When You Give, Amazing Things Happen!

November 2021 Volume 68, Issue 11 Worship Sundays at 10:30 AM Mabaan at 12:30 PM

When You Give, Amazing Things Happen!

By Pastor Edgar

The Growing Committee planned the Fall Festival with one purpose: to get to know our neighbors. The logic behind this is simple but transcendent. When our church interacts with our surrounding community, we are opening more possibilities to share the good news of Christ, reach out to more people in search of a meaningful spirituality, and build relationships to expand the ministry of our beloved church. On Sunday, October 17 at 3 PM, members of the Growing Committee and church members witnessed the fruit of this valuable effort. Four people from the community attended the Fall Festival. By giving time, resources, and energy to our church, we met three neighbors from the Hawthorn Hill apartments. By giving, we witnessed these people's genuine interest in listening to the good news of Christ and visiting our church. We also helped a sojourner in need. By giving, we prayed and supported this sojourner to get home with food and more hope for his

life. When you give, amazing things happen! Shirley Christoffersen and her crew arrived at the church kitchen with a passion for giving. Ann Sarosi and Abby Darrington cut the vegetables as Shirley cooked the meals; later, Ryan Riley arrived to help with the serving. Then, two little boys, Avett and Wyatt came to the scene with great energy and a happy attitude, helping the crew put cookies on each plate. These boys are fantastic! By giving, they served members of our community at the Children and Family Urban Movement Supper Club where dozens of families received food. Children & Family Urban Missions (CFUM) Supper Club provides an evening meal to 100-120 adults and children Monday through Friday. CFUM provides after-school programming for 30-50 students at Moulton Elementary across the street. Our church provides the meals on the third Friday of each month. Our fantastic group of

2 - THE LIGHT Sunday Worship at 10:30AM November 2021

Mabaan Worship at 12:30 PM

volunteers begins meal preparation at about 12:30 PM in the church kitchen. The meals are then packaged and delivered by 4 PM. These are just two stories that I want to share with all of you to encourage your faith. When I give, I can see amazing things happen. When you give, you can see amazing things happen! Worship turns into a marvelous experience of sharing, singing, and enjoying inspiring music and transformative messages. When you give, lives are transformed, our church can develop the vital work of administration and maintenance, new projects become a reality, and God uses your gift to bless others. We invite you to participate in all these amazing things by giving! Remember that you are an active and positive participant of God's kingdom here on earth when you give! We invite you to pray to God in thanksgiving and ask Jesus, ”How can I give to my church so we can deliver the good news of God to many?” Jesus may say, "My church needs your positive presence, prayers, service, and donations to continue to move forward to a brighter future, to make disciples for the transformation of the world." Keep in mind that during the following Sundays, you will receive many positive reports from our church ministries. Keep in your heart that God will use your gifts to help your church carry on

God's mission. Remember that we will all bring our pledges on November 21st, 2021, asking God's blessings and direction for a new vision. When you give, amazing things happen. Do you want to see more of God's work in our church and community? Let's keep on giving! Please visit our web page for more information.

It’s Time to Say Farewell

My Dear First Church Family: Many of you have already experienced the joy of retirement and others of you have it yet to look forward to. I want to share with you that I am excited to tell you that now it is my turn.

As I reflect back over my work career, I think about the many and varied jobs I have had.

o Grocery store check-out clerk o Seller of donuts o Staff resident in a college

dormitory o Teacher o Missionary o State Education consultant o Business owner o Church staff member



Each of these jobs has had their joys and challenges but I want to say that I can’t think of a better way to end my professional career than to have had the privilege of working with the pastors and members of First Church. Thanks goes to Kevin LaGree who hired me (with perhaps a little encouragement from David Stout) and from whom I learned so much about the practice of prayer. Thanks to Eric Guy who allowed me to try new things and would just roll his eyes when I would say “I have an idea” and then would say “go ahead.” And finally, thanks goes to Edgar Solís who has opened my eyes and my heart to what the church can be if we will only be bold enough to catch God’s vision for the future. I have so enjoyed the times we have spent together in worship, studies, potlucks, mission trips, decorating the church for Christmas and Easter, meetings, food preparation for Trinity, and many other activities. I have been privileged to:

o Participate in weddings o Conduct funerals o Participate in worship o Visit you at home or in the

hospital o Watch your children grow o Learn from you

Each of you has enriched my life in a special way and I thank you for that. I believe that with Pastor Edgar’s leadership the future looks bright. I am excited to see what it holds for me and for First Church. May God continue to bless each and every one of you.

