12/30/2006

A year's worth of outreach to others

By Gretchen Murray
Local columnist

A year's worth of columns can produce a lot of faith-inspired stories that might otherwise go unnoticed because of the modesty of the people who have made outreach a part of their lives.

This past year, we learned about Frieda Lewitt, a 53-year-old single mother in Petoskey, who founded Singles For Christ, a non-denominational group that gathers for fun and friendship. She had tired of the dating merry-go-round and sought a Christ-based network of friends.

We found strength in a group of teens at Traverse City West High School who gather together before the school day to pray, and in how another group of teens at House of Hope, sorting through their own issues, banded together to create a stunning wall mural depicting a biblical timeline of the Holy Land.

The Leelanau Christian Neighbors kept food on the tables of those less fortunate from Suttons Bay to Northport, while John Chuchman, of Central Lake, took an early retirement from a high-powered job to help guide people through the stages of grief.

As we prepare to begin the new year, two large mission projects continue to gain momentum.

Over the past few years, Edna Shaffer, of Beulah; her daughter, Vicki Kritzell of Clyde, Ohio; and Esther McDaniel, of Union City, have devoted their efforts to Hearth to Hearth, a mission helping orphans in Kenya and Uganda. Using elbow grease, willpower and prayer, the three oversaw the building of two orphanages to care for and educate hundreds of African children. As interest in their mission grew, Shaffer received many calls from local people interested in "adopting” orphans through sponsorships.

Shaffer said a sponsorship was what a Traverse City man wanted for Christmas and she also heard from a family who decided to forgo their holiday gift exchange to donate to Hearth to Hearth. The project will ramp up next year as property has been purchased for another orphanage, and Shaffer said all they have to do is "pray up” the money for a building.

In August, Central United Methodist Church members Ken Engle and Staton Lorenz collected and overhauled equipment donated by area farmers and packed it onto a rail container bound for a mission school in Rio Colorado, Bolivia.

If you had asked Engle six months ago if he would be crossing the Andes Mountains in a truck loaded with farm equipment, he would have said, "No way,” but on Nov. 6, he and others met up with the shipment, reassembled the equipment and offered operating instructions. But the story doesn't stop there. Engle and Lorenz plan to spend next year raising funds to purchase more equipment and a stockpile of spare parts.

Both Shaffer and Engle find their work gratifying.

"If you have an opportunity to reach out, seize the moment,” Engle advised. "I have come to realize there's a lot of forces going on here that I don't understand, but it's been an incredible thing.”