NS Sterling Scholars, missionaries serve Fairview museum
North Sanpete Sterling Scholars who completed a service project at the Fairview Museum include: Above from left: Liz Madsen (General Studies), Eneli Silva (Foreign Language), Harrison Cook (Math), Spencer Olson (Music), Adam Cox (Social Science), Maren Bench (Drama), and Azyln Freeman (FACS).
Elder Thomas and Elder Rowell work with Maria Ricks on xeriscaping outside the Fairview Museum
FAIRVIEW–The Fairview Museum has benefited recently from a series of service projects. In July a group of North Sanpete High School Sterling Scholars dug in to beautify the east side of the museum’s outdoor display, and last week a couple of missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took an opportunity to pitch in as well.
“I love serving,” says Liz Madsen, General Sterling Scholar for North Sanpete High School. “It brings me joy to know that I am making someone else’s day easier with just a little extra effort on my part.”
This is the attitude of all the Sterling Scholars of North Sanpete High School who provided service at the Fairview Museum with the organizers of this service project, Madsen and Adam Cox. This year, all of the Sterling Scholars agreed to do meaningful projects that would serve the towns in the North Sanpete area.
As their first service project, the group chose the Fairview Museum of History and Art, which provides a vast pool of historic items and records of Sanpete County. It contains hundreds of paintings and sculptures by well-known artists, from the world renown — such as Avard Fairbanks, to local talented artists who gain respect and public exposure through the museum’s Rotating Artists program. With two full buildings and a large outside exhibit, volunteer staff always accept the offer of a lending hand.
“As the Social Science Sterling Scholar, I knew I wanted to do projects related to history,” said Cox. “Because of this, my first idea was to find some way to help the Fairview Museum.”
The Sterling Scholars’ daunting project was to clear out all the weeds which had marred the view of the large outside exhibit of pioneer tools, transportation, and machinery. It took seven of the scholars almost three hours. The project made a huge difference by making the exhibit more attractive, environmentally healthy, and welcoming to the public.
After completing the service Eneli Silva said, “I am so grateful for the opportunity to help my community. I love being able to serve as a Sterling Scholar, which is helping me to find more ways to help others!”
Madsen summed up the day’s activity saying, “The Sterling Scholars want to help beautify our county and find ways to serve the people who live here, so we found a way to help the museum and the amazing people who work there, by beautifying the grounds.”
Elder Thomas and Elder Rowell, missionaries from the LDS church also joined with Fairview residents to complete outdoor projects.
Recently a group of regional leaders for the church took part in an online Zoom meeting. During the meeting members of the church were urged to help the missionaries serving in their areas fill some of their time with service projects. Just like others, the missionaries’ day-to-day routine has been affected by COVID and they want to help the communities they are in.
The elders worked alongside Maria Ricks, who organized the project, and Blake Madsen to do some major landscaping in front of the museum’s Heritage Building. Drought had taken a toll on the few plants that were there and the beds were filled with weeds. The volunteers have been working to replace the water-needy landscaping with xeriscaping–a type of landscaping that uses little water.
Below, on the left, is Elder Thomas, of Ft. Worth, Texas, commented while resting from the heavy work, that “It is so awesome to be able to help the community, meet some more new faces in town, and also occupy my time in doing something good.”
On the right is Elder Rowell from Spokane, WA. He thoughtfully said: “During the COVID time we tend to think about what we CAN’T do, rather than what we CAN be doing.
Service is one of the things people can do that helps the whole community.” Maria added that we all feel better when doing good, both about ourselves & our town.”
Something good always comes when a few people decide to do something positive with their time.
