By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
March 25, 2004

SPENCER - Two high school students made crosses as part of a confirmation project at Sacred Heart Parish in Spencer.

Ryne and Tyne Matthews, a sophomore and junior, decided to make the crosses as a service project for Tyne's confirmation.

"We got the idea from my cousin," said Tyne. "She made crosses for all of her aunts for Christmas."

Her parents suggested that they make the crosses, sell them and give the money to the religious education program at Sacred Heart.

It took the Matthews family about 40 hours to put all of the crosses together. They bought rectangular nails and glued the nails together in the shape of a cross. Their father, Burlin Matthews, helped by cleaning the rust off the nails. They glued pins to the back of some of the crosses, so people could pin the cross on their shirt or coat.

"They heard about this. They thought 'we could do this together. It is something that we could accomplish together and help out our parish,'" said Alissa Schipper, youth minister at Sacred Heart. "It puts their faith into action. It helps them find out where their strengths are, what they can do and that doing something small can help someone incredibly. We have given them the tools to do this, now they need to take them and do it."

They originally made 500 crosses and had enough demand to make 200 more.

"I've never really done a service project before," said Tyne. "It felt really good to know that I was helping out someone else."

She added that this is a way for them to show people that there are good kids out there and they don't do drugs, but they do good things for the community.

"Our parish was proud of these two teenagers that were doing something like this together," said Schipper. "They got to see teenagers doing something positive. They don't always get that focus. If you don't have a teenager living with you or if you don't work with them, sometimes you forget that there are really great ones out there."

At the beginning of Lent, Ryne and Tyne sold the crosses in the vestibule after the three Masses at Sacred Heart one weekend. They made announcements at all of the Masses as well to let parishioners know that the crosses were available.

"A lot of people have told us that it was a nice thing that we made the crosses and how they use it for the Lenten season," said Ryne. "It is a religious offering that we give out to them to help them with their religion."

They raised about $700 by selling the crosses. Ryne commented that giving the money raised through selling the crosses to the religious education program was part of the project because it would help the program provide different things to the students.

"We know that the money is going toward the religious education program," said Tyne. "They can help students who are going to Camp CAYOCA who can't afford it. They can buy new books and things."

"No one knew how big it would be," said Schipper. "It ended up being bigger than we ever thought it would be. It was neat."