Betty Doyle’s family sends thanks

Dear Friends, 

The cards, notes, calls and visits in response to Betty’s death have meant a great deal to all of us.  We thank you for your thoughtfulness and caring. They have helped us at a most difficult time.

Al Doyle, Lloyd and Sally and families

In Memoriam

Diaconal Minister Margie N. Hardy died of heart failure at home on Saturday, October 26, 2002. Memorial services were Wednesday, Oct. 30, at Ross United Methodist Church in Dyersburg, Tenn. The Rev. Russell Morrow and Dr. Mark Matheny officiated. Burial was in Memorial Park Cemetery in Dyersburg. Additional Memorial Services led by Dr. Matheny and the Rev. Robert Clark  were held for the Rev. Hardy at 2:00 PM Saturday, November 2 in the chapel of St. John’s UMC.

Correspondence for the Hardy family should be directed to the McKendree District Office, c/o Dr. Mark Matheny, 5118 Park Avenue, Suite 610, Memphis, TN 38117-5714. Memorials will be designated for children’s ministries and should also be sent to the district address with checks payable to McKendree District Administration. The Rev. Hardy leaves three sisters; Martha Shockley, Toledo, Ohio; Magnolia Fowlkes and Esther Johnson of Milwaukee; and a brother, John Hardy of Memphis.

In Memoriam

The Rev. George G. F. McKelvy, 82, retired minister in the McKendree District, died November 6, 2002 at Methodist-University Hospital in Memphis from complications from neurotrauma suffered in a fall at home, Oct. 26. McKelvy served as pastor of Methodist churches in western Tennessee and western Kentucky for over 50 years.

The Memorial Service was Monday, November 11, at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Memphis. There was no visitation.

In addition to his wife, Winnie, McKelvy is survived by four children, their spouses, eight grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a sister. Correspondence should be sent to Mrs. Winnie McKelvy, 1739 Tutwiler, Memphis, TN 38107.

Position Available

• Part time Youth Director: Trinity United Methodist Church, Memphis. Please contact the Rev. John Bonson Sr., Trinity UMC, 1738 Galloway, Memphis, TN 38112; phone: (901) 274-6895. E-mail: wesley123@bellsouth.net.

United Methodist Association of Communicators awards

The Memphis Conference United Methodist Reporter was recognized at the national meeting of United Methodist Communicators in New Orleans, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, as the Best in Division for Newspapers. This is one of the highest awards a newspaper can receive. The award specifically cited stories about Heartsong United Methodist Church by Cathy Farmer and “Sparky, the dog,” by the Rev. Dan Weathersbee, as “insightful and interesting.”

Cathy Farmer, Memphis Conference communications director, received Best in Division for Writing. The award-winning entry was Farmer’s news feature highlighting Reelfoot Rural Ministries and its partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture in repairing homes for Lake County’s indigent elderly.

“Real Food for Thought,” the poster designed by Golden Circle Graphics in Jackson, Tenn. for the 2002 Reporter subscription campaign, won Best in Division for Advertising.

CrossRoads team goes to Uganda

Buvuma Island a ‘sobering, heart-wrenching experience’ for 8 from Collierville

CrossRoads team members, Collins Keenum, Pam McKinney, Thomas Potts, Mike Graff, David Essary, Leesa McDowell, Russ Womble and John Holt helped build a school on Buvuma Island in Uganda, Africa.

By The Outreach Ministry Team

CrossRoads UMC

The airport at Memphis never looked better than it did on  Sunday, October 20, at 12:57 PM. That’s when eight members of CrossRoads United Methodist Church returned from a Volunteers in Action work trip to Buvuma Island, Uganda, Africa.

Families and members of the Collierville, Tenn. congregation did a lot of hugging, crying and cheering as the team of six men and two women, each cherishing a deeper appreciation of the United States of America, came up the airplane ramp.

The Rev. John Holt, CrossRoads pastor, said of the trip, “After experiencing the events of these last few days, I will never again complain about government, taxes or the U.S.A.!”

