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Vol. 2, # 33, March 26, 2004
At least eleven Shepson children and grandchildren
were among the cast of "A Technicolor Promise," which
was a drama based on Noah and the Ark. Included in the cast were:
 Zachary
Bostic
Hank Holland
Marian Nase
Emma Phelps
Georgia Vaughan
Taylor Bostic
Abby Holland
Elizabeth Vaughan
Helen Moyers
Nancy Moyers
Nathan Thomson
Shepson adults helping with this presentation were
Margaret Phelps and Doug Moyers. PH sure hopes that Chester's retirement
does not mean that Margaret is retiring also. She has amazing success
with the children's music ministry and is one of those special people
who does so much behind the scenes.
 After
enjoying various liquid refreshments and consuming delicious Southern
cooking delights, Shepsons present at the Spring Social sang repentant,
resurrecting, spirit filled gospel hymns. PH was pleased that at
least three Fanny Crosby hymns were sung. Let PH tell you about
those Brown's. Dr. Donna told PH that it was important to them that
PH attend. Thus, carpenter Dr. Rob constructed a nice ramp that
made it possible for PH to enter their home from the garage. This
was truly a random act of kindness and made it possible for PH to
totally enjoy the hymn sing. PH felt like a teenager again (back
when PH sang in the Barton Heights Baptist Church Youth Choir every
Sunday night). Doug Moyers stirred so much spirit on the piano that
funeral home fans were administered to cool him down. In addition
Dr. Donna brought in an electric fan and aimed it directly at Doug.
Rick Mears is scheduled to have surgery today: PH
received the following E-mail from Linda Mears:
 "Dear
Henry, Just wanted to write and ask for special prayer for Rick
on the morning of March 26th. He has to have another cerebral
angiogram to check on the AVM fistula in his head. He is very
nervous about going back to a hospital again and we are praying
so hard that this won't bring on more seizures. Stress seems to
be a big trigger for them. Please ask the class to pray with us
about this. Please give our love to all".
Love, Linda
Mary and Julian miss being with us. Mary wrote PH
the following:
Hi, We miss Sunday School and Bob's good lessons.
We missed the hymn sing last night. That is our favorite get together.
I have had a cold with some left over hoarseness so thought I'd
better not be in a group where I'd do a lot of talking and singing.
We leave tomorrow for a week in Anguilla, BWI , where our daughter
and her husband are spending a month. The Caribbean is new territory
for us so we are excited about the trip. Thanks for all the weekly
PHA editions.. We look forward to them. Mary and Julian Pentecost
- 3/21/04
Remember in your prayers Rick and Linda Mears, Mary
and Julian Pentecost, Nancy and George Werner, the family of Nancy
Smith, the Phelps Family, Bill Tuck, Vonda's great-grandson Caleb,
Emily King, Matt Brooks, Kay and Bob Culpepper, John and Margaret
Oliver, Donald Deer, Dot and Cecil Sherman, the Church staff, the
Pastor's Search Committee, the Denominational Affairs Committee,
the Executive Committee, our military in harm's way, the least among
us (especially those fellow citizens who are homeless) and those
only known to you.
Also continue to remember and work on those Easter
Food Baskets. The Easter food baskets project is one of our class
mission projects and will continue until the palms appear on April
4.
By John Hall
RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) -- The lone survivor of a
drive-by shooting that killed four Southern Baptist workers in
Iraq has been upgraded to stable but critical condition and is
"doing well" in a German hospital, according to an International
Mission Board spokesman.
Carrie Taylor McDonnall, a 26-year-old member
of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, sustained
gunshot wounds in all four extremities.
 "She
was hit pretty heavily," said Bill Bangham, a spokesman for
the International Mission Board, which employed the four missionaries
killed -- Larry T. Elliott, 60; and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of
Cary, N.C.; Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, Calif.; and
McDonnall's husband, David, 29.
McDonnall and the others were researching the
need for future humanitarian work in Mosul, Iraq, March 15 when
an unidentified assailant opened fire on the workers' car.
Officials of the IMB encouraged Christians to
pray for the families, friends and churches of those who died
or were injured. Clyde Meador, IMB executive vice president, said
the pain of this incident is deeply felt by Southern Baptists
worldwide. "We're grieving about the situation," he
said during a March 16 press conference. "Our hearts are
broken."
Meador did not indicate if other IMB personnel
are in the area but did say workers would continue carrying out
their missions. "Certainly this affects morale, but our folks
are there because God has called them to a lost world," he
said.
Michael Dean, pastor of Travis Avenue Baptist
Church, said members were "stunned" to hear two of the
congregation's former youth workers were shot. Members held prayer
vigils in small groups soon after they heard the news about the
McDonnell's. Part of Sunday's worship service will be devoted
to the couple."
In honor of Shepson piano players Anne James and
Doug Moyers, this piano story from the NY Times is printed below.
In honor of Shepson piano players Anne James and
Doug Moyers,
this piano story from the NY Times is printed below.
By ALAN COWELL
Published: March 25, 2004
LONDON, March 23 — There are piano stories,
and there are piano stories.
