Oct. 6, 2003
Workers find picking pumpkins hard, ‘but it’s a job’
A UMNS Feature by Kathy L. Gilbert
FARMINGTON, N.M. (UMNS) — First thing in the morning, the air is crisp and cool. Two hours later, it is hot and dry.
Wind blows the silky fine dust everywhere. At the end of the day, the workers in the pumpkin fields will have enough dirt on their bodies to start their own pumpkin patch.
From dawn till dusk, more than 400 workers will stoop, cut, grab, toss and load pumpkins into cavernous 18-wheel trucks for delivery to locations across the United States.
Twenty varieties of pumpkins cover more than 1,600 acres. The vegetables range from tiny to enormous. Some are white, some are red, and some are covered with what look like the warts on a witch’s nose.
Workers form a human chain and toss the pumpkins to each other until they reach the conveyor belt hooked into the back of the trailers. Once the pumpkins are on the conveyor belt, workers inside the trailers inspect and stack them. Those that don’t pass inspection come flying out of the back of the truck.
The pumpkins can’t be too ripe or too green, and they must have a "handle."
"People like to have a bit of the stem on their pumpkins," says Tina Jones, the chief financial officer of Pumpkin Patch USA, the company that leases the land from the Navajo Nation.
Bend down, pick up a pumpkin, toss it to the next person, repeat. Slow, hypnotic work that requires little brain power but a lot of attention if you don’t want to get hit in the head by the next pumpkin coming your way.
Old yellow school buses load the workers and take them to the seemingly endless miles of pumpkins. Most of the workers are Navajo. For the approximately 45 days of harvest, they will put in long hours, seven days a week, doing backbreaking labor.
"It’s hot and it’s hard, but it’s a job," a young Navajo man says. "It keeps me out of trouble," he adds, laughing as he bends to pick up another pumpkin.
At noon, the lunch wagon – a Frito-Lay truck in a previous life – rumbles into the field to bring a hot lunch and a much-needed break to the workers.
"They have to rotate jobs," Richard Hamby, owner of Pumpkin Patch USA, says. "One man can’t stoop over and pick up pumpkins all day."
Hamby started the pumpkin patch business almost 30 years ago. In the beginning, he touched every pumpkin that went out.
"I was the best pumpkin stacker in the business," he says, with pride. Today, Navajo workers do most of the picking, tossing and stacking. When the work picks up, migrant workers from Mexico help.
By the time the last pumpkin is gleaned, more than 700 trucks will have gone out.
Watching an 18-wheel truck make its slow way out of the field, Hamby muses, "Every year, we think we will never get to the end. But we always do."
top
Oct. 6, 2003
Churches rely on pumpkins for raising funds
A UMNS Feature by Kathy L. Gilbert
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (UMNS) — Jill Vogle and about 50 of her closest friends are spending a windy Sunday afternoon unloading 2,000 pumpkins from the back of an 18-wheel truck.
Vogle is the senior high youth director at Fellowship United Methodist Church and a new recruit to Pumpkin Patch USA, a company that sends pumpkins to churches to sell for fund-raisers.
"We will be here seven days a week for the entire month of October," she says. "Sunday we’re open from noon to 6 p.m., and Monday through Saturday we’re here from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m."
The youth group of about 60 will be out in the pumpkin patch every day, working to raise money for their summer mission trips, summer camps and other youth events.
Fellowship’s pumpkins were packed on the truck Sept. 25 in Farmington, N.M., and arrived at the church in Murfreesboro around 1:30 p.m. Sept. 28. Fellowship is one of nearly 700 United Methodist churches selling the pumpkins during October.
Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer. News media can contact her at (615) 742-5470 .
top
Oct. 10, 2003
UMCOR appeals for U.S. disaster response funds
A UMNS Report by Linda Green
A series of major storms has taxed the United Methodist Church’s relief agency, virtually depleting its funds for responding to future disasters in the United States.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief is launching a churchwide appeal Oct. 19 to replenish its funds. Agency leaders are urging local churches to take an offering on that date or soon after.
Storms during the past 16 months have left the agency with less than $100,000 for undesignated disaster response in the United States.
Since last year, UMCOR has provided $1.5 million to annual conferences for relief and response work. Annual conferences are asking UMCOR for another $1.1 million to continue existing recovery programs in response to storms in the South and Midwest. Additional funds are needed to address the devastation caused by Hurricane Isabel, which struck the East Coast in September.
Based on previous appeals, UMCOR anticipates raising more than $2 million, though agency officials say the need in the annual conferences could exceed that.
Louisiana is one of many states where UMCOR provides ongoing recovery help. Hurricanes Isidore and Lilly struck the state within days of each other in October 2002, destroying farmland and homes.