Christine Anders

The Establishment of the AIDS Ministry at First UMC

Submitted by: Deanna Snyder,

Reconciling Task Force Member

At a recent meeting of the Reconciling Ministry Committee, the question came up as to when exactly this congregation had begun discussions on gay rights and on becoming a reconciling congregation. I think those issues grew out of our AIDS Ministry that dawned back in 1993. I am inclined to think that when conversations about gay issues were not



yet comfortable, having an actual disease on which we could focus our intention, allowed us to address concerns that just happened to be very significant in the gay community. Jerry Cunningham sponsored the creation of a quilt panel in the name of Robert Mann, a gentle man who had come to our church, his frail body walking carefully down the center aisle on a Sunday morning to participate in Communion. I had asked Robert how we could be helpful to him, and his response was, “I don’t need help; I want to share with people what it’s like to live with AIDS.” I arranged for him to speak to one of our Sunday School classes, and afterward, class members came to me and said, “We just HAVE to have him back! We’ve only begun to learn his life story!” I believe the quilt that Jerry had inspired, was created by a member of that Sunday School class. When Robert died, a memorial service was held in our sanctuary. Several hundred people attended, and a large display of flowers in a tall vase sat on the floor in the center of the chancel. After the people sat in poignant silence following the stunning postlude played by Tim Short, they were invited to come forward and take a flower in remembrance of Robert. From there, we invited the support group at the AIDS Project to meet at our church; they were looking for someplace away from their office

setting. I remember how the women of the church struggled with the idea that these very sick men were meeting at the church. The coffee cups were cleaned with bleach and the room was wiped down after the group left. Much education was needed to bring this church into a sense of security in this very new endeavor. I had proposed a notice on the church’s billboard on the front lawn that we would be offering healing services for persons with AIDS. A few voices were raised in dissent, saying it would tell the community that we were a “sick church.” We, indeed, began a healing ministry, and we partnered with the other five downtown churches to participate in a monthly Healing Service for persons with AIDS. Eventually, we were able to secure some quilt blocks on loan from the National Aids Quilt, the huge memorial in Washington D.C. that has displayed thousands of the quilts on the National Mall. (Currently there are 48,000 quilt panels.) We were granted the privilege of displaying six of them in the sanctuary for World AIDS Day. Bob Mann’s quilt was one of those on display. The AIDS Ministry was lauded in the Des Moines Register on several occasions, having interviewed Father Kevin Cameron, a gay priest who had partnered with me in the establishment of this ministry. He was the facilitator who had sat with clients down at the AIDS Project of Central Iowa, just a few blocks south of the church.



As this ministry was progressing, First Church member Zoe Nichols came to me and shared quietly that her son, David, was very ill with AIDS out on the east coast. It was the first time, I believe, that she had shared that with anybody at the church. A new sense of acceptance and, I will say, awe, began to permeate the minds and hearts of our congregation as we opened the doors to this amazing community of people, living with a terminal illness and with all the stigma that surrounded it. Surely, God was at work here.

Where Our Vision and Our Future Intersect

vision (n), 1. the act or power of imagination, 2. unusual discernment or foresight, 3. a lovely or charming sight

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 The coming weeks are going to be unusually exciting at First Church. We are embarking upon a visioning process designed to guide our ministry inside the church and throughout this community into the future. Our Vision Process is being led by an enthusiastic and capable Visioning

Team, working with a skilled and experienced church consultant. The First Church Vision Team includes Arnie Brown, Jacque Coulson, Ben Jung, Angie Sadler, John Sarosi, and Wanda Wendt. They are working with Consultant Paul Nixon of the EpiCenter Group. This Team will be able to accomplish much in the way of consolidating information and framing questions, but the Team alone cannot and will not write this new vision for the future of First Church. You will be an important part of that process. Soon, you will be asked to participate in a survey aimed at delving deeply into our understanding of First Church, our relationship to it, our dreams about what might be, and our commitment to a new and bold future. When that survey comes to you, be sure to complete it, thoughtfully and prayerfully, and return it so that your voice – anonymously and in the aggregate – will be heard. In addition to this survey, the Team will be collecting a wide variety of historical, demographic, and organizational information about First Church and our community, in order to better understand the context in which we live and the future into which we are moving. They will be analyzing the results of the survey that we will all be taking, and they will be working with



our consultant to shape the culmination of our consultation: A congregational conversation identifying directions, ministries, commitments, and goals for the coming years. That conversation will take place in many parts and many stages over the weekend of January 21-23, 2022. Save those dates on your calendar; tell a member of the Visioning Team that you want to be involved in that weekend consultation; plan and pray and prepare for this important part of the life of First Church. Finally, join me as I keep the Visioning Team, the future of First Church, and our ministry within this community in prayer. Twila Glenn, Chair, FUMC Church Council

