Butler Resident Participates in Volunteerism Week With Church Group

For one week in August, St. Mary’s Parish in Pompton Lakes sends its youth on an annual visit to Doddridge County, West Virginia. This year, Kaitlin Horner of , along with five other teenagers and two adult chaperones, joined other youth groups from Binghamton, Syracuse and Long Island, NY, Chester, NJ, and Boston, MA, for a week of service, community, simplicity and prayer at Nazareth Farm.

Nazareth Farm, located within the Appalachian region of West Virginia in the town of Salem, is a Roman Catholic community of volunteers inspired by the Gospels and social teachings of the church. By focusing on the cornerstones of prayer, community, simplicity and service, the teens were devoted to developing relationships, eliminating sub-standard housing through home repair in rural West Virginia and providing a communal experience of Church as a center of action and prayer.

The week was designed to bring complete strangers into greater community with one another by person-to-person interaction within the schedule of an honest hard day’s work. Everyone there was broken up into smaller work groups, which became one’s mini family for the week. Assigned to a different job each day, the teens enthusiastically tackled jobs that would daunt the average homeowner. The jobs focused on repairing houses out in the community for families who cannot afford professional laborers.

The home repair jobs consisted of painting, roofing, siding, light construction and landscaping. However, the job was not just to repair a house, but to interact with the families by listening to their stories, sharing each other’s gifts and growing in community with them. One other job of the week for each group consisted of staying back on the farm, cleaning, cooking, making beds and creating a warm environment for the hard-working groups to come home to each day.

As much as this was a week of service and community for the teens of St. Mary’s, it was also one of simplicity and prayer. Texting, processed foods, TVs, and iPods, were replaced with actual conversation, organic and homemade foods, simple card games and finding God in others. Five-gallon bucket showers trumped modern showers and outhouses dominated over traditional toilets.

Instead of staying up late to be on the computer or watch TV, the teens stayed up late with each other talking, laughing, recounting stories of their day and playing cards. Prayer also infused itself within the week, whether it was in a group setting, or individually. For one week, these modern teens were asked to remove the noise from the iPod and listen to the sounds of God; in nature, in others and in themselves. By the end of the week, each and every teen had created and led a group prayer service with and for people they had just met only a few days before.

St Mary’s gives thanks to its youth for their dedication to service and looks forward to next year’s visit to Nazareth Farm where the blessing of community will transform houses to homes and faith to action.