Rev. David Turner
Rector of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Hampton
Since 2016, a team of extremely hardworking volunteers from
St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Hampton, N.B. has been striving to realize their
dream of providing housing for community members who would otherwise have to
leave Hampton when no longer able to maintain their own homes. Thanks to the
dedication and persistence of those very passionate and capable volunteers,
that dream is just days away from becoming a reality.
On land donated by St. Paul’s Anglican Church and the
Anglican Diocese of Fredericton, a brand-new independent senior’s living
complex, called DeMille Place, and comprised of 21 units, is rapidly nearing
completion. The independent not-for-profit corporation created to complete this
project is in the process of welcoming future tenants who are thrilled that
they will be able to stay in the community they love.
As the Rector (a.k.a. Pastor) of St. Paul’s, it’s been my
honour to journey with the volunteers that have pushed this project forward.
What has struck me most while on this journey has been the sheer generosity, in
terms of time and effort and material resources, that has gone into making this
project possible. Without the enormous generosity of the DeMille Place volunteers
and the time and effort that they have put into forming generous partnerships
between the local church, the Diocese, the municipality, and provincial and
federal agencies, this project would not have been possible.
The question that comes to my mind then, as I wonder how we
might see more of this kind of thing happening in our region, is this: How
might we cultivate and reproduce the kind of generosity that’s been
demonstrated in the DeMille Place project? And a second question follows out of
it: What might be possible, not only in the area of rural and aging housing,
but in every area relevant to community flourishing, if we did?
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