Vol. 3, # 4, Sept. 3, 2004

Next ISH Local Missions Project:

Warm winter coats for children ages infant to seventeen

Diapers for infants and adults

October 1 to October 31 (Boo)

Questions to: Charlotte and Bill Simpson (285-3185)

Shepson Bob (not the teacher) to Go to the Land of Moses

ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Bob Carter will visit Egypt from September 18 to October 2. It sounds like a great trip. Will he bring back some Exodus dirt?

Prayer Rounds

Donald Deer Is Slowly Improving

PH received an E-mail from Barbara Deer

Dear friends,

We have been following the news of the damage done by tropical storm Gaston in Virginia and especially Richmond, destroying Shockoe Bottom, etc., and we are concerned to know that you are o.k. We called you but didn't get any answer, so next best is sending you e-mail.

Please know that you are in our thoughts and prayers, and if convenient and possible, please send us word that you are weathering the storm, so to speak.

Donald is progressing slowly day by day. His physical therapist puts him through the paces, and is trying to stretch some muscles that became tight during the 6 weeks he had to wear a brace on his hip, following the surgery. We went back to see the surgeon last week and he was pleased with Donald's progress.

Henry, Dorothy Becker [a post-polio Pilgrim who knows of Henry] saw Donald in his wheel chair (he walks with a walker, but sits in the wheelchair to eat), and said, "You'll have to tell Henry Holland that you're in a wheelchair now too!"

Warm greetings to you all.

Donald & Barb Deer
607 Leyden Lane
Claremont, CA 91711-4236
Tel.: 909-621-5315
E-mail: db.deer@verizon.net

Marian Nase is in and out of the hospital.

Marian Nase developed a bladder and kidney infection earlier this week and was admitted to the pediatric floor at St. Mary's Hospital. She responded to intravenous antibiotics and was discharged yesterday. The discharge news from grandparents Charlotte and Bill is below:

"Marian was released by the hospital this morning (Thursday) about 11 o'clock and is probably in better shape than Catherine, who spent every minute of every day there with Marian and is pretty much exhausted. We are thankful that Marian and Catherine are home again. No, very thankful. " Charlotte and Bill

Carolyn and Ransone Hartz experienced extensive damage to their home last Monday night. A tree fell on the power lines near their house and an electric spark traveled along the wire to their house, setting it on fire. The Hartz's were not at home when this occurred.

Remember in your prayers Marian and Catherine Nase, Donald and Barbara Deer, Carolyn and Ransone Hartz, Audrey Thomson, Sheila Komito, Sharon Ruben, Jared Oliver, Cecil and Dot Sherman, Rick and Linda Mears, Julia Tyler and her parents, Mary and Julian Pentecost, Kay and Bob Culpepper, John and Margaret Oliver, Mike and Vivian Clingenpeel, the Church staff, our military and civilians in harm's way, and those only known to you.

Tyler the horse, owned by Lauren Brown, has miraculously improved. Tyler was near the "put down" stage last weekend, but after intra joint injected antibiotics, Tyler started getting better and he returned to his home stall yesterday. As Rob Brown told PH: "Horse prayer answered."

Brenda and PH have a daughter, son-in-law and four grandkids who live in Gulfstream, Florida. They have evacuated inland and hopefully will be safe from Hurricane Frances. Others of you might have relatives or friends in Florida and prayers will be appreciated.

Physician Expert on the Dying Process Expired on August 24

The Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book "On Death and Dying'' and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

She died Tuesday of natural causes at her Scottsdale home, family members said.

Published in 1969, "On Death and Dying'' focused on the needs of the dying and offered her theory that they go through five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

"Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life,'' she once wrote. In another passage, she wrote: "Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.''

Kubler-Ross wrote 12 books after "On Death and Dying,'' including how to deal with the death of a child and an early study on the AIDS epidemic.

"She brought the taboo notion of death and dying into the public consciousness,'' said Stephen Connor, vice president of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

In 1979, she received the Ladies' Home Journal Woman of the Decade Award. In 1999, Time magazine named Kubler-Ross as one of the "100 Most Important Thinkers'' of the past century.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Kubler-Ross graduated from medical school at the University of Zurich in 1957. She came to New York the following year and was appalled by hospital treatment of dying patients.

"Whoever has seen the horrifying appearance of the postwar European concentration camps would be similarly preoccupied,'' she said.

She began her work with the terminally ill at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, and was a clinical professor of behavioral medicine and psychiatry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Kubler-Ross began giving lectures featuring terminally ill patients, who talked about what they were going through. That led to her 1969 book.

"Dying becomes lonely and impersonal because the patient is often taken out of his familiar environment and rushed to an emergency room,'' she wrote.

"He may cry for rest, peace and dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or tracheostomy. ... He will get a dozen people around the clock, all busily preoccupied with his heart rate, pulse, electrocardiogram or pulmonary functions, his secretions or excretions - but not with him as a human being.''

The most important thing Kubler-Ross did was bring death out of the dark for the medical community, said Carol Baldwin, a research associate professor of medicine at the University of Arizona and who worked as a nurse in one of the nation's first hospices in 1979.

"She really set the standards for how to communicate with the dying and their loved ones,'' Baldwin said recently. "Families learned that it's not a scary thing to watch someone die.''

