{"id":365,"date":"2019-12-16T02:30:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T02:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/?p=365"},"modified":"2019-12-17T18:54:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T18:54:38","slug":"maggie-simpson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/2019\/12\/16\/maggie-simpson\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie Simpson"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Lane Kadish ’20<\/em><\/p>\n

As I approach the front of the building, my fingers are going numb and my face hurts from the biting cold. Before I can even knock, the door opens and a smiling woman ushers me inside. Maggie Simpson introduces herself and welcomes me to Living Water Community Church<\/a>. Maggie, a church member, serves on the board of the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter<\/a>, a role she took on after encountering the staff’s friendliness and wholehearted commitment. Her Christian faith, Maggie said, compelled her <\/span>to support the shelter and help it grow. <\/span><\/p>\n

Maggie’s hope is to be an extension of Jesus\u2019s love to others; her motivation, however, stems from more than the external desire to do good. At a very young age, Maggie found herself a single mother with two small children. She needed to drop out of college in order to work and provide for her kids. \u201cIt was a struggle,\u201d she recounts, \u201cbut that also motivated me. I can understand how difficult it can be to provide a home, to pay all the bills, and I can see how easily life happens and people can become homeless or just not know where to turn.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cSpiritual care,\u201d Maggie emphasizes when I ask her how she sees herself enriching the lives of homeless shelter guests. \u201cThe homeless shelter does a wonderful job when they are placing people in the community, they continue to follow them for a period of time.  But what happens when that time is done? It\u2019s so nice for these people, if they desire, to have a relationship with a church of their choosing so that they have continued support.\u201d Maggie has experience in providing spiritual care and already oversees the spiritual care program at Northern Light Inland Hospital. Part of her job is to arrange for clergy to visit patients who want to speak with someone about emotional or spiritual concerns. \u201cSpiritual wellness is so important in the healing process of any patient. If a patient doesn\u2019t want any visitors, we don\u2019t go in. But if they need help, we hope to be there for them.\u201d  <\/span><\/p>\n

Maggie admires the devotion of her fellow board members at the homeless shelter, some who have been on the board since the shelter\u2019s conception nearly 30 years ago.  She hopes to be a source of experience and expertise in establishing a spiritual care program at the shelter. The shelter\u2019s motto is \u201ca shelter that rebuilds life with a hand up, not a hand out,\u201d and Maggie\u2019s visions certainly fit into this goal. \u201cI\u2019d like the guests there to feel that there is always some place where they can go to find camaraderie… When they get back out on their own, it can be scary because life happens and you need to have good support underneath you.\u201d She continues, \u201cWe need one another. Life is hard and some people open up well to others and other people have a tendency to feel like they can do it on their own, but still just having people that you know are willing to talk with you and help you through those tough times is important.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Maggie foresees building a coalition of faith leaders, like Jon Avery, who have a desire to reach a diversity of people in the shelter and who can be there for guests with all types of faiths. \u201cWhen I think about anything faith-based,\u201d she notes, \u201cit\u2019s about knowing that not everyone agrees, but we are willing to be open and sit down and listen to all sides. [We must] think about the guests and their well-being first.\u201d She would also like to develop a number of services for families at the shelter, such as child care so parents can attend a Bible study knowing their kids are in good hands, or community events where kids can just have fun and be kids. <\/span><\/p>\n

As I walk the short distance from the church back to my car, immediately shivering from the cold, I can\u2019t help but empathize with the guests at the shelter. I can\u2019t imagine what it would be like to be forced out into the cold, lacking the ability to obtain affordable housing, and I realize how essential the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter must be. Maggie has seen the impact of the shelter firsthand: \u201cWhen you go into [the shelter] and talk to some of the guests, you get the feeling that they are so well taken care of.\u201d She hopes to further enrich the lives of homeless shelter guests by improving the spiritual aspect of this care.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Lane Kadish ’20 As I approach the front of the building, my fingers are going numb and my face hurts from the biting cold. Before I can even knock, the door opens and a smiling woman ushers me inside. Maggie Simpson introduces herself and welcomes me to Living Water Community Church. Maggie, a church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7980,"featured_media":494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7980"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/faithinwaterville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}