"The United Methodist Committee on Relief is a way in which our faith is put into concrete action," said Louisiana Bishop William Hutchinson. "It is a way in which our beliefs are transmitted to the general public, and it is a way to help people recover from things not necessarily of their own making. UMCOR is a way for us to be responsible to God as we are called to be a servant and care for other people."
The agency is appealing to church members for money "because the vast majority of our donations are specifically designated for a particular Advance and we cannot use them (the money) for this purpose," said the Rev. Kristin Sachen, a UMCOR staff executive. The Advance is a churchwide program that raises money for a wide range of ministries and mission work.
The appeal money, Sachen said, would be used to fund programs developed by annual conference disaster response teams. UMCOR helps conferences assist the most vulnerable through long-term case management and volunteer building and repair teams.
UMCOR is funded through the proceeds from the annual One Great Hour of Sharing offering, taken the fourth Sunday during Lent, and not by apportionments, she said. "Our capacity to respond to the forgotten disasters is determined by the availability of undesignated funds. We don’t want any annual conference to be forgotten." The annual offering raises 27 cents per church member for UMCOR, she said.
United Methodists should respond to the appeal because "UMCOR is one of the longest-serving disaster recovery bodies that is on site," Hutchinson said. While other groups come in immediately and then leave, "UMCOR is there for the long term and does a tremendous amount of work over a long period of time. This is where the long-term effects of helping people in their lives takes place."
UMCOR, he added, "puts our faith in action and puts our concern for people and their lives on the front burner."
Since May, severe weather systems have brought tornados, floods and hurricanes to numerous parts of the United States, leaving behind major damage and exposing the most vulnerable. The events brought death, injuries, damage and destruction to homes, businesses and crops.
Sachen said the UMCOR appeal has four objectives:
* To make United Methodists "aware of the situation facing brothers and sisters in the U.S. who have been devastated by disasters that the rest of us have forgotten."
* To build an awareness leading to a "compassionate response" in the form of money or material help for the UMCOR Sager Brown Depot in Louisiana, as well as encourage volunteer help for United Methodist-related recovery organizations.
* To enable UMCOR to fund annual conference efforts to "provide compassionate ministry to those in their midst who are living in deplorable conditions."
* To affirm United Methodists as part of a connectional church that supports people in times of need.
Donations can be designated for "Churchwide Appeal for USA Domestic Disasters," UMCOR Advance No. 901670. Checks can be made to UMCOR and placed in church offering plates or sent to the agency at 475 Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit-card donors can call (800) 554-8583, and online donations can be made at http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor .
Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer.
top
Oct. 9, 2003
Africa’s war is now HIV/AIDS, Methodist bishop says
NEW YORK (UMNS) – Bishop Mvume Dandala once visited a small village in Mozambique populated only by elderly women.
Their husbands had been killed during the country’s long civil war, and their children had fled, also because of the war. The village had no future.
In the same way, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is "killing the tomorrows" of people across the entire African continent, the former presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa said Oct. 5, at a breakfast at Riverside Church in New York. Each day, 7,000 Africans die from HIV/AIDS.
Dandala, who recently became general secretary of the All-Africa Conference of Churches, came to the United States under the sponsorship of Africa Action, a Washington-based Africa advocacy organization. He was among the participants in a series of public teach-ins in six U.S. cities in connection with the organization’s Africa’s Right to Health Campaign, which focuses on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He also co-officiated the World Communion Sunday service at Riverside Church with its senior minister, the Rev. James Forbes Jr., and former pastor William Sloane Coffin.
Because of continuing conflicts on the continent, the bishop noted that it is hard for Westerners to see "the powerful things that are happening in Africa."
But in this post-apartheid era, "it is exciting to see more and more African leaders committing themselves to the paths of democracy," Dandala said. To hear those leaders talk about working toward good governments, political accountability and social systems that will put food on everyone’s table is a major advancement for the continent, he added.
The way nearby heads of state negotiated the peaceful departure of former president Charles Taylor from Liberia this summer is an example of how this newfound cooperation can work, according to Dandala.
When South Africans finally were freed of the apartheid system, they knew they had to set up an effective government and deal with substantial issues such as poverty. "But none of us expected the tragedy of HIV/AIDS, which decimated the continent," he said.
Addressing the tragedy requires practical assistance, not condemnation, from the churches. "All we ask is that our friends with the church should walk with us in this great battle," Dandala said.
In Africa, however, the battle involves more than access to medicine or treatment. "We cannot fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic without giving equal attention to the issue of poverty," the bishop explained. "Until and unless we face up to the poverty issue … all our strategies will fall short."
When some one suffers from poor nutrition, for example, the toxic effects from drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS are heightened, he pointed out.
In many parts of Africa, the health care system is so poor that instead of being a tool for treatment it actually becomes a transmission agent — through the re-use of needles, for example — to help spread the virus, Dandala declared.
