Dinner at Your Door substitute drivers are needed to fill in when someone cannot make their 2nd Monday or 2nd Tuesday shift. Time commitment begins at 11:15 a.m. and takes 60-90 minutes. Contact Jan Quist at 952-474-8194 to get on the contact list.
Men, are you angling for a good book? Cast your bait and reel in one or more of these. You’re sure to find something that will hook you!
Fiction
Chicken Soup for the Little Soul: The Best Night Out With Dad by Jack Canfield
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
The Presence of Angels by Michael Sherer
The Twilight of Courage by Bodie and Brock Thoene
Non-Fiction
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonheoffer
The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory A. Boyd
Love, Dad: Letters of Faith to my Children by Herbert Brokering
Love, Dad: A Father’s Daily Epistles to his Two Boys ... Written on the Run and Left on the Breakfast Table by Patrick Connolly
Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker
Conversations With Poppi About God by Robert W. Jensen and Solveig Lucia Gold
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Truman by David McCullough
90 Minutes to Heaven by Don Piper
God’s Politics by Jim Wallis
All men who check out material during June are automatically entered to win the fishing gear on the display table.
Third Tuesday of the month from 7-8 p.m. in the Fireside Gallery
This get-together is for all women who love reading and would like to connect with others who do too. All are always welcome. Simply read the book and show up in the Fireside Gallery at 7 p.m.
A good site to find out more about these and other ‘good reads’ is www.readinggroupguides.com. Upcoming selections and discussion dates are:
When Margie Olson joined Gethsemane in 2006, she wasted no time becoming “involved”….Voices of Praise, Quilters, Deborah Circle, Caring Ministry visitation, the Katrina Mission Project, but she isn’t the run-of-the-mill “joiner.” Her vibrant faith is in the service of the God who freed her stifled spirit and led her back to wholeness.
Margie (nee Margie Adolphson) grew up on a farm near Chokio in southwestern Minnesota. She had five sisters and one brother.
Always, a singer, she has good memories of her musical family…
Singing in the car or at home with her Mother at the piano.
But it was also a deeply troubled childhood, a period when she and her sisters were all sexually abused by their father. As a child, she kept her silence, but she is now open about the experience, hoping that her candor may help other victims of incest.
When Margie reached confirmation age, one of her older sisters found the courage to share the “secret” with caring adults, their hired man, a counselor, and a pastor.
Following an investigation, their father was sentenced to prison for four years.
When the time came for his release, Margie could no longer live at home. Her remaining high school years were spent away from home, first with her married sister and then working for room and board for a young married couple.
She also found a summer job at a canning factory in Sleepy Eye, folding boxes for the pea pack.
Margie graduated as Valedictorian of her class, then enrolled for nurses training at Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis. From Fairview she moved on to the University. In the 1950’s she was head nurse at University Hospital.
In 1956 she and her sister Laverne set out on a bold adventure...a two-month tour of Europe in a rental car. The plan-as-you-go trip undoubtedly fostered her lifelong love of travel.
While at the University she met and married Ralph Olson, in training to be a forester.
They moved to Grand Rapids, and their children grew up there, two girls and a boy.
The busy mother put her professional skills to work, first at the Grand Rapids Hospital, then teaching practical nursing at the community college. She pursued independent study and became a public health nurse, a job she held for 14 years.
In 1984 she faced up to the state of her spiritual life. “I had always been a church-goer, but my faith was on a starvation diet.”
The first positive step was her own personal Bible study, digging into the Scriptures on a daily basis and journaling before she went to work each day. “There was not a day when there wasn’t something there for me.”
One day at lunch with her friend Verna, stimulated by the spirited conversation and nudged by the Holy Spirit, she had the notion to take a short sabbatical from work and sign on to volunteer service in nursing abroad.
She confided her dreams to her pastor at Zion Lutheran. He enthusiastically began casting about for a specific assignment.
