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Grace Nolt, Open Door
grace@sprucelake.org

Spruce Lake Outdoor School, an educational ministry of Spruce Lake Retreat, is celebrating its 20th year this fall, 2007. Since 1987, over 60,000 students have experienced Christ-centered, hands-on outdoor learning at Spruce Lake. The ministry has indeed become a counter-cultural enterprise, if one agrees with what Richard Louv observed in his recent book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder; “Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature. That lesson is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors…”

Richard Louv had not yet written his book when Paul Beiler, Spruce Lake’s founding director, dreamed of starting an outdoor school on the camp’s Pocono Mountain property. But they would have agreed earnestly on this: “the extent that we separate our children from creation is the extent to which we separate them from the creator – from God.”

With little time to develop the dream himself, Paul appointed Sterling Edwards to direct the new program in 1987. Under Sterling’s passionate leadership those first 18 years, the ministry grew from 12 to over 100 schools participating each year. Students in grades 4-12 have arrived from 11 different states, some from as far away as Ohio, West Virginia, and Massachusetts.

“God just brought the right people at the right time to build this ministry,” Sterling has said. Now, as then, Spruce Lake Outdoor School is all about integrating natural and spiritual truth – “learning ABOUT God’s creation IN God’s creation.” Students are exposed to the “sensory magic” of being outdoors. Teachers try to cultivate the sense of wonder that is such a critical element for wide-eyed spiritual and practical awareness.

Ecologist and naturalist Doug Musselman has taught at Spruce Lake Outdoor School 12 years. He’s on a team of eight instructors and just as many support staff who pitch in to help. Many children he teaches are in junior high, the same age Doug was when the seed of concern for the environment started growing in his own mind.

Doug went on to earn a B.S. in General Biology from Grace College and spent two years at AuSable Institute of Environmental Studies, where he earned his Naturalist Certificate and worked as an Environmental Education Intern.

“God led me to teaching in the big classroom of his creation!” Doug said, having discovered that the typical classroom setting was not for him. “I enjoy opening people’s eyes to the wonders of our Father’s world,” Doug said, “and helping people understand our role in taking care of it.”

His years of teaching at Spruce Lake Outdoor School have convinced Doug all the more that taking care of God’s world and its resources is actually part of our Christian witness, “We are the ones to be taking care of his property, as his children.”

Just last week Doug led a new group of students on a Spruce Mountain Hike. Afterward, Doug asked the class, “How can we respond to this?”

“Wow,” burst one child! That is just what Doug had been hoping to hear. The memory of it stayed with Doug for days, sustaining lively hope that this child, and surely others the school has taught, will not be the last ones in the woods.

David Kochsmeier, Steel City
scmchurch@aol.com

What’s in a name? Psychology indicates that names are powerful determinates to our behavior. I remember my seminary professor of Marriage and Family Therapy, David Augsburger, using a modified family tree to show the connection between a person and their behavior in one generation and how a namesake in another generation would often live out a similar behavior. I have witnessed this numerous times as I have walked with individuals. It is amazing how they are living the life script of another.

The business world indicates that names are powerful determinates to success. Commonly known as “branding,” the concept couples name recognition with customer loyalty. When a company or product name is widely known for its quality, customers frequently use them. The more usage, the more profit. Makes sense and dollars!

So, what is in a name? This question was recently the focus of discussion at the Life With God Radio Broadcast board meetings. Realizing, as an organization, we have more to offer the community of faith than just a weekly radio broadcast we have changed our name. Our new organization name will be “Life With God Ministries.”

While our primary focus will be on radio programming, we will develop other forms of media (print, internet, speaker services) to connect with people in ways to strengthen their life with God.

The following comments exemplify how Life With God has strengthened individual lives:

“Dear Rev. K., Last evening I was most blessed to hear your renewal message on WDAC.”

“Thanks for the good program…I need to hear the Word of God spoken over and over again.”

“Your gentle program this past week using 2 Corinthians 12:9 surely was a blessing to me…I can’t say how I praised God for your well-chosen words.”

We believe the widening of our focus will enable Life With God Ministries to interact with more people, more of the time. Simply put, with radio, our 30-minute Sunday morning program reaches only a certain audience (the listeners of WNPV 1440 AM) at a specific time (7:30 a.m.). Our new focus will enlarge our audience and be available “on demand” fitting into the time frame of our listeners both new and old.