And then there is this chronicle of loss and fulfillment
that begins with a Blüthner grand piano built in Germany
and shipped to South Africa in 1936, a saga set to end in just
a few weeks, when the piano returns to Berlin and a new home at
the Jewish Museum there, completing an elegant parabola from Nazi
Germany and apartheid South Africa to new eras in both lands.
Perhaps more than the piano itself, though, the
story has been a voyage of self-examination for Tessa Uys, a South
African concert pianist based in London and the daughter of the
German music teacher who first took the piano from Berlin to Cape
Town.
As she pored over her mother's documents last
year, Ms. Uys (pronounced ace) said, she was also obliged to confront
what she had always suspected about herself, a revelation for
which her research into the history of her mother and the piano
proved to be the key.
 Brought
up in the Calvinist tradition of the Dutch Reformed Church in
South Africa, the daughter of an Afrikaner musician and organist
in his local church, she was unaware of one critical fact: her
mother, Helga, was Jewish.
But in postwar South Africa run by the white exclusivist
National Party, some of whose leaders had sympathized with the
Nazis, it was an issue her mother did not discuss widely before
her suicide in 1969. She even counseled her daughter to embrace
Afrikanerdom rather than Judaism.
"I once said to my mother, `I wish I had
just a little Jewish blood in my veins like two Jewish girls I
know,' " Ms. Uys, 55, recalled. "My mother said: `You
don't need Jewish blood. You have Afrikaner blood.' I think she
said that to protect me after what she had been through in Germany."
Now by returning her mother's piano from the thatched
family home in Pinelands, a suburb of Cape Town, to the land of
its creation, Ms. Uys, said in an interview, she sensed a burden
being lifted.
After her mother's death, she said, she played
the piano with great pain and difficulty. "And for my father,"
she added, "he could not enter the music room. He used to
weep to hear it," so intense were the memories evoked by
the sound of the instrument.
"It was always a source of pain, and that
is why, now that the piano has left the house in Cape Town, there
is this sense of closure for me and a new life for the piano,"
Ms. Uys said.
On Wednesday morning, in the dark early hours,
the piano left Cape Town in the hold of a cargo ship bound for
Germany, an 18-day voyage that seems almost prosaic by contrast
with a history that at every turn intersects with the 20th century's
great transgressions, from the persecution of the Jews to the
oppression of South Africa's black majority.
When she played a final concert on the Blüthner
for friends invited to her house last month, Ms. Uys concluded
a recital of classical pieces with the African hymn "Nkosi
Sikelel' iAfrika," or "God Bless Africa," which
is synonymous with South Africa's struggle against white minority
rule. "There was not a dry eye," she recalled.
And when a local Afrikaans-language newspaper,
Die Burger, published an article about it, it did so with a mocked-up
photograph of the piano, built in 1913, set against a huge black
swastika.
Ms. Uys said that after the piano is restored
at the Blüthner factory near Leipzig, she planned to give
its first concert in Germany since the 1930's, at the Jewish Museum,
which is financing its return and restoration. And she intends
to include"Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" in the program. The
piano will be installed permanently and played in the museum's
concert hall.
Born Helga Bassel in 1908 of Jewish parents, Ms.
Uys's mother had studied music in Berlin and bought the piano
secondhand in 1930. Around that time she was engaged to be married
to a non-Jewish geologist. With Hitler's coming to power in 1933,
Bassel converted to Christianity, but her fiancé nonetheless
came under pressure from Nazi authorities to break off the engagement.
In 1935 she was told that she no longer qualified
for membership in the Reich Music Chamber, an important professional
body, and instead had been named as a member of the Reich Association
of Non-Aryan Christians.
Although Nazi authorities did not explain the
decision, Ms. Uys said, subsequent research by Aubrey Pomerance,
the chief archivist at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, established
that Bassel had been classified under Nazi regulations as "fully
Jewish," and therefore to be persecuted in her profession.
Tipped off by a friend of her former fiancé
that much worse was on the way, she and a brother, Gerhard, fled
to South Africa in 1936. She took the Blüthner with her.
Later, at a concert in Cape Town City Hall, she met Hannes Uys,
an Afrikaner accountant and musician who played the organ at the
Dutch Reformed Church. They married in 1943.
Their first child, the satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys,
was born in 1945. Ms. Uys was born in 1948, just after her parents
moved into the two-story thatched house in Pinelands where the
piano remained until it was finally dismantled for shipping last
month.
In his stage shows, Ms. Uys's brother likes to
quip that the discovery of Jewish roots in an Afrikaner family
meant "we are from both chosen peoples." But the issue
of her mother's faith was not discussed at home, Ms. Uys said.
Ms. Uys moved to London in 1967 to study at the
Royal Academy of Music but returned frequently to South Africa,
practicing on the Blüthner. After her father died in 1990
the house was rented to tenants, but the music room with its trove
of Nazi-era documents was kept locked in her absences. And while
she practiced for hours on the piano during her stays in South
Africa, she did not choose to scrutinize the documents too closely.
