Column

A road trip to discover how other half lives

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published July 27, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Lance Aram Rothstein | Times] The Rev. William Roen paints a building Thursday at Farmworkers Self Help Inc. in Dade City on his annual trip.

During his eight years at Nativity Lutheran in Weeki Wachee, the Rev. William Roen led an effort to collect shoes for the children of migrant workers in Dade City's Tommytown.

He left in 2003 for Church of the Ascension Evangelical Lutheran in Savannah, but he has never forgotten these poor people.

Each summer, the Rev. Roen, 57, returns with an energetic band of youngsters.

They paint buildings, scrub and weed. In the afternoons, they have fun with the children at the Farmworkers Self Help summer camp.

This weeklong trip gives the mostly white, mostly middle class, high school and college students a chance to live and work among Hispanic families. It's a world very different from their own.

Some return home transformed.

"You cannot change the world by spending a week, but you can change yourself," Roen said.

He returned again this week. We caught up as he knelt in the garden in front of the farm workers' office on Calle de Milagros Street of Miracles, pouring red bark mulch around the shrubbery. Nearby stood Sarah Anderson, a recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. Anderson had been on mission trips to Haiti, and Biloxi, Miss. This was her first trip to Dade City.

While her former classmates were job hunting, Anderson, 23, stood in the heat and humidity re-lettering the office sign out front. She studied photography but also can handle a paintbrush.

"If you have certain gifts, it's important to use them not just for your career but to help better the world," she said.

Think she has heard Roen preach?

After 25 years in the ministry, it's still just a matter of passing on what he learned from his grandmother: "It's not about what you get, but what you can give."

For the group of young people, visiting Tommytown is like visiting a Third World country, without the fear of violence. And the timing for this year's group couldn't have been better.

During the contentious immigration debate this spring, Roen was dismayed by the hostility toward immigrants - even among church folks in Savannah.

The preacher knew it would be important for these young people to meet migrant workers and their children, hear their dreams, meet longtime Farmworkers Self Help Inc.'s director Margarita Romo.

Their work will define their lives in a positive way for years to come.

What a great reason for a road trip.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 27, 2007, 06:22:25]