Liberia turned out to be her opportunity, working as a volunteer for Lutheran World Ministries. She left Grand Rapids on Christmas Day, 1985, and returned the following 4th of July. Zion parishioners supported her with $10.00 a day living expenses. One 7-year old boy saved up his allowance money for one day’s expenses.
The mission trip “cemented her relationship with Jesus” and probably led to treatment for the wounds from her clouded childhood. Here she was, a successful health care professional with a desperate need to be healed. She finally found direction when she turned to Lutheran Social Services for help.
LSS referred her to Jackie, a Christian counselor, who helped her deal with the shame that had shadowed her life. Jackie encouraged her to take a virtual walk with the Savior and to leave her childhood experiences at the foot of the cross.
In 1990 her 33 year marriage ended in divorce.
One Sunday afternoon she took a walk, pondering the morning’s sermon on the Holy Spirit. Back home she read a magazine article in which a student described her call to the ministry. The Holy Spirit made it clear. Margie felt a call to
Seminary training, a bold move for a woman past 60; but decisiveness is built right in. She enrolled in the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in 1991.
Ordained in 1995, Pastor Margie Olson’s first call was to Epiphany Lutheran Church in Canoga, California. Then she served 2 1/2 years at the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation in Poway, near San Diego, a part-time assignment. She also worked as a volunteer in prison ministry in Tijuana, Mexico.
Following retirement, she basked in the California sun for several years, then decided to return to Minnesota and family. It’s important to her, staying in close touch with her sisters, her children, and grandchildren.
Her daughter Chris Resch is a nurse living in Coon Rapids. Paul is a commercial banker in River Forest, Illinois. Jane Sholtz, a product manager for Thrivent, lives with her family in Hopkins, so Margie shopped for a house here.
A big yard satisfies Margie’s fondness for gardening. Her clergy credentials provide an opportunity for interesting part-time work...conducting weddings at the Mall of America. She also serves on the Hopkins Human Rights Commission.
Why did she join Gethsemane? She found it a “warm and welcoming place, a church where the Spirit is alive.” She envisions a great future for Gethsemane, “as we continue to reach out.”
On the second Monday and Tuesday of each and every month, Gethsemane volunteers deliver hot noontime meals to the homebound in our community. Don and Lorraine
Carlson recently ‘retired’ from this duty after many years of faithful service. On behalf of our congregation, the Social Ministry Team recognizes and thanks Don and Lorraine for their generous gift of time.
Could you serve as a regular driver? We have many volunteers who are able and willing to help as occasional substitutes. However, we need people who could be ‘regular’ drivers on the first Monday (or even the first Tuesday) of each month. If your schedule fits that timeframe, please contact Jan Quist at 952-474-8194 for more information.
The first step in interviewing Marilyn Zwack and Marge
Campbell should be attach name tags. It is a problem...which is which?
When they started life in Watertown, Minnesota as Marjorie and Marilyn Hammerberg, Marilyn was born first..five minutes ahead of Marge. Their parents, Ruth and Elmer Hammerberg, were totally surprised. They had been “expecting,” but they hadn’t expected twins. Mom was a homemaker, and Dad worked for the telephone company.
The family lived on the edge of town, a location that made it possible to raise a few pigs and chickens. The twins remember having to saw wood or hoe potatoes before their Dad would take them fishing.
In childhood, they say, they were shy and quiet. And obedient! When, as teenagers, their mother sent them shopping for clothes, saying quite firmly that they were size 16, they obediently bought size 16 clothes for their size 12 bodies.
They lived about a mile from school, and on their first day they got lost walking home. Actually they often rolled to school with their clamp-on-roller skates. Bikes (acquired at age 12) took them to Luther League, 4-H and other activities. Their church burned down when they were teens, and Marge and Marilyn were among those who watched it burn.
The code of behavior in the Hammberg household was strict..no movies, no dancing, no lipstick. It was, however, a happy home. “Never once did we hear our parents argue.”