Mary Jane Lederach Hershey, Salford
mjhershey@aol.com

For the past three summers, Salford Mennonite Church has hosted a group of educators from South Africa. These teachers come to the University of Pennsylvania to study for a five-week term. In 2006, 24 South African scholars came to Salford homes for a weekend in July. My husband Hiram and I hosted Kholeka Kholly, a language teacher who taught English and two provincial languages, Afrikaans and isiXhosa, in Queenstown.

On Saturday afternoon as I was becoming acquainted with Kholly, I asked about her parents and family. She said she never knew her father, because he died when she was born. Her mother was murdered about seven years ago, by thieves who broke into her mother’s home, robbed and killed her. Kholly expressed her regret that the hanging of criminals is no longer legal in South Africa, adding that she hated the murderers of her mother and would hang them herself, if she could. During this conversation I talked to Kholly about capital punishment in this country, about the work of Sister Helen Prejean who accompanies men on death row to their execution. I also talked about the victim–reconciliation program.

During 2006 the Mennonite Heritage Center mounted an exhibit entitled “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” The exhibit included a wall of 15 panels called “Heroes of Peace and Justice” with pictures, information, and writings by worldwide justice and peace leaders. The peacemakers portrayed ranged from Anabaptist martyrs, to Mahatma Gandhi, to local peacemakers like Lois Gunden Clemens and Clayton Kratz.

Whenever we have international guests, we plan ahead what we will do in the evening. Although the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville is rarely open on Saturday evening, I knew that on this particular Saturday, the Center would be open for a special film night. I planned to take our guest Kholly to the Center after dinner and a visit with our son and family.

That evening at the Center we viewed the “Heroes of Peace and Justice” exhibit. First, we talked about the Anabaptist martyrs and how they forgave their assassins before they died. She read the panels of the peacemakers she knew; Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. I told her about Pastor Andre and Magda Trocomè, whose French town of Le Chambon hid thousands of Jews after Pastor Andre asked his congregation to shelter “the people of the Bible.” We read the story of how Michael Berg had forgiven the men in Iraq who beheaded his son Nick. Kholly read the Tom Fox panel and the prophetic words of Fox, “We forgive those who consider us their enemy.” After she finished reading, she stood in silence for a few minutes, and then turned to me and said, “They all say the same thing – it’s forgiveness.”

When Kholly came to breakfast Sunday morning, her first words were “I am a changed woman. They won’t know me when I return home. I have forgiven those who killed my mother.”

I told her I was thankful that her heart had changed. However, I did not really believe, because I thought, “How could anyone, overnight, forgive such a heinous crime?”

Later that morning, during the discussion hour at Salford, she shared this change again. And later in the afternoon, she told various people who had gathered at our house, “I am a different person. I have forgiven.”

As we left our house to meet the bus to return to Philadelphia, she asked if she could again visit the exhibit. She wanted to photograph the panels. We hurriedly did so, and had her at the bus only a few minutes late.

Her final words came via e-mail:

Thank you both for a very enjoyable weekend. All of your guests are singing your praises as well. After the readings, I can safely say I’m a new peaceful person. God moves in a mysterious way. God bless.

God does move mysteriously. These panels are now on exhibit in the lobby of the Salford Mennonite Church.

Mary Jane Lederach Hershey is currently Trustee Emeritus for MHEP.

Betsy Moyer, Salford
moyerpb@comcast.net

Requests came from University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University seeking invitations to their international student guests for a highly valued American home stay. All they asked was for one overnight visit, less than 24 hours with a host family. Folks in our community already had so many commitments. It was a challenge.

The opportunity to host international students is an honor given to us through a long and positive relationship Claude Good built with persons from these Philadelphia universities. During years of teaching English as a Second Language at “International House” in Philadelphia, Claude invited university students to spend a weekend or holiday out of the city in our community. The word got out that our Franconia Conference community was a welcoming and interesting place to see a beautiful view of America. Stories circulated of warm host families; of worship services where international visitors were welcomed, allowed to ask questions, and invited to share from their own countries. It was a perspective of America that was different from what they saw in Philadelphia. Students reported that these home stays were the highlight of their time in the US!

In July we welcomed a group of 24 South African middle school teachers who were studying curriculum development for five weeks at the University of Pennsylvania. These adults had been selected from all over South Africa in a very competitive process. The group was diverse in gender, South African ethnicity (representing all four groups), and faith (including Muslims, Hindus, and Christians). They sang, talked, listened, and endeared themselves to us. One hostess said the weekend with her guests was “a mountaintop experience.”

Several guests wrote thank you notes to their host families and some to the congregations they visited. One guest wrote, “I am (now) a Mennonite, even my kids are the grand-children of the Mennonites. I am not going to lose any contact with you, not at all. You are my family that God has created forever and ever, AMEN.”

