October 2020
Ongoing Outreach
“Labors of Love” on September 6th was a great success. All the dozen cookies with handwritten notes, cards, or letters were placed on the doorknob and those that answered the door were personally invited to our church service.
Wester Elementary: Our church continues to support Wester through prayer and visits to the teachers. Todd and Wendy took all the teachers a soda from Sonic one afternoon!
TransformHERs Bible Study: This is a Women’s Bible Study that meets on ZOOM every 1st and 3rd Monday at 7 p.m. Carol Salesky leads this study. The next meeting will be the start of a new study. All women of the church and friends are welcome!
The Tool Shed Men’s Bible Study:Meet via ZOOM every 2nd and 4th Monday evenings at 7:00 pm. All men of the church are invited and any friends as well.
Other ZOOM meetings are ongoing during the week and Pastor Todd sends out information at the first of each week and a reminder by email. So be sure to be checking your emails from the church daily!
Sunday Morning Services are now not only online but in person! Pastor Todd has a virtual congregation AND a face-to-face congregation to face every Sunday morning at 10:15. Misty Peden leads a Zoom Sunday School Class starting at 9 a.m. every Sunday.
October Birthday October Anniversaries
A Short Story
Many of you know my mother suffered Alzheimer’s and began her journey in her late 50’s which at that time was rather young. My older sister worked at NIH and we were able to get her into a study in hopes it would help other families this disease visits. When I read Pam’s story about her mother it jolted so many memories of “things” with my mother. I never truly learned to appreciate her until it was basically too late. Maybe my story in that area will help others as well. This story happened when mother was in her early 60’s. She died at 67 from complications of a fall and surgery. . I wrote this one about 25 years for sort of an exam in a writing class I took in Amarillo. I never dreamed how it could heal me to put down in words that moment in time.
P.S. Anyone have a story? A story of how at some point God worked in your life
-Alisa dollar
Blue eyes that in times past had brightly snapped, searched dully into my own like-blue eyes. I was in turn saddened and distressed at this woman’s lack of knowledge, lack of desire, lack of recognition.
My mother.
New surroundings were discomfiting to us both. My mother, trapped in the debilitating clutches of Alzheimer’s, viewed her space in an agitated and fretful manner. As for me-this simply was not home.
Home. One never truly puts a finger on what constitutes a “home.” Home is where the heart is. Home is a place to hang your hat. Home is full of laughter and memories, both bad and good. Home is the nucleus from which we are spawned. Home is a mother’s sacrifice-and unconditional love. A nursing home it’s not.
As I watched my mother look about, her hands fidgeting in anguish, I felt the need to be beside her, letting her know she wasn’t alone. All to no avail. Her lackluster eyes looked beyond me as if I were part of the fixtures in this room she did not know or understand. Eyes roamed but did not see. Hands reached but did not touch. Mouth opened, but no sound escaped.
I stood before her with tears running down my cheeks, grasping at something, anything to say, to make her somehow understand she was safe and not alone. This woman had done the same for me more times than I could count. I knew there surely had to be a way to reach the inner soul of this mind, that for unknown reasons was now distorted. This now helpless woman had conquered her past, becoming all she’d ever dreamed, plus some. She’d helped her husband in a business while raising four children. A sports woman, she’d bowled, hunted, golfed and, in her day, played basketball. Well-known civically, she had done many things in social organizations helping to better our small town. And First Baptist Church surely would have cratered had she not been the treasurer.
Suddenly, a thought sprang to my mind as I bent down to Mother’s level, putting my hands on either side of her chair. Eye level once again, blue to blue, I touched her cheek softly and said, “Jesus loves you, Mother,” just as she’d done to me when I was a child and hurting.
The worrisome flutter of her hands stopped. Blue eyes peacefully examined blue and a calmness settled within their depths. I knew she understood. How marvelous that a simple sentence taught to most, generation after generation, truly had the effect of quieting the mysterious puzzle of my mother’s lost spirit. Memory being a strange entity in normal circumstances was extraordinary to watch within the bounds of abnormal.
For the last time, I saw her smile and I knew she was smiling at me. As I said goodbye to my mother of the past, and greeted the present, knowing each meeting from hence would be yet another person to call “Mother,” I thanked that very Jesus for the precious lesson she’d taught me, and I, in turn, had taught my children. Jesus loves you. That simple sentence I had said by rote all my life had suddenly become a startling reality-comforting yet squeezed tightly by stark reality. Before the monotony of dreariness crept back into her eyes, I urgently leaned into her face to quickly whisper, ”I love you, too, Mother.”
I experienced a true comprehension of inner peace and understanding of the faith taught to me since birth. While I could not fathom her illness, she no longer could practice her teachings. I knew the tables had turned. I had to trust what I could not see and turn over what I could not understand. My mother had always believed in God and His goodness. In this goodness, I had been allowed to tell my mother the one thing I should have said many times in her years of understanding and had only just said in a time she could barely comprehend. Thus, the journey into Mother’s greater darkness had begun.
I closed the door to Mother’s new home knowing I had expressed to her my love. And I know she saw and heard through the memory of her soul.
This month’s surprise is a highly creative and busy lady. She is always smiling. I admire that about her because she has one of the hardest jobs in the church. More on that in a moment.
She is a wife and mom and she so dotes on her family and extended family. She does not have a selfish bone in her body. Even though she is direct in asking what she needs or having some one help her, she is also giving and kind as she helps those of us not nearly as “gifted” as she while we “try” to help her.
She is amazing with children and early on when joining our congregation, she took on the little kids Sunday School classes. For many years without help, but as the age differences began to get a little far apart, she now has help to manage all the ages.
If you have ever looked into the children’s Sunday School class, you would think a volcano of color erupted everywhere in sight. She has artwork, paperwork, and pictures all her “babies” have done.
Even in the hallway leading to the room, there is an array of what the children have done to show their parents, grandparents, and the rest of us, what they are studying and doing in class.
The thing I personally love, even though I don’t have small children anymore, but a grand girl who comes sometimes, is that she teaches the Bible and is very faithful to the children learning early about what the Bible is and what it teaches.
There can be no better teacher for parents and grandparents to know that when this lady has them under her wing, they are learning Bible verses and the stories in the Bible.
What a blessing! Because of her hard work and time she puts in preparing, we the congregation try to help her with supplies so that she can do the hard work – teaching.
***********Carmen Stueve**********
We love you!!
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St. Matthew United Methodist Church
5320 50th Street
Lubbock, TX 79414