Rockland nonprofit gives pastors, missionaries an affordable midcoast vacation

ROCKLAND, Maine — It wasn’t easy for Don Evans to leave his church in Kentucky to take a vacation. As his church’s pastor, he didn’t have a lot of money to spend when he did find the time to take off, so he was elated when he stumbled across an online listing of an affordable retreat in Maine.

The nonprofit Crie Haven House on Summer Street in Rockland works to give Christian leaders a vacation they can afford. For $30 or less per night, pastors or missionaries from around the world can stay in the white three-story Greek Revival home.

“On a day-to-day basis, what a pastor looks at is everybody else’s problems,” Evans said. “In the life of a pastor, you see a lot of good things, but also you see a lot of bad things happen to people and you’re involved with them when people are sick or hurting or passing away. It can be stressful sometimes and if you can go to a place like [Crie Haven House] where you can just relax and there aren’t a lot of people around, you can refresh yourself. It’s really good for us.”

That’s exactly why Celia Crie Perry, 74, of Rockland created the Crie Haven House. Her parents left her the seven-bedroom house, but she already had a home in Rockland.

“I saw the need for something like this. There’s nothing like it — not in the midcoast at least,” Perry said. “Ministers and missionaries, they need rest. They deal with people constantly.”

Perry, a retired teacher, had moved from Rockland, her hometown, for college and had stayed in the South for years. When her parents got older, she moved back to Maine to take care of them. In that time, she worked as a missionary in Maine, so she was in a network of Christians and knew how stressful the job could be. When her parents died, she saw owning the extra house as an opportunity to do something positive. Her ancestors settled the Maine island of Criehaven after the Revolutionary War, so she named the house Crie Haven as a tribute to her family.

“I felt like this was God’s idea. I was just available,” she said.

With the help of volunteers who fixed up the rooms, Perry turned the home into a retreat for Christian leaders. The house is open to any Christians who need a rest.

“It’s not that we don’t want other people, but we want to make sure pastors can get a chance to get away. It’s hard for them to take a vacation because of the cost. And they really need the rest.”

The house has been working as a retreat since 2005. Perry’s reservation book is already filling for this summer.

The house is not a bed and breakfast. It doesn’t have a staff and relies on volunteers, and its guests to do the laundry and cleaning. The guests get a bedroom and they all share a kitchen, living room, dining room, porch and bathrooms.

When the pastors and missionaries are there, they vacation in the midcoast like everyone else. Jackie Roach and her husband, who is a pastor in Kentucky, walked to the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, meandered downtown and ventured to Spruce Head to watch the lobster boats come in.

The bedrooms range from nautical in appearance, with twin beds, to antique-looking, with lace comforters and wooden writing desks. The living room has a player piano, which requires the player pump two pedals with the feet. It’s a big hit with children, Perry said. The green-carpeted kitchen has a cabinlike feel with a vinyl plaid tablecloth, old family photos on a nearby hutch and cross-stitched poems hanging in frames.

Nothing about the house is overtly religious, except maybe the library, which is full of books with titles like “The Holy Spirit.”

The Crie Haven House has welcomed people from Brazil, Austria, Africa and all around the United States. What Perry rarely sees is someone from Maine. Most locals don’t even know the house is there, she said.

“I wish more local pastors would know about it and use it,” she said.