wfn.org | SOOPers provide sweat, smiles to get new building in shape

[BethAH@mbm.org]

March 14, 2001
Beth Hawn
Mennonite Board of Missions
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

March 14, 2001

SOOPers provide sweat, smiles to get new building in shape

Grant Rissler is serving through Mennonite Voluntary Service as a
writer and photographer.  After spending a year as 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.

AUSTIN, Texas (CHM/MBM) – When Kathy Goering Reid, co-pastor of
Austin Mennonite Church, introduces visitors to Service
Opportunities for Older People volunteers Richard and Margaret
Cook, she calls them Saint Margaret and Saint Richard.

“I couldn’t give you enough superlatives to describe Richard and
Margaret,” Goering Reid said of the retired couple from Maple
Ridge, British Columbia, who for two months worked here,
spearheading the effort to get Austin Mennonite Church’s new home
into better shape. “They’ve just been wonderful to have here.”

The urban congregation of 45-50 members that had rented worship
space since its beginnings in the early 1980s recently purchased
a vacant Presbyterian church in north Austin, but the building
needed a number of improvements, said Goering Reid.  She
described how, with the help of the energetic Cooks, the
congregation was able to do the $30,000 job of putting new
paneling on the outside of the building for only $3,000 using
volunteer labor.

“It’s incredible to see what they’ve been able to do in two
months,” Goering Reid said.  “You notice the big things right
away – the new paint, the paneling – but there are also so many
little things, like the door that doesn’t squeak anymore and the
way they’re always smiling.  We were able to say, these are some
of the things we see, but let us know what else needs to be
done.”

Ironically, the relationship happened almost by accident.
Richard, a retired railroad worker, and Margaret, a mother who
provided a foster home to more than 200 children in 20 years, had
done short-term mission trips to Tijuana, Mexico, in the past,
working with an organization called Soulseekers for Christ.  This
year, they were looking for something different and contacted a
number of organizations.  SOOP was the one that answered
immediately.

Then several options for SOOP, working with death-row inmates in
Alabama, and building with a church in Brownsville, Texas, fell
through because of a lack of other volunteers and a lack of
living space, respectively.  But in December, Saùl Murcia, a
member of the Austin congregation and an assistant director for
Mennonite Voluntary Service, heard that a couple needed
placement.  Murcia contacted Goering Reid and a housing
arrangement with other members of the Austin congregation fell
into place.

“We had a number of choices [of programs], and it must have been
the Lord because everything else fell through and this worked so
smoothly,” Richard said.  “People at home [in Canada] told us not
to come down here.  They said, ‘It’s Texas; they’ve got guns.’
But I’ve found them to be super-courteous.  Serving, meeting
people, it’s all part of [SOOP].  A whole new circle of friends
opens up.”

For the congregation, the volunteers have allowed them to get
projects done in a short time that they thought would take
months.  The help allows them to move on to their real mission:
doing outreach in the surrounding multicultural neighborhood.

“Right now, we’re very inward-focused,” Goering Reid said.  “But
this fall can be a wonderful time of looking at things we’ve only
dreamed of doing before, about what it means and takes to do
mission and be a witness in this neighborhood.”

As for the Cooks, they plan to apply for SOOP next winter, this
time in San Antonio.  “This is the first time we’ve done it, and
we like it,” said Richard.  “It’s a broaden-your-horizons kind of
thing.  You’re never too old for that.”

Service Opportunities for Older People is a sponsored by
Mennonite Association of Retired Persons, Mennonite Board of
Missions, and Mennonite Central Committee Canada.

* * *

Grant E. Rissler       PHOTOS AVAILABLE