On August 11, we welcomed 19 Western European Young Leaders to a Peach Picnic in Souderton (PA) Park. This celebration with peaches and corn, Franconia Conference families, and international students has been an annual tradition. The group this year was energetic and eager to see who we, as Mennonites, really are. Having only been exposed to dorm life and cafeteria food at Drexel University, these young adults found our picnic of grilled chicken dogs, roasted corn on the cob, colorful salads, fresh peaches, chocolate brownies, and ice cream to be “the best meal they had yet” in the United States.

We were fascinated to hear them tell us where they came from, discovering that most of them now live in a different country from where their parents were born. Many of the students bravely sang their national anthems for us, even though they had no accompaniment and were outside in a public park. We tried to return the favor by singing a few traditional Mennonite favorites and a folk song or two for our guests.

God works in mysterious ways and extending hospitality to strangers can be a most powerful witness. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing that, some have entertained angels without knowing it.” ~ Hebrews 13:2

Emily Graber, Methacton
emilygraber@yahoo.com

This summer I participated in the !Explore program with sixteen other youth from across the United States and Canada. !Explore, initiated by Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), is a program for high school juniors and seniors who are interested in how they could fit into the church. The program includes a 100 hour internship with a church and an 18 day group experience. There are two group experiences during the summer, and mine was in July. Both the internship and the July group were fun learning experiences and I am grateful for the opportunity I had to be involved.

My internship at Methacton Mennonite Church officially began on June 17. That first week I taught Bible school and planned worship for Sunday. It was an incredibly positive experience and it was a good way to begin. I have helped with Bible schools in the past, but this year I was in charge of the teaching part, which ended up being a lot of fun. I taught nine girls, grades 3 and 4. Each day was exciting and I was sad when the week was over.

The second Sunday I led worship, which was much harder than I thought. I enjoyed the planning aspect, but leading was hard because I didn’t feel as though I could worship while I was leading. That week taught me just how hard it is to be up front all the time and how much we should really appreciate our worship leaders and encourage them as they lead.

Then I was off to the Mennonite Youth Convention in San Jose for a week, and the day after I got home from that, I drove with two other !Explorers, Larissa Landis and Lauren Derstine, to AMBS in Elkhart, Indiana, for the group part of the program. Larissa, Lauren, and I spent, July 9-26, with a fun group from all over.

The first few days we spent at Mirror Valley and Amigo Centre retreats in Michigan, getting to know each other. Then we went back to AMBS and studied. We had lectures from professors about various ministry skills, like pastoral care, preaching, and worship leading.

While at AMBS, we were put into theological exploration groups, nicknamed “theolex,” where a group of five or six of us would meet with a professor almost daily and talk about our theological question, which we had to decide on during the application process. My theological question began with where the Bible came from and how we know that the right books were chosen for it. The leaders split us into groups depending on our questions. Other people in my group had questions regarding how wealth in the Mennonite church affects our ability to live simply, how we know the Bible is true, why God lets people suffer, how to talk with people about pacifism, and a study of the book of Revelation. At first, I didn’t see how all of our topics fit together, but by the end, I think we all realized that all the topics had a lot of overlap and were all important. While I began with only a few questions, the more I learned, the more questions I had, and each new question was equally important. It has been through this time of intense questioning that I have grown much closer to God. Theolex was a highlight for me.

After several days at AMBS, we went to Chicago and worked with the Mennonite Mission Network’s DOOR (Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection) program. I worked with kids at a preschool for two days, spent one day boxing up food for elderly and young children, and one day weeding and helping in a community garden. One night Brenda Matthews came and spoke to everyone who was participating that week. She talked about trust and accountability. Her message was challenging. After our week at DOOR, we went back to AMBS and continued our learning, then spent the last few days back at Mirror Valley.

After a wonderful experience with other !Explorers, it was exciting to come back and share what I learned. The last three weeks of my internship with Methacton Mennonite I preached twice, went on a 24 hour silent retreat, and attended an Alpha Conference about sharing faith in contemporary contexts.

!Explore was an amazingly positive experience. I learned a lot about the church, myself, and how I can fit into the church. In the internship I learned the incredible importance of encouraging the leaders. In the group experience I learned that it’s really okay to question, and it’s through questioning that sometimes the greatest growth can occur. I had an absolutely fabulous experience and I hope !Explore continues in the future.

Emily Graber graduated from Chrisptopher Dock High School in 2007. She is currently a student at Goshen (Ind.) College.