Kubler-Ross is survived by her two children, Kenneth Ross and Barbara Lee Ross, and two granddaughters.

In a 2003 Associated Press interview, her son said that his mother, in her final months, was reaping the benefits of the movement she helped start, finding comfort in the constant companionship and dependable care of a group home.

"We get letters and e-mails from around the world,'' he said. "There's people who say, 'I was going to kill myself' because they've lost children or their husband or wife, and they read her book and it gave them a sense that they should go on.''

On the Net:

http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/

Preacher Cecil's Last Sermon (for now) at RRCB

Cecil Sherman has been our interim pastor for the last seventeen months. He has missed very few Sundays during this time. Most of his sermons are on the church's website under Publications. PH finds it both inspiring and theologically meaningful to hear Cecil preach and to read his written text later. A few weeks ago Cecil preached on keeping the Sabbath or dedicating a day. In PH's mind one of the more meaningful parts of that sermon is below:

"A lady talking to me since I've taken this job, having visited this church two or three times in the period of my assignment said, "Once you break the church habit, it's hard to recreate it." It may be second tier, but it matters. It's like a lot of things that are not the most important thing, but they matter. Does punctuality matter? Is it the most important thing on the job? No. But if the help come in 20 minutes late and leave 10 minutes early and cheat a little on the front and back end of lunch and extend time at the water fountain and the coffee break and the restroom, you better be running a profitable enterprise, or you can go broke on punctuality. Do study habits matter? They're not the most important thing, but unless you're pretty smart, study habits matter. Does what you eat make any difference when you're fifteen? When I was fifteen I could treat my stomach like a garbage can and function pretty well, but I understand that inside somewhere, somewhere, something's keeping score. It rose up and bit me last month! Those nickel and dime hamburgers I ate a long time ago and a few other habits, does it make any difference? It's second line, but it has a whole lot to do with the kind of person you are way down the road, it's just a little thing; it's one of those little things that matter. Being a Christian means you set apart a day. It's D-D-D in Christian history. You need it, the generations who come after need to see it in you. Fifty years from now they need to imitate you. It helps church, but far more important, it matters who you are. It identifies you, ultimately. Dedicating a day – it strengthens the church. But far more important, it strengthens you".

Have Two Seasoned Preachers Found More Work?

PH has learned from Pastor William Crockett that two River Road connected pastors have found interim's at other churches. More details will be forthcoming when PH has a heart to heart talk with Pastor Crockett.

Three Shepson Couples Celebrate Anniversaries

Barbara and Jack Harvie will celebrate forty-six years of marriage on Monday; Susan and John Gordon will celebrate forty-one years of marriage on next Tuesday and Courtney and Don Bunn will celebrate sixteen years of marriage on next Friday.

Dates to Mark on your Calendar

Sunday, September 5, We say thanks to Cecil in Fellowship Hall at noon.
     At 9:45 AM, The final 2004 Catacombs Lecture: Can God Be Found in the Movies?
     The Pianist
Monday, September 6, Labor Day (maternity shops closed for crowning)
Tuesday, September 7, Pastor Mike Clingenpeel begins his duties as our pastor
Wednesday, September 8, 5:30 PM Fried chicken and baked beans just before the River Road Evangelical Follies
Sunday, September 12, Pastor Mike delivers his first sermon as our pastor.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT DATE FOR YOUR CALENDAR: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16TH. Carolyn and George Thomas will host our fall social. Fellowship, 6:00-7:00 PM; dinner, 7:00 PM. More details later.

DON'T FORGET. You can pick up your I and II Samuel commentary this Sunday

The Warsaw Ghetto

World War II began sixty-five years ago on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Shortly thereafter The Jewish population in the city of Warsaw was confined in a ghetto, which was enclosed by walls in November 1940

In his book "The Holocaust," Martin Gilbert wrote the following:

"In those seven weeks (July 23 to September 12, 1942) a total of 265,000 Jews were sent by train for 'resettlement in the East'. Their actual destination was Treblinka and its three gas-chambers. Death, not slave labor, was their fate. It was the largest slaughter of a single community, Jewish or non-Jewish, in the Second World War."

The ghetto population originally numbered about 380,000 people or about one-third of the population of Warsaw. The space assigned to the ghetto was about 2.4% of the land in Warsaw. After the deportations in 1942 about 70,000 Jews remained. They worked in German run factories and managed to smuggle arms into the ghetto. The Warsaw Uprising occurred from April 19 to May 16, 1943, before the remaining Jews were forced to surrender to overwhelming German numbers and arms.

This Sunday PH and Brenda will present some portions of the film "The Pianist" and attempt a Christian interpretation of the scenes viewed. The setting of this film is the Warsaw Ghetto and how it affected one Jewish family. If the reader would like to see a number of photos of the Warsaw Ghetto, visit the web page below:

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/G1941WGU.htm

Attached to this PHA is one of the more famous pictures of the Holocaust.
German stormtroopers force Warsaw ghetto dwellers of all ages to move, hands up, during the Jewish Ghetto Uprising in April-May 1943.
Photo credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.

PH

Poor Henry's Archives

August 27, 2004
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2003 Archive

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