Volunteers Provide Valuable Assistance

By Shirley Brinkerhoff

Volunteers contribute over 20,000 hours annually in the ABWE home office. Beginning with the efforts of the 1140 volunteers – from 28 states and 10 foreign countries – who helped renovate and construct the Harrisburg facilities, the work of volunteers continues to bless and enrich home office staff and missionaries every day of the year.

Some volunteers come for a limited time period, with a specific job in mind, such as Audrey Aviet, who arrives all the way from Wales each year to help paint. ABWE staff members smile when they mention Audrey’s willingness to don bibbed overalls and climb a stepladder, paintbrush in hand; they also applaud the wonderful tea she brings with her.

Other volunteers make themselves available to do whatever is needed, whether or not the job is related to their former experience. Ed and Marilyn Wheaton, from Western Pennsylvania, never planned to spend their retirement years in the kitchen, but everyone who works at the home office – as well as countless others on site for a board lunch or an MK Thanksgiving dinner – benefits from their willingness to peel, mince, fry, and bake. They routinely feed over 100 people three meals each day during Candidate Seminar, and are on hand to prepare meals for special occasions such as the recent all-staff retirement lunch for Bob Henry or various conferences and seminars offered throughout the year.

Carole Tuttle, Lois Polleck, and Janice Eims package and mail book orders, and fulfill literature requests from the Mobilization staff, missionaries, and churches. Volunteer Coordinators, Dave and Jean Heyd, recently relocated to Harrisburg from Erie, Pennsylvania, where Dave taught mathematics at the Penn State Erie campus for 31 years and helped write several best-selling calculus and pre-calculus college textbooks. Dave will also coordinate the task of digitizing ABWE’s vast slide library.

Still others, such as Mike Tibbits, come to ABWE with a specific skill they hope to use for God. Mike loves to drive, and helps with all kinds of transportation, from driving the airport shuttle to pick up administrators, board members, or missionaries, to steering a moving truck to help relocate new employees.

Dr. Richard Stagg, who practices medicine in the Harrisburg area, evaluates missionary candidates to see if they have any condition that would disqualify them from missionary service or limit them to certain fields. He also oversees the health of all the missionaries around the world, staying in touch by phone or email, and helping them to get medicine from the United States that may not be available in the countries where they are serving. “Although my wife and I miss being on the field ourselves,” Dr. Stagg comments, “we realize that this is a vital ministry for our missionaries who are on the field.”

Some individuals volunteer a week of their vacation time to work here at ABWE; entire youth groups have camped onsite and helped with everything from scrubbing baseboards and peeling potatoes to raking the lawn. Several volunteers came for a week or two this past summer to help with Candidate Seminar and the Missionary Enrichment Conference, the two biggest events of the ABWE year. The possibilities for helping at ABWE are endless.

To view volunteer possibilities, visit the volunteer page , and click either "Around the World" or "Home Office" for information on departments in which volunteers are needed, including food services, carpentry, maintenance, landscaping, clerical, computers, media and more. A volunteer application is also available there.

To view the rewards, take a close look at Ed Wheaton’s warm smile when he says, "I look forward to being here every single day!"

Fran Weddle

"Volunteering is what keeps me going,” Miss Fran says of the one hundred or so hours each month she spends filing for eight different ABWE employees.

Fran taught MKs in Iquitos, Peru, from 1961 to 1993, and also helped train national believers in the Bible Institute there. She returned to Missouri to help care for her father, who was legally blind, until his death, then moved to the Harrisburg area and began her volunteer work at ABWE in 1997.

Elsie Miller

Elsie Miller’s dedication to ABWE has spanned almost four decades. She worked first as a secretary, then as an administrative assistant, and now – at age 91 – as a volunteer.

"Miss Elsie,” as she’s known to home office staff, was processing top secret papers at the Pentagon in 1965 when an invitation came to join ABWE. “I didn’t want to work here at first,” she admits, “because I wanted to stay in the business world.” However, by the time she met with Mr. Edward Bomm, then treasurer of ABWE, about the job, the "glamour of working at the Pentagon had worn off.” She began as secretary to Dr. Harold Commons, then president of ABWE, in September of 1965, when the office was still located in Philadelphia .

From 1971 to 1982, the year she officially retired, Miss Elsie worked in the Cherry Hill office as Administrative Assistant to Dr. Kempton. She soon found that being retired, however, didn’t suit her at all. When asked how long her ‘retirement’ lasted, Miss Elsie answers, “Two weeks. And that was too long!”

Miss Elsie now volunteers at ABWE four days per week, seven hours per day, keeping the mission’s record books, posting board and finance committee minutes, and working as secretary to JoBeth Loftis, among other duties.

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