Two years ago, David and Sherry Essary, members of CrossRoads, had as guests in their home Phillip Knight and his family. The Knights, long time friends of the Essarys, are missionaries assigned by the Congregational Methodist Church to Uganda. They were home on furlough.

The Essarys invited other CrossRoads members to dinner to hear stories by the Knights relating the need for churches in remote areas of Africa.

After the Rev. Knight explained how much it would cost for materials to build a church on Buvuma Island, the CrossRoads Outreach Ministry Team decided to undertake the project.

Holt suggested that the church send a work team under the direction of Collins Keenum to provide the labor. Keenum, an engineer, heads up the church’s annual building and repair week at Reelfoot Rural Ministries in Lake County.

God’s people still live in mud and grass huts

Buvuma Island is located on Lake Victoria in Uganda. It’s made up of a chain of 52 smaller islands. Buvuma itself is 18 miles long and 11 miles wide. On the island, God’s people still live in mud and grass one-room huts with dirt floors. There’s no electricity, no fresh water for drinking, no education, unsanitary living conditions, and little creativity. Due to numerous diseases and parasites, only two of ten children reach adulthood. The average life expectancy is 42. Average annual family income is $200.

Holt said you could sense that many of the people had lost hope. “You could see it in their faces.”

Visiting Buvuma Island, a third world country, was like stepping back in time 200 years, Holt said.  “The poverty was ten times worse than anything we have ever seen.”

Life might be hard, but Christianity on the island is increasing.

CrossRoads team would build  a school and plan a church

CrossRoads’ trip had a two-fold purpose. One was to secure a building site for a church in Toujje, a village on the south end of the island. The building will be multi-purpose: it will be used as a church, as a school for the children, and as a medical clinic.

Constructed with a concrete floor, the building will be the first permanent structure on the south end of the island.

CrossRoads’ second purpose in going was to build a permanent building for the school teachers in Kikongo, a village on the north end of the island chain. Kikongo already has a church building with a dirt floor.

The VIA team, the first work team to visit the island since the country gained independence from colonial rule in the 1950s, worshipped in Kikongo on Sunday, October 14.

The Outreach Ministry Team learned early this year that several thousand more dollars would be needed to purchase building materials. New money making projects were explored. Dinners were held in members’ homes. The project would have been impossible without the monetary and prayerful support of CrossRoads members.

Teachers’ salaries underwritten by CrossRoads youth

The youth of CrossRoads have taken as their mission project the support of the teachers’ salaries. School on Buvuma Island should begin in January, 2003. School supplies, curriculum, books and equipment will be purchased as a part of CrossRoads’ continued financial support.

One member of the work team was so touched by the unprecedented poverty that he personally donated the money required for medications for one year in the Kikongo village.

Sudanese children die daily in overcrowded refugee camps

Another member of the work team, a nurse practitioner, was able to spend four days in the refugee camp near Kampala set up for the Sudanese refugees pouring into Uganda. She worked with Dr. Shadrack, who donates two days a week to treat patients at the camp. There are about 50,000 refugees in two camps, very few doctors and very few medical necessities. Hospitals have four children per bed with some on pallets. Children dying daily broke her heart.

“It was a sobering and heart wrenching experience to watch the children dying,” Holt said, “and not have the simplest of medicines to make the difference.”

The Nationals, as the natives of Buvuma Island are called, were very appreciative. Although their food is limited, they wanted to share what they had with the team. “The people are so gracious,” Holt commented. “When you give them something, they want to give you something in return.”

Everyone on the team said they wanted to return to the island in the future–perhaps for the 2003 dedication of the new church which will be called CrossRoads.

Interest has already begun for a second Volunteers in Action project.

The lives and the priorities of the eight team members are forever changed!

Home-churned butter and other wonders

By Kenneth Z. Turner

retired pastor

Some 70 years ago, when I was in my teens, the world was very different from what it is now, in this Year of our Lord, 2002. We had never heard of such things as radio, television, electric lights in our homes, hot and cold running water, and toilets inside the house. Oh, there were some homes in the cities that boasted such things as these and bathtubs. But not where we lived.