Their father was musical, often playing musical instruments in his telephone truck.
There must have been “something in the water” in Watertown. There were three sets of twins in their high school class of 23.
Have Marilyn and Marge always fit the twins stereotype? They did dress alike when they were small, but in high school, not so much. They’ve always had identical interests and still call each other every day. There’s one difference in their uncanny similarity. Marge will accept a cup of coffee, but Marilyn asks for water. They’ve sometimes attended the twins convention in Twinsville, Ohio.
After high school Marge enrolled at the Minnesota School of Business in Minneapolis..and of course Marilyn did, too. Marilyn found work as a secretary and so did Marge (Marilyn at Pillsbury, and Marge at Lutheran Brotherhood).
One night Marge went to a dance at the Business School, as did Marilyn. That night each of them met the man she would marry. (Gene Stavlo for Marilyn, and Earl Redmond for Marge.) There was a double wedding.
Early in their marriages both “took in” sewing, and both cared for foster children, along with their own.
The Stavlos had five children (three boys and two girls), and the Redmonds had four girls (one of them died.)
The Stavlo family joined Gethsemane in 1955...the Redmonds in 1967.
Marge did secretarial work part-time at Gethsemane with Pastor Harlan Robbins as her boss and Marilyn did duty in the nursery.
Marilyn and Gen Stavlo had a “friendly divorce” after 26 years of marriage, and in 1979 she married Butch Zwack, a neighbor who had been baby sitter for her children.
Marge was widowed in 1968. A mutual friend played matchmaker, introducing her to Jim Campbell, who lived in Pennsylvania. Their marriage soon followed. The Campbells adopted son Tom, and they were also surrogate parents to exchange students from Chile, Colombia, and Sweden.
The twins’ grown children are all close by. Of Marilyn’s five, Scott Stavlo is in Hopkins, Paul in Elk River, Tammi in Champlin, Dane in New Hope, and Cherry Hempel in Waterville. Of
Marge’s four, Debbie Kapinos lives in Bethel, Kim Corkins in St. Bonifacius, Kelle De Costa in Elk River, and Tom Campbell in Shakopee. Both twins are grandmothers as well as great-grandmothers.
Gethsemane’s kitchen is a home away from home for Marge and Marilyn. They’re in charge of preparing dinners for the ASK (After School for Kids) program and are also involved in serving funeral luncheons.
Both twins are members of Dorcas Circle. Together they sew about 40 school bags a year for Lutheran World Relief, colorful containers that are filled with school supplies by other circle members.
In a project called Sew Much Comfort, they produce adaptive clothing for amputees and other disabled servicemen. Utilizing a generous amount of Velcro and elastic, the clothes are designed to simplify the dressing task.
Marge Campbell and Marilyn Zwack, two of a kind and a double blessing for Gethsemane church.
Cross-country skiing in winter, biking in the summer, conducting exercise classes every Monday morning at church, stuffing the tract racks with health brochures…Charlotte Bolla is Gethsemane’s energetic fitness guru.
As a kid growing up in New Ulm, Char was a tree-climbing tomboy, and decades later the image hasn’t changed much.
Char’s dad, Ben Krahn, was in the monument business; her mother, Meta, worked as a secretary. They had met at a wedding in Milwaukee before settling down in New Ulm. Char’s sister, born with spina bifida, died at age two, and she had one older brother, Roy. The family made their home in an apartment above the monument shop.
“At New Ulm public high school I tried everything,” she recalls, “badminton, softball, the junior play…”
She was college age when all the boys began leaving for World War II military service, and Char signed on to the Cadet Nursing program at the University of Minnesota, training at General Hospital. After graduation in 1946 she earned $10 a day caring for polio patients at the University Hospital.
A fellow nurse, Marie Bolla, invited Char to her home for dinner. Marie’s brother John was off somewhere with the Navy, but his family and Char “got to look each other over.” She became Mrs. John Bolla in 1947.
