wfn.org | Service Adventure

[BethAH@mbm.org]

January 17, 2001
Beth Hawn
Communications Coordinator
Mennonite Board of Missions
phone (219) 294-7523
fax (219) 294-8669
<www.MBM.org>

January 17, 2001

Johnstown Service Adventure: swimming against the current

Grant Rissler is serving through Mennonite Voluntary Service as a
writer and photographer.  After spending a year as an intern at
the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations office in
Manhattan, he is traveling for five months by bus to 20 other MVS
and Short-Term Mission sites, gathering the stories and
experiences of other volunteers and communities.  A weekly column
by Grant can be found on the web at www.MBM.org.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (CHM/MBM) – This city of 27,000 is best known for
the floods of 1889, 1936 and 1977 that ended thousands of lives
and cost millions of dollars in property damage.  Today, though,
the city is threatened by a trickle.

“So many people move out to go to school, to get a job,” says
Bill Brubaker, the leader of the Johnstown Service Adventure
unit, as he drives past several abandoned houses in the Kernville
neighborhood where the unit is located.  “Since the steel mills
and the coal mines closed, this area has had one of the highest
unemployment rates in the state.  The population in Johnstown
itself drops each year.”

Out of this context, in 1998, nine area Mennonite congregations
joined together to support a Service Adventure unit and, in a
small way, to reverse the stream of people leaving.  For the past
three years, five volunteers have moved into Johnstown, serving
in day-care, Head Start and after-school programs, as well as
helping out in area Christian schools and church youth groups.

“The [Service Adventurers] come and make a difference in people’s
lives,” said Mary Spory, one of the unit support committee
members.  “There’s not a lot of permanency in some of these kids’
lives.  Moms leave, dads leave; there are a lot of people
leaving.”

“Having the unit house (in Kernville where several of the
day-care programs are) is really important,” Spory said, because
often children in the programs come by to visit the Service
Adventure house on their own, creating longer-term relationships.

“We’re there to listen, to give hugs, to be someone to say ‘good
job’ on their report card,” said Kristy Letkeman, a unit member
who works with 30-40 kids each afternoon in an after-school
program called New Day, Inc.  “There are so many different
personalities you need to learn to work with in different ways,
but you still love them all the same.  Once the kids get home at
night, they might not be in a particularly caring environment.”

“We’re very fortunate to have [Service Adventure participants],”
said Carol Whritenour, who directs the recently started Mary’s
Day Care Service where Dan Eash serves.  “The kids love him.”

Together with congregation members, the unit also runs a program
called Friday Night Kids, which provides Christian-oriented
activities for neighborhood youth each Friday night.

Most of the Service Adventure participants move on after their
year in Johnstown, said Spory, but many came back recently for a
reunion.  “Former unit members went back to see kids that they
knew.  It was very important to get to see them.  Many of the
kids were amazed. They said, ‘I never thought I would see you
again.’  Those continuing relationships speak volumes about the
impact of this program.”

For Joe Peckman, who is enrolled in a local university but lives
and volunteers in Johnstown, the experience inspired him to set
down roots.  “I moved away, but I couldn’t live without
Johnstown, so I came back,” said Peckman, a member of the first
unit in 1998.  “While I was in Service Adventure, it became clear
to me that service is not something you do and then move on.  For
me to be most satisfied, it can’t be about me; it has to be about
others.  And the best place for me [to live that out] is here.”

Service Adventure is a joint program of the Commission on Home
Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church and
Mennonite Board of Missions of the Mennonite Church.
* * *
Grant E. Rissler       PHOTOS AVAILABLE