In the country, if we heard an automobile or an airplane coming, we ran over each other trying to get to a place where we could see such sights.

Many activities that we enjoyed in those days have been gone for ages. We washed our clothes in tubs of water, boiled them in big kettles over roaring wood fires, rinsed them in clear water and then in “bluing” water, and hung them on clothes lines to dry.

We made lye soap and hominy in big kettles in the back yard. We raised big gardens. We saved and canned fruits, vegetables, and blackberries. We raised hogs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, whatever. We tried to always have one or two milk cows. We learned early on how to milk the cows, enjoy their calves, sometimes even having rides on bucking calves. It was a good life.

Churning was a sit-down job

There were lots and lots of chores, feeding and tending the living things, and using and preserving everything else. One chore was churning the surplus milk for the production of delicious country butter.

Churning was a sit-down job and much preferred to chopping stove wood or cutting weeds. You could actually rest while sitting and churning. Personally, I spent many nighttime hours doing my churning chores while watching and tending my baby sister while she suffered the agonies of polio. I would sit with her all night, then prepare breakfast for the family before they were out of bed.

Whenever our cow or cows had young calves, they gave an abundance of milk. We all liked that rich, fresh, whole milk. Pasteurized milk had never been heard of. We drank our fills and saved the balance for churning. The amount of butter was determined by the richness, in cream content, of the milk. The “richest” milk came from the Jersey cows. The Holstein cow produced more milk but it was not as rich in cream.

Before iceboxes came along, we tried to keep the unused milk cool in different ways. People with cisterns would put milk in fruit jars, put the jars in the water bucket and lower it into the cool interior of the cistern. We didn’t have a cistern so we had dug a huge hole in the cool earth under the house, which was about five feet above ground. We kept milk, potatoes and other things in the pit.

The churn was an item of pride in our homes. The first one I remember was a glazed ceramic container about 30 inches tall. It was off-white and had a beautifully patterned ring all the way around the top. It would hold about five gallons but you never wanted it to be more than about half full.

The process required a steady agitation of the milk with an up and down motion. We supplied the motion and a “paddle,” called the “dasher,” did the agitation.

Dad always made the dasher. It consisted of a broom handle after the broom had passed away. On the business end of the broom handle, Dad would attach two pieces of wood about four inches wide and about five inches long. He would attach these two pieces together, with one running north and south and the other going east and west. Then the resulting part would be firmly attached to the bottom end of the broomstick. The ceramic lid for the churn fitted inside a rim on the churn and had a hole in its center for the broomstick.

You could sit and churn, while doing a lot of thinking. I took many an imaginary trip to far away places while churning. I imagined myself grown up. I daydreamed about going to high school, and I eventually did get to go one full year. That was no small accomplishment in those years!

After a few minutes of churning, the agitation would cause the small flecks of cream to be separated from the milk and show up atop the milk. Continuation of the agitation brought more and more cream to the top and it was easy to tell when everything looked like it was “done.” The cream would have become a nice layer of butter.

Then it was fun to skim off the rich yellow cream. We would put it in a bowl and play with it. We’d use a spoon or paddle or a cake turner to pat down the butter and squeeze out the liquid called whey. The whey was drained into the nearby container in which you saved feed for the pigs.

After you patted the butter enough, you could shape it into a ball or a pyramid or whatever for the family.

But if you were expecting company after church on Sunday, you would want to get out the butter mold. The mold was  a round wooden container  with a fancy carved pattern. You would ladle the new butter into the mold and pat it down. Turn the mold over and set it in a plate, then lift the mold from over the butter and you would have a nice piece of art, perfect for company on Sunday.

Remaining in the churn was that wonderful country buttermilk!

Churns were a lot like trunks in those days. Families took pride in their trunks, their churns, their doilies and many, many other things. To this day, people enjoy collecting such items that were treasured in the olden days.

If you find a churn for sale and it takes your eye, buy it. You will enjoy it.

(kenzkorner@apex.net)