I never did write about Maine... did I ?!?

Well - here goes...

I'm no real stranger to sleeping in the Church! Not in the pews... or at least not often in the pews! When I've slept it's been for overnights with the junior youth group and the senior youth group, so I thought I was prepared. When some of the youth group wanted to talk to me about a project that they wanted to do, I thought "no problem! I bet its another fun event, possibly ending with a sleep over in the church... I wonder what they have planned" If truth be told, nothing could have truly prepared me to hear these words as I walked into the St. Hilda's room "So, we have been doing a lot of research and are pretty sure we want to take the DARE group on a YouthWorks Mission trip for 10 days to coastal Maine - Calais to be specific, and we need another adult to go...." Isn't it amazing what kids can come up with? The hopeful looks on their faces could only elicit one answer "You've got yourself another leader!" And then the whirlwind of planning sprung into action (by this I mean the youth group leader - wow is he organized!) and we left on Saturday July 1st. 4:30am comes early - the sun hasn't even risen - did you know that???

This was all new ground for me, literally because I've never been east of Montreal, and mentally, because I've never been on a mission trip before and I had no idea what to expect. Calais is a picturesque little rural town where the average kid starts drinking at 14 and probably comes from a family who lives below the poverty line (of $19,500). But beneath the flaking paint on the houses, and the families scraping to make ends meet (or rather meat...) exists a community really uncertain of its future. We were granted the opportunity of spending time getting to know this community, and in the end, falling in love with it. We laughed with their kids at "Kids Club", sang hymns with their seniors at nursing homes, scraped and painted the house of an amazing family and cried with a woman whose father died the morning we arrived to paint. We worked alongside youth and adults from Newark NJ, Upstate NY, Toronto (Islington United Church!), and each other. We were from different denominations, different social backgrounds, different ages and we all came together to help the struggling community of Calais; we came to love our neighbours as ourselves. I'm not going to tell you any more, but I wish you could tlak to these kids. I wish you could ask the them what happened. See the light on their faces when they tell you about the car trips, kids, piano's, ladders, conquering fears and daring themselves to do something that they never thought they could. These teenagers impressed me, and I am so proud of them.

And I did end up sleeping in a Church, just not ours. I'm grateful to the United Methodist Church in Calais for hosting YouthWorks, giving us that floor to sleep on and allowing us the time to watch stereotypes shatter.