Submitted By Kathleen McQuillen

First UMC has for several years contributed to Justice for Our Neighbors, (JFON) a legal services program for immigrants. Recently JFON combined with the American Friends

Service Committee (AFSC) Immigrant Rights Program to form the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice (IMMJ). IMMJ is a statewide membership-based legal services and advocacy organization driven and led by immigrant and refugee voices and united with allies. The legal services program offers clinics at seven sites throughout Iowa, assisting people with numerous immigration related issues including "family-based immigration, humanitarian programs including Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, asylum, Violence Against Women Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" The advocacy program is "centered on the voices of immigrants and refugees to create a more positive narrative and build a powerful movement for immigrants' rights at all levels." The advocacy program has 3 foci: Iowa ICE Watch, Workers Rights, and Iowa Sanctuary Movement. The FUMC Outreach committee now contributes $1,500 to the important work of the IMMJ.



Gardening for Good On Saturday, October 9th, ten members and friends of FUMC traveled to a farm just outside of Madrid to harvest vegetables for local food pantries. We couldn’t have ordered a better day to be out in nature. In 2.5 hours, the group was able to pick over 1,000 pounds of butternut squash! Way to go team! Thanks to all who helped. Pictured left to right (front row): Mandy Chouangmala, Kay Pudil, Eloise Cranke, Christine Anders, Alexa Bounmaphouxay (Mandy’s sister). (Back row): Shirley Christoffersen, Josh Sadler, Will Sadler, Delvin Sadler, Lesley Gesaman



Understanding Thanksgiving

David Silverman is a professor at George Washington University who specializes in Native American, Colonial American, and American racial history. In 2019 he wrote a book entitled This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. The book opens with the following. “Serious, critical history tends to be hard on the living. It challenges us to see distortions embedded in the heroic national origin myths we have been taught since

childhood. It takes enemies demonized by previous generations and treats them as worthy of understanding in their particular contexts. Ideological absolutes – civility and savagery, liberty and tyranny, and especially us and them – begin to blur. People from our own society who are not supposed to matter, and whose historical experiences show how the injustices of the past have shaped the injustices of the present, move from the shadows into the light. Because critical history challenges assumptions and authority, it often leaves us feeling uncomfortable. Yet it also has the capacity to help us become more humble and humane.” He goes on to say, “Today, critics might charge revisionism. To defenders of the status quo, it does not matter if the origin myth or national history is untrue or hurtful to those it leaves out or vilifies. The point is that the story upholds the traditional social order by teaching that the rulers came by their position heroically, righteously, and even with the blessing of the divine.” We all know (or think we know) the story of the first Thanksgiving. It goes something like this. In 1620 a group of brave Englishmen called Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was a tough cold winter, and they didn’t have a lot of food. Many people got sick and died. When spring came the Pilgrims had to learn how to feed themselves. Native Americans who had lived on the land for many years knew how to survive and taught the Pilgrims how to grow crops such as corn. In the fall the Pilgrims had a big harvest and had plenty to eat. They decided to have a big dinner and invited their Native American neighbors to the celebration. The Pilgrims were thankful they had settled in a good place and started a new life. Sound familiar?

Continued on next page



Today we call this event the First Thanksgiving but the Native Americans in the Cape Cod Bay area call it the National Day of Mourning. For us, Thanksgiving is a time of celebration, celebrating the bounty of the land and the beginnings of the white man in America. For Native Americans it represents the beginning of their people’s demise. Our Thanksgiving story depicts the Wampanoags as naïve savages, in awe of the arrival of the Mayflower and its strange passengers. But that is not true. They had in fact been shaped by the legacy of many European ships that had visited their land and left behind enslavement, murder and theft. The real Thanksgiving story is more dramatic. There was a debate within the Indian community. Do they wipe out the strangers before they become a threat (they knew what had happened during previous encounters with foreigners) or do they seek to trade goods and even military support? Despite their piety, the Pilgrims introduced themselves to the Wampanoags by desecrating graves and stealing seed corn from underground storage barns. Nevertheless, Massasoit (the Wampanoags chief) extended a peaceful hand to the newcomers, not out of friendliness but because of pity and because his people needed allies against their rivals after they had suffered a devastating epidemic introduced by Europeans. Little did the Wampanoags know that before 50 years would pass, they would no longer be a free people. Silverman says “The dishes had barely been cleared from the First Thanksgiving before a litany of English crimes began to mount: atrocities like the New England colonists’ 1637 massacre of the Pequots at Mystic Fort.”