After his Navy discharge, John became an accountant, then comptroller for Farmers and Mechanics Bank.
Char’s nursing career was put on hold when she became pregnant with Anne. As three more girls and a boy filled their nest, she was content to be a stay-at-home mom. When the kids were all in school she began a 20-year service as a nurse practitioner for Planned Parenthood.
When the family outgrew their house on Beard Avenue South in Minneapolis they moved to April Lane in Hopkins. Their church for five years was Zion Lutheran, but Char’s good friend and neighbor, Virginia Prior, lobbied enthusiastically for Gethsemane, showering her with parish literature and inviting her to attend. Eighteen years ago the Bollas transferred to Gethsemane. In her new church home, Char joined Virginia’s circle and sang alto in the church choir.
It was Merle Knutson who set up a parish nursing program at Gethsemane. It was natural for Char to work with Merle. She took a preparation course, then took over the part-time position as parish nurse in 2000.
“It was rewarding,” she recalls. She kept in contact with those on the sick list, did blood pressure checks, assisted with services of healing, and promoted the use of Life Line for members living alone. Char has allowed her RN accreditation to expire and no longer holds the position, but she believes in the work. Although it’s no longer officially her assignment, she still feels a special concern for the health of Gethsemane’s members.
Three of the Bolla’s grown children live in Minneapolis, and two in California. Nee, a financial manager for a women’s health group, lives in California. Katie Bolla is a nurse. She lives in California with her carpenter husband, Pat Ford, and their two sons. Jack is single, is lead engineer at a small hotel, and lives in Minneapolis. Jane is divorced, manages several small HMOs and lives in Minneapolis. Mary Bolla and her husband, Don Ness, have two teenagers, 16 and 18. They are also a Minneapolis family, and Mary works for U-Care.
It was Char Bolla who got Gethsemane’s After School for Kids program started six years ago after noting Mizpah’s successful effort. A corps of volunteers works with about 40 kids on Thursday afternoons, helping them with schoolwork, playing games and serving supper to the children and their families. Char also enjoys working with a church group that produces quality, hand-stitched quilts.
Away from church, Char is a backyard birder and an enthusiastic gardener. She is also an avid biker; every year she takes part in the St. Paul Classic bike ride, a marathon achievement.
Charlotte Bolla’s hopes for Gethsemane’s future include a permanent commitment to a parish nurse program. Thus far the money hasn’t been there to support a salaried position, but it is a need that is being recognized by increasing numbers of neighboring churches.
Clients of ICA, our local food shelf, really appreciate our donations of fresh vegetables and fruits. As your gardens produce, or when you're visiting the farmers' market, please pick some to donate to ICA. Place your donations in the basket at the foot of the altar on Sundays and we’ll promptly deliver them.
Men’s Ministry invites everyone—women and men—to attend their fall kick-off breakfast September 14 at 7:00 am in the Fellowship Hall. We are honored to have Jim Klobuchar as our speaker. His topic is "Looking for New Horizons." Breakfast is provided with a $6.00 donation.
Jim Klobuchar is a celebrated Minnesota journalist, author of 23 books, world traveler, mountain climber, and father of two well respected daughters—current U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and Meagan McGlade, auditor-accountant with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Jim’s writings have appeared frequently in the Christian Science Monitor, which in 2003 nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism.
Women and men, family and friends, mark your calendars and plan to attend on September 14. You won’t be disappointed!
Join in the joys of summer camp and a full range of experiences that combine faith and fun: nature, wildlife, campfires, sing-a-longs and worship.
We will be staying at Mount Olivet Conference & Retreat Center, in Farmington, September 20-21. Choose from overnight or day camp. Transportation provided.
Click here to register. Deadline to register is September 3.
Questions? Contact Susan Radde, Parish Nurse at 952.935.1753, or cell, 612.272.2732.
