HELLO again from Cleveland! We are doing fine since we last wrote in July and are looking forward to hearing from you and/or seeing you soon. This particular 9 month volunteer assignment concludes Nov. 21 and then we’ll be heading home to North Carolina for a few months ‘furlough’ before moving on to a 2009 assignment (details later in this letter).
LAKEWOOD, a city bordering Cleveland, is our current housing location provided by the host agency. (We lived west of the city for 5 months, then house-sat for 6 weeks in Shaker Heights.) Since moving here on August 9, we no longer ride the rapid (train) as we are now driving downtown Cleveland in less than 10 minutes. This furnished studio apartment is on the 3rd floor in one of several high rises (16 stories or more) on Lake Erie called the Gold Coast. We can walk to the local park where we once enjoyed an outdoor concert. In September we went on the Lakewood Historical Society’s annual house tour.
LAKE ERIE we see every day with some sailboats and a few freighters. It is huge and reminds us of the ocean! One glorious August Saturday afternoon we took the Goodtime III sightseeing boat and learned much from the tour of the harbor and Cuyahoga River.
JULY and AUGUST in Cleveland found us at our volunteer site Monday-Friday. Many fine summer weekends gave us ample opportunity to visit places such as Presque Isle, tour the US Brig Niagara at the Maritime Museum in Erie PA, see the Christmas Story house (movie filmed in Cleveland), explore the Shaker Museum, enjoy the newly renovated Cleveland Museum of Art, climb to the top of the Garfield Monument, attend the Cuyahoga County Fair, and receive a guided tour of the well-known Botanical Gardens. Thanks to new friends who include us in their social events we’ve been to Blossom Outdoor Music Center and to Gray’s Armory for a Wurlitzer organ concert. We also had fun with co-workers at a staff/volunteer appreciation day event by attending a Captains baseball game (Indians triple A). And once again, Bill was given tickets to a baseball game at Progressive Field…
FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION in the Little Italy section of Cleveland on August 15 was an especially interesting and pleasant experience for us. One of our co-workers, Pat, invited us to her home for this special Roman Catholic holy day. We found the procession and atmosphere certainly reminding us of Europe, the Italian food delicious and Pat’s family members congenial and entertaining following the processional event.
LABOR DAY WEEKEND we spent at home in North Carolina (500 miles). The long weekend trip was planned to see family, touch base with friends, register the car, check on the house, get car maintenance done, accomplish some banking, have a few doctor check ups, play golf, attend Elon’s opening football game and worship at our home church. It was a whirlwind of activity but the changes in routine and scenery made for a nice break from the volunteer work in Cleveland.
A WEDDING GOWN ‘pageant’, not soon to be forgotten, was a unique part of Labor Day weekend at home. Son, David, and family weekended at our house and Mary’s niece, Anne, and her family from Virginia joined us for part of the weekend. There were 10 of us in all which included 4 girls ages 12, 10, 6, and 4. Knowing that some of the girls liked to play ‘dress-up’ we found several outfits of great interest. They included 3 wedding dresses: Mary’s 1966, her mother’s 1940, and her grandmother’s 1918. We also had daughter Cindi’s prom dress, and a bridesmaid’s dress from the 1980’s. When the ‘pageant’ descended down the staircase (on August 31), we had lots of oohs and aahs and then much astonishment when we all realized that it was exactly 68 years ago that day when one of the wedding dresses was actually worn by the girls’ great grandmother on August 31, 1940.
POKAGON State Park in Angola IN was a treat for us in September when we attended a staff retreat and planning session with Cleveland colleagues and Indianapolis (Disciples of Christ) counterparts. The two groups share the management of Global Ministries. (www.globalministries.org) and deal with the challenges of current overseas mission.
SEPTEMBER had us at the IMAX Theater, off to visit the Hale Farm and Village, and then hurricane IKE hit Ohio and some of our co-workers were without power from Sunday night to Thursday. It was mighty windy at our place with whitecaps on the lake.
CLEVELAND CLINIC is an amazing medical facility with an outstanding world-wide reputation. Two friends, Doug Allcock and Pam Moffat, have each had surgery there and we’ve been to visit them.
ENTERTAINMENT of interest lately is the movie, Fireproof. If you haven’t seen it yet, we hope you will soon. We also liked the movie Mama Mia – mostly because of the setting in Greece. We are now reading The Shack and Gilead. Last week we were given free tickets to the opera ‘Figaro’ and were glad to have the electronic translation in front of us.
CHURCH LIFE at West Park UCC has been good for us and has included Sunday worship, Wednesday Bible Studies, Thursday Choir rehearsals, and after church socials. Friendships made there caused us to participate in an active Marriage Encounter Community group and also led to invitations to some homes– a special treat when our housing is pretty basic.
DIVERSITY abounds here. Cleveland is foreign-friendly with various communities retaining language and customs from afar. Interesting to us is the local NPR station carrying regular programming in Eastern European languages, some families on our floor speak no English and executives in offices next to ours speak another language often on the telephone. This ‘melting pot’ of Americans enriches the culture and provides great varieties in the availability of international foods.
VOLUNTEER WORK, full-time at Church House, United Church of Christ National Setting, has us fully occupied. The best practices manual we are writing will be done by the time we conclude our assignment and the data clean-up and email communications are coming along nicely. We are involved with supporting staff-led events; just recently we transported a former missionary in the area, helped with registration at ‘Missionworks’ where current mission service personnel from China, East Germany and Lebanon/France shared their experiences.
PARTNERS in SERVICE, the long term UCC domestic volunteer program in which we participate, remains remarkable for more than 50 years in its ability to reach out to non-profit, church-related, agencies to offer helping hands. We are privileged to have served, learned, and met some most interesting people, during our volunteer assignments at:
2003-2004 Menaul School, Albuquerque NM
2004-2005 Blowing Rock Conference Center, Blowing Rock NC
2005-2006 Heifer International Ranch, Perryville AR
2006-2007 Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta GA
2007 Montreat Conference Center, Montreat NC
2008 United Church of Christ National Setting, Cleveland OH
OUR 7th ASSIGNMENT will most likely be at Silver Lake Conference Center in Sharon, CT. Final details are being worked out but we think we will be there March-Nov 2009.
VOTE! We already have– via absentee ballots.
