Mission Matawan aims ‘to learn, to love, to serve’

Above: Perry Neare, Diana Noble and Tom Sung dismantle and move a trailer on a Morganville property as part of Mission Matawan’s work on July 1. Left: Kyle Wolf removes dead wood on the property. Beneath a pile of trash and brush, an unopened bottle of champagne was discovered, completely intact, by a volunteer from the First Presbyterian Church of Matawan.

The Mission Matawan crew spent a minute to laugh about it: it was the prettiest thing in a gravel lot enclosed by dead wood and poison ivy.

But just like the rest of the trash — a bowling ball, mini-fridge, three bicycles and a completely dismantled trailer — the champagne was tossed into the growing pile of junk that Mission Matawan volunteers found at the Morganville property.

In its ninth year, Mission Matawan performed cleanups and repairs at 24 homes of local elderly and disabled people this summer. Volunteers from the First Presbyterian Church — as well as members of the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Youth Group in Keyport — spent the week of June 27 digging, cleaning and fixing houses in Matawan, Aberdeen and other Bayshore towns.

Volunteers usually arrive for an 8 a.m. hot breakfast at the church, where a poster instructs them to “eat, register and socialize.” They are divided into teams depending on the jobs scheduled for that day, the number of volunteers available and their individual skill sets.

Project chair Diana Noble said the jobs include anything from yard work and painting to masonry work and light building projects.

“Where possible, we try and provide something a little extra, such as unrequested flowers and mulch, or painting some unprimed bare wood,” she said. “We also do a lot of emotional and spiritual ministry.”

Mission Matawan prides itself on being more than just a community service project. It encourages volunteers to build strong relationships, whether it’s with the people they’re helping or with a volunteer they meet when cleaning out a gutter.

“Many of our clients could be our own neighbors,” a Mission Matawan pamphlet reads. “Personal contact changes things. Come to learn, to love, to serve, and be prepared to be changed yourself.”

“You pick up job skills around here from people with know-how,” said volunteer Tom Sung, an Old Bridge resident. “Young people can learn a few things they’ll have to know as a homeowner one day.” Sung’s 15-year-old daughter, Monica, started out on a scaffold, painting a client’s staircase. Before long, she was using power tools and sledgehammers to take down an outhouse in Cliffwood Beach.

“It was so much fun,” she said.

Highlights from previous years’ missions include painting an entire house in one day, cleaning out a stroke patient’s mobile home, and reinforcing a deck sinking in a homeowner’s backyard.

“All the stories are more heartbreaking every year,” Noble said.

She gave the example of one of this year’s clients, a 99-year-old woman living solely on her deceased husband’s pension. “It barely gives her enough money for food, and it doesn’t really cover her medical needs. She certainly can’t afford to pay for lawn care of any kind,” she said.

On another of this year’s jobs, volunteers improvised while transporting the equipment needed to repaint a client’s backyard deck.

“If this was Make-A-Wish [Foundation], they would have just put a gate in the fence,” Noble said. “So we did.”

Noble said many of Mission Matawan’s clients appreciate the work so much that they pay it forward in some way. Some make monetary donations, others donate supplies.

“A lot of our poorest clients are the most generous in the sense of paying it forward for next year’s mission,” she said.

Noble said that the people — volunteers and clients — keep her hopeful for the future.

“They not only learn skills, they step up with compassion toward people they often have never met. That’s what it takes to build strong communities,” she said. “In these tough times of a dog-eat-dog world, it’s a balm to my soul.”