Until last year.
Overcoming apprehension about what she might find,
Ms. Uys said, she became engrossed in her mother's papers and
took documents with her to Berlin, where research conducted by
the Jewish Museum established that her mother had been expelled
from the Reich Music Chamber because she was Jewish.
That final disclosure, Ms. Uys said, seemed to
lead inexorably to another conclusion: the piano should be returned
to Germany. At first the idea seemed daunting but then, she said,
became a form of catharsis.
"My life had been so involved with the piano.
It had been a focal point of my life," she said, so the idea
of parting with it seemed "like a shock, a wonderful shock,
and then, a minute later, it seemed like a natural conclusion
for the piano as it had come from Berlin."
"It was almost as if in the music room there
was this secret that was never talked about," she said. "Now,
through the piano, the secret has been defused."
Speaking of musicians, perhaps the world's greatest
living organist will present an organ concert in honor of Carl Freeman's
thirty-five years as RRCB's minister of music. The concert will
be Tuesday night at 7:30 PM. The Tuesday Night Club will meet early
in order to make the concert. The guest musician is Olivier Latry,
Titular Organist, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris (not South Bend).
The RRCB Sanctuary may be packed for this event.
As a member of the Board of Missions PH sent the
following letter to all the health care providers and known health
care advocates in RRCB:
Dear Health care Provider and/or Health care Advocate:
The Board of Missions of RRCB has been involved
in the planning stages for a new western Henrico Cross Over free
medical clinic. As a new member of the Board of Missions I have
attended the last three planning meetings of the Cross Over Ministry.
There are sixteen western Henrico churches of various denominations
that are involved in this planning process.
 For
those unfamiliar with Cross Over Ministry, this ministry began
twenty years ago. The mission of Cross Over Ministry is "providing
health care, promoting wellness, and connecting the talents and
resources of the community with those in need in the name of Jesus
Christ." Cross Over has operated a free medical clinic on
Cowardin Avenue for a number of years. This clinic provides free
medical care, dental care, eye care and pharmacy services. In
2002 there were 17,072 patient visits. With the number of people
without any type of health insurance increasing, the need for
medical care for the working poor has increased. Two-thirds of
the Cross Over patients are employed.
In the western Henrico corridor along Parham Road,
there are more people without any form of health insurance than
in the area currently being served by the clinic on Cowardin Avenue.
Plans are underway to open a Cross Over Clinic in western Henrico
in one year. Hopefully some of you will be interested in volunteering
for this local mission project. In addition to raising funds,
this new clinic will need volunteers, including health care professionals
and advocates.
On Wednesday evening, March 31, following the
church dinner, staff from the Cross Over Ministry will present
an informative, educational and inspiring program about this ministry
which is intended for the least among us. I urge you to make a
special effort to be present.
With Sincere Regards,
Henry D. Holland, MD
Board of Missions of RRCB
All Shepsons will hopefully be interested in this
worthy mission project and attend next Wednesday night's roast beef
dinner and program..
Mack Dennis will preach this Sunday and Teacher
Bob will return to John, chapter 18. Jesus should be brought before
Annas this Sunday. We are a bit ahead of the church calendar, but
PH has great faith that the church calendar will pass us by Easter
Sunday.
 Shepson
Beth stole away one week day and saw the Passion of the Christ.
She was fair in her comments on the film. She stated that for a
few this film might make a difference and may reach someone regarding
the sacrifice made by Jesus. Beth did not feel that the film was
anti-Semitic, but a bit anti Roman soldiers. Everyone has to make
their own decision regarding the film. PH observed that Beth was
not wearing a nail necklace, but she did elaborate on her naivety.
That story is for another PHA.
 Franklin
Fowler will be twenty-nine on this Sunday. When the IMB was the
FMB in Franklin's early youth, Franklin was the doc in charge of
medical evaluations of missionary candidates. In this capacity PH
first met Franklin in 1974, thirty years ago. How can that be? Franklin
and PH are both only twenty-nine.
At the last Tuesday Night Club Shepson Miller told
a true story about a friend who had a skunk in his garage. The friend's
German Shepherd dog went into the garage to get the skunk and the
dog got sprayed in a most convincing manner. The odor in the garage
was most offensive. The friend investigated and learned that the
skunk was hiding under a riding lawn mower. The friend rolled the
lawn mower out of the garage. Unable to scare the skunk from the
lawn mower, the friend started a fire and rolled the lawn mower
(gasoline tank and all) over the fire. The skunk, becoming a little
singed, made a hasty escape. Thus, this skunk escaped the bite of
a large German Shepherd, the blades of a lawn mower and the flames
of a fire. One effective defensive weapon can often frustrate pursuers.
This skunk lived to stink again. Miller concluded the story by mentioning
that all his friend needed was a shotgun.
Attached to this PHA is a photo of the skunk that
got away.
PH
March
19, 2004
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12, 2004
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5, 2004
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27, 2004
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20, 2004
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13, 2004
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6, 2004
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30, 2004
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23, 2004
January 16, 2004
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9, 2004
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2, 2004
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