Continued on next page

How did Thanksgiving

come to be?

Thanksgiving had no link

whatsoever with Pilgrims

and Indians.

It was a regional New

England holiday to mark the

close of the agricultural

year.

Thanksgiving celebrations

emerged out of the English

puritan practice of declaring

fast days of prayer. They

were days of churchgoing

and piety, not gluttony and

sports. They did end with a

communal meal.

In 1863 President Lincoln

declared that the last

Thursday of November

should be a national day of

Thanksgiving. It was hoped

that this observance would

foster unity amid the

horrors of the Civil War.

It was around this time that

Americans began to think of

the holiday as originating in

a feast shared between the

English colonists of

Plymouth and the

surrounding Indians.

The first suggestion that such

a link existed was in 1841

when Rev. Alexander Young

published the only primary

source account of the event

and added a footnote that

“this was the First

Thanksgiving.”



The colonists cheated the Indians out of their land, herding them onto reservations, and making them trespassers in their own country, exploiting Indian poverty, forcing them into servitude, and degrading them by calling them savages. For the Native Americans, the English and their descendants betrayed the Wampanoags who had once befriended them in their time of need.

The Thanksgiving story we all know distorts history by making the famous dinner the seal of an alliance. Yet in English records, it was a minor affair compared to other milestones in the relationship. Hundreds of pages of English records dedicate only a handful of lines to the feast and then only in passing. The Native Americans also didn’t seem to put much stock in the event. Silverman states that the alliance between the Wampanoags and Plymouth colony took shape around other, usually less palatable episodes in which the participants were always acutely aware of how quickly it could all degenerate into bloodshed.

There is so much more to the story but since we are not Wamganoag or Native American, we will never understand the emotions indigenous people associate with Thanksgiving. Many Native People do not recognize Thanksgiving and some have even said “No thanks” and “no giving.” For many Native Americans, the day is a day to remember what they have lost. It is important for us to remember that much of the prosperity for which we are thankful came at Native people’s expense. Silverman writes over 400 pages encouraging us to rethink Thanksgiving. Scenes of happy Indians and Pilgrims dismiss Native peoples’ real historical traumas in favor of depicting their ancestors as consenting to colonialism. If we are going to continue to associate Pilgrim and Wampanoag relations with Thanksgiving, Silverman tells us we should at least try to get the story right.



Meet Our New Missionary, Patrick Booth

For several years First Church has been providing financial assistance to United Methodist missionary, Chin Cho. Chin has been serving in Mongolia but has made the difficult decision to return to the States to help provide care for his aging parents. After exploring several possibilities, the Outreach Ministry Team has decided to provide support to Patrick Booth. Patrick is from Lewisville, TX and is a new missionary called to serve in Cambodia where he will help reintegrate survivors of human trafficking. Patrick has a counseling background which will be very useful.

Here are some facts:

16 out of every 1,000 Cambodians are trafficked (261,000 victims) 71% are women and girls 29% men and boys

Due to financial bondage and predatory debt, only 1 in 10 maintain their freedom after being rescued.

We are grateful to Patrick and all UM missionaries for their work among the lost and the least and we look forward to developing our relationship with him.

Be sure to “fall back” one hour for daylight saving time on Saturday evening, November 7th.



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Worship ~ We Welcome and Affirm Everyone First Church - A Reconciling Congregation

First United Methodist Church, at the top of 10th Street in downtown Des Moines, strives to love others as Christ loves us and, in doing so, to be the Body of Christ in word and deed. As the Body of Christ, we welcome and affirm all of God’s children, knowing that each is created in the image of God. We welcome and affirm people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, races, ethnicities, family configurations, and physical and mental capabilities to join us in full participation as we come together to worship God and then go out to share God’s love in the world around us.

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When You Give, Amazing Things Happen!

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