says. “They want to go out and exercise it and see what they can do with it.” He is in the process of organizing more service missions to aid those living in poverty in nearby cities like Paterson and
Hackensack .
Like the trip to Blaine, Rodney believes that a local aid mission will serve the purpose of helping the less fortunate as well as introduce teens from the
Pascack
Valley to new experiences. “I want to challenge them and open their eyes to all of the blessing they have and the tremendous variety and cultural diversity that’s all around us,” he says. Going into the experience, Rodney had wanted the trip to
Blaine to “give them [the kids] the opportunity to help and get their world opened up little bit.” And, he says, “I think that really happened.”
Karen F. Mrnarevic's e-mail address is Mrnarevic@northjersey.com.
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