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 Volunteer newsletterWinter 97/98
Volunteer is published by Brethren Volunteer Service
I was sitting next to a stranger at a recent conference of volunteer programs. When I told her that I was with BVS she said "What a wonderful program you work with." She knew of BVS from her work in the mid 80's. She wasn't a stranger at all. We had BVS in common. I get this reaction a lot when people find out I work with BVS. I really am privileged to work with such a great program. And as we approach the 50th annivers Jim Lehman, a writer and publisher from Elgin, is working on a 50th anniversary celebration booklet. In his research he came across the minutes of the first planning meeting in July 1948 that gave substance to BVS after annual conference had voted approval of the program. The early purposes were to: Does this sound familiar? Reading these early minutes from the beginning of BVS one could easily imagine them being from a meeting today; they are full of the ideals of the early thinkers that developed BVS. And, they are still current. I think this only goes to show how on target the planners were. Jim Lehman says he believes these early creators of BVS were very radical for their time. I hope that BVSers continue to be radical in their approach to serving in the world. More details of the plans for the 50th year celebration appear later in this newsletter. Our current BVS team is pictured below (though Kristin Flory could not be present for the photo). We continue to be committed to the goals and ideals of BVS and look forward to serving those who come in contact with this wonderful program of BVS.
I am pleased to present to you the winter edition of the Volunteer. I wish it could have come earlier, but we ran into some unavoidable problems. We recently got new computers and moved to a bigger office space in the building. It has been a wonderful and much needed change. Unfortunately, we have also had computer problems recently. Our network keeps crashing. I can't tell you how many times in the last few weeks many of us in the building have felt downright helpless because we couldn't use our computers. People even talked about going home because they had no work to do without the use of those monstrous machines. It's a sad commentary on life in the ‘90s. With the computers being down for a while, it meant I couldn't work on this newsletter, so it shifted my "to do" list around and I made some support calls. It was a blessing to have the connections with people, which is what I think life is all about. I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter. It's all about people's connections with others in the various jobs they do. If you ever have stories to share, I welcome unsolicited submissions in whatever form (artwork, poetry, stories, etc.).
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