The All-Africa Conference of Churches, based in Nairobi, Kenya, has taken several steps to deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. During the past two years, it has sponsored three well-attended conferences that produced materials regarding the crisis for member churches to use. Currently, the organization is in the process of identifying which of its 169 national denominational members needs additional help to do "cutting-edge work" on HIV/AIDS, the bishop said.
Another of the organization’s concerns is that only about 20 percent of the money Africa receives to fight the disease goes toward research and that research not sponsored by major pharmaceutical companies often receives no funding at all. A goal of the conference is to equip the churches to address this and other "powerful moral questions for this pandemic," Dandala said.
He believes the United States, as a nation, "needs to take the global fight against HIV/AIDS a little more seriously," he said. And if churches can interpret the pandemic as a moral issue, "I think that would be a powerful thing."
Most Africans committed to battling the effects of HIV/AIDS "are ordinary churchgoers who live with this pain every day," he pointed out. He suggested that U.S. churches could form partnerships with African churches to join in the fight. Dandala said his organization could help forge the links for those partnerships.
More information on the All-Africa Conference of Churches can be found at www.aacc-ceta.org , the organization’s Web site.
Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer in New York.
top
Oct. 7, 2003
Gleaning program fights hunger in U.S.
A UMNS Report By Nancye Willis
An ecumenical ministry founded more than 20 years ago by two United Methodist ministers is taking the ancient practice of gleaning into the 21st century.
Gleaning — gathering surplus food left behind after a harvest — is what Ralph Goings, an official with the Dallas office of the Society of St. Andrew, calls "a stewardship ministry."
The Society of St. Andrew, founded in 1979 by the Rev. Kenneth C. Horne Jr. and the Rev. Ray Buchanan, builds on the generosity of farmers and volunteers to feed thousands of hungry people across the United States.
The food, Goings says, "is God’s gift. We are just seeing this gift is passed onto people who are hungry."
After a recent apple harvest, coordinated through the Society of St. Andrew, volunteers were allowed in to harvested orchards to pick up the leftovers — fruit that was edible but not up to commercial standards.
A late freeze and hail made for a poor crop this year, and orchard owner Douglas Reynolds donated what was usable to a local food bank, where fresh produce is a rarity.
"It’s a good thing to know I can have these people come in and some good can come from apples that I can’t profit by," Reynolds says.
Jim Douglas, director of the Bowie (Texas) Mission, was pleased to distribute the fruit. "Any time that we get apples, it’s just like a Christmas present," he says. The mission served as a "go-between the grower or the donator and those that are going to receive it."
From its beginnings 20 years ago in Big Island, Va., in an abandoned sheep shed, the Society of St. Andrew has grown into a national organization that has saved 433 million pounds of food that otherwise would have gone to waste. That food provided 1.3 billion servings to hungry people during the two decades since 1983.
So far this year, the Society has saved about 21.8 million pounds of fruits and vegetables. The produce provided 64 million servings for hungry people.
Four regional offices in Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia coordinate projects, including the Gleaning Network.
The Gleaning Network alone has accounted for about 10.4 million pounds of the saved produce this year. The Society of St. Andrew estimates that about 35,000 volunteers from churches, synagogues, Scout troops, senior citizens’ groups and other organizations participate in gleaning activities each year. So far this year, the Society has had about 17,500 volunteers participate.
The Society’s other food-saving program, the Potato Project, redirects tractor-trailer loads of potatoes — rejected because of slight imperfections — to soup kitchens, Native American reservations, food pantries, low-income housing areas, local churches and other hunger agencies.
Another ministry, Harvest of Hope, is the Society’s ecumenical study, worship and mission program, designed to educate youth and adults about the problem of hunger.
Though the Society has collected millions of pounds this year, its total is down 18 percent as of the end of September, says Carol Breitinger, public service director for the organization. She attributes that to harvest shortages due to excessive rainfall. The previous year, harvests were down because of drought.
"We are certainly due for a good year of crops," she says.
"We keep on looking for more new food sources and suppliers — farmers that come on board and allow us to go into their fields," she says. "As that network grows, we are still trying to get as much food as we possibly can."
The Society is an Advance Special of the United Methodist Church. Donors can designate contributions for Advance Special No. 801600 and make checks out to their local church or to "Advance GCFA." Contributions can be left in church collection plates or sent to P.O. Box 9068, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10087-9068.
The organization operates nearly year round across the United States. More information on the Society of St. Andrew is available from the organization’s Web site at http://www.endhunger.org
Willis is editor for the Public Information Team at United Methodist Communications in Nashville, Tenn. This story was based on a UMTV report by John Goheen with additional reporting by Tim Tanton at United Methodist News Service.
