The ADT Journey – Week 28

Back when we first entered Kansas, Gretchen Davis sent us an itinerary of speaking engagements and people hosting us for the days we would spend around Kansas City.  We met Gretchen and her husband Ardie in Frisco, Colorado because of a detour we took after meeting Andy Held; because we met Gretchen, Ky found a repair shop for her car, we stayed with the Nelsons in Lawrence and spent Thanksgiving on the Talberts farm.  The itinerary in our hands revealed we were about to meet a whole bunch more people, more bittersweet memories of bonding with people before moving on.

Because of all the planned activities for us we had to arrive at Kansas City ahead of our original schedule.  We had the whole state of Kansas road walking to gain miles, but then illness led to two rest days as we neared our destination.  Fortunately, with Ky providing support we could arrive in time and still be brought to slack pack the remaining miles to the Missouri border during our stay.

Our first full day in Kansas City started with a presentation at the elementary school where Gretchen used to teach.  I was more nervous about presenting to this children audience for the first time than with any other.  Between college, church and community organizations I needed to tweak the community involvement message only a little.  Relating to children requires a whole different approach.  My nervousness amused Cindy, pointing out the irony that someone who so often acted like a kid should be nervous about speaking to them.  With the aid of a few gag photos I thought the presentation went well.

I gave a community presentation that evening at a town hall building.  Mostly friends of Ardie and Gretchen attended.  The way that Leadville “confused who is giving and