Maine, Vacationland. Surely many of you have seen that motto right below the lobster or loon on license plates from the great state of Maine. Many of you have then been prompted to ask "Why?, why do people only know Maine as a vacationland?", or "Why do people only talk about Maine when it comes time for trips during the summer, why do they not talk about Maine during other times of the year?". After a year of intensive on-site research I have stumbled on a possible answer to those puzzling questions.

It is interesting how you can go to a place and travel around while never actually seeing that place. It seems to happen to most of us on vacation. We travel somewhere to 'see the sights' and all we end up 'seeing' is an endless stream of roadside landscaping, downtown tree-planting projects and freshly paved roads. Many of us are oblivious to what that area is really like. In America we are very proficient at decorating around our problems. Sometimes I think that is why trips to developing countries are such eye-openers for Americans. Developing countries lack the resources to decorate around their problems. When we go on workcamps and disaster relief projects we are struck not only by the magnanimity of the problems but by the fact that they hit us full-force.

I had been to Maine before my year of BVS. It is a beautiful state, bordered on the east by the rocky Atlantic coast and the awe-inspiring Acadia National Park, and framed on the west by the White Mountains. In the midst is the great Baxter State Park which is better known as the home of Mount Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachain Tail.

Sandwiched between those natural wonders is another story. A story of poverty, hunger, transportation problems, educational problems, and of families caught in the middle as businesses struggle to find ways to survive in a high-tech society. Those are stories that members of the Church of the Brethren saw when they decided to begin a BVS project in Lewiston in 1978.

Since then, the project has attempted to help provide food and shelter and spread the Gospel to the people of Maine. During the the past 20 years, three Church of the Brethren congregations have been started around Lewiston. The churches in turn have started a parochial school.

With BVS I served as a teacher's aide at the Lewiston Area Mission School. I did not really know what to expect, but was relatively surprised to find myself serving primarily as a Spanish teacher and secretary for the school. I worked at the school four days a week, which made me available to work on community projects every Friday. If you are a person who values varied experiences, my Fridays would have been for you. Among other activities, I built a shed, put siding on a house, planted yards, insulated and worked on building houses, did a fair amount of painting, and fixed up the school building. More importantly, I spent Fridays getting to know people, hearing their stories, and talking and learning about Jesus Christ and faith.

The school week was a learning experience for me. Teaching a subject that I did not feel terribly proficient in caused me to spend more time studying than I had in years. Fridays became a learning day of their own-- performing different tasks; dealing with cold weather; dealing with frustration; and learning about service.

Many Fridays, school vacation days, and the summer vacation found me working at the other BVS project in the area, the Good Shepherd Food Bank. The Food Bank probably taught me the most in Maine. It taught me about how a small group of people, when committed to a single purpose (in this case, seeing the hungry fed) and backed by faith, can accomplish anything.

It was at the food bank that I really learned about Maine. I got to know and worked with people caught in a viscious cycle of dependance on government aid that stretched back generations. I became friends with people working several jobs and volunteering at the food bank just so they could feed their children. I saw desperation and frustration, good people caught in terrible situations, people who could take the world by the tail if someone would only help them get on their feet.

When I look back at my term of BVS, sometimes I think about how much I learned, while at other times I simply realize how little I know. However, either way, I know that we can look without seeing and know that I will never look at vacations the same way.