A Prisoner Creates Art In Support Of Those In Need--And Invites Us To Match His Generosity

This beautiful manger scene, crafted by someone incarcerated at the Dillwyn Correctional Center, was donated to the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale's annual auction to help raise money for world relief. The creche is currently on display in the lobby of VMRC's Park Place, along with other items for the Sale.

Over  4000 people are expected to attend this year's Relief Sale at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds October 3-4. Among them are the many who contribute to make this fundraiser possible for Mennonite Central Committee, mostly by donating auction and other sale items and through selfless hours of volunteer time to make this an annual event a success. 

Many of the rest of us will help mostly by being consumers of the food and craft items offered at the event and not primarily as actual contributors to this effort. WE will leave the Sale with full stomachs, good feelings about having enjoyed a pleasant day, and with whatever items we have added to our store of possessions.

Could more of us consumers become generous contributors as well? 

One way is by encouraging increased cash, check or credit card donations at the SOS (Sharing Our Surplus) giving table, or for those unable to attend, by sending a gift to the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale, 601 Parkwood Drive, Harrisonburg, VA 22802, with checks made out to VMRS. 

On the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community campus I am personally collecting contributions for the SOS effort, which since 2017 has raised well over $200,000, thus substantially adding to the total income produced by food, craft and other sales.

Having said all that, this effort isn't primarily about raising record funds for the Relief Sale, or even for MCC. Rather it's about loving our hungry, homeless and hurting neighbors around the world just as we love and care for ourselves, neighbors whom God loves and longs to bless with daily bread and adequate shelter.

Let's all join good people like the one who created the Christmas creche shown above, someone who gave so much of his time, talent and meager means for a cause he deeply believes in. 

Here's how he describes his amazing creation:

Artist: Brian E. Brubaker

Dillwyn Correctional Center

A Virginia Model Facility

1522 Prison Rd.

Dillwyn, VA 23936

This project made for the 2025 Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale is

in part made possible by the many members of the Mennonite

community residing in the Virginia Mennonite Retirement

Community, the greater Harrisonburg area, and my friends and

relatives scattered across our great nation. I simply would not be

able to craft if not for those who have chosen to journey with me

supporting my artistic endeavors during my incarceration

experience. I must also give credit to the Administration here at

DWCC who give artists the ability to purchase Elmer’s Glue for

artists like myself who work in three dimensions. This project

required the following materials to create and my only tool not

created by myself that I can purchase off the commissary used

was the tiny 2” in length, fingernail clipper used to cut every

popsicle to size.

2 boxes of popsicle sticks (roughly 2000 stick)

25 pencils split in half

4-sheets of 15”x20” aquarelle artists painting paper

16 8 1\2”x11” cardboard legal paper pad backings

17 4 oz. bottles of Elmer’s Glue

2 16oz. Peanut butter jars of sifted sand to make plaster

1 cornstarch shower powder bottle added into the plaster

2 handsfull of stones used to the stable/chimney construction

4 an estimate of the number of 2 oz. Bottles of acrylic paint

6 broken or worn out mini fingernail clippers

2 bottles of Kiwi brand brown shoe polish

Brian would be honored to have his effort inspire each of us to make an equally generous contribution.

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2023/10/some-reflections-after-2023-va-relief.html

In Resigning As A Pastor, I Want To RE-sign As A Newborn In the Jesus Family

The Zion Mennonite Church nurtured and supported me
in the first two decades of my ministry as a pastor. 

It was September of1965, sixty years ago, that I was first licensed as a minister in the Virginia Mennonite Conference. I was only 26, and had no seminary trining when I began serving as an assistant pastor, then senior pastor, at Zion Mennonite for the next two decades while also teaching part time at Eastern Mennonite High School. 

In 1972-74 I was granted a two-year leave of absence to serve as an interim principal at Western Mennonite School in Oregon  and was later granted a nine-month leave to attend the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana in 1983-84. Meanwhile I was also taking graduate courses at JMU and intermittently at Eastern Mennonite Seminary before finally completing a masters degree in counseling at JMU in 1979 and one at EMS in 1996. I could have never done that without the encouragement and help of my good wife, family and church family.

In 1988 I left Zion and accepted an assignment as a counselor and congregational resource pastor at VMC's new Family Life Resource Center, where I worked for the next 38 years while also serving as an unsalaried pastor of  Family of Hope, a house church congregation I've been a part of up to this day.

At 86, I am far past the age at which Virginia Conference pastors are expected to retire, and our aging house church no longer has the required ten households to be recognized as an official VMC congregation.

In consultation with our overseer Roy Hange, and in light of normal uncertainties about my future vitality and health, I've felt it was time to resign my official role as pastor of the house church I have loved and been an active part of for nearly four decades. I've expressed my willingness to continue being an active participant in whatever form Family of Hope may take in the future, whether as an official VMC congregation (with another pastor or pastoral team), or as simply a fellowship or cell group of people who meet for occasional fellowship, prayer and/or Bible study, but in which each member has transferred their membership to another congregation. 

Needless to say, I feel some sadness and loss in coming to this place, as well as feeling a pastoral obligation to make sure none of our members are left spiritually homeless should the congregation choose to disband. I am meeting with individual members and with the group to consider a range of possible options.

Me at around six or seven

I am also planning for a change in other involvements, to seek a replacement for my role as Valley Justice Coalition chair while continuing to advocate for multitudes who are oppressed, in prison, and deserving of second chances. 

I am likewise encouraging the HomeTown Pastoral Counseling Group, where I still work one day a week, to seek a replacement for me.

Meanwhile I'm making a conscious choice to reclaim a new sense of just being a beloved child in God's great extended family. As such I choose to re-sign for the following:

I am re-signing to practice being more dependent on the care of others rather than being primarily being a caregiver for others.

I am re-signing to experience the wonder of being an ever more avid learner, reveling in more of the mystery and miracle of all God has created rather than primarily being in the role of a teacher for others.

I am re-signing for closer relationships with friends, family and members of my church family, recovering more of my role as a sibling and an "under-seer" rather than primarily as an elder or overseer.

I am re-signing for a time of intentional preparation for the life to come, of getting my earthly affairs in order and focusing on whatever legacy I can leave behind for my children, grandchildren and other loved ones everywhere.

This is but the beginning of a list I want to be adding to in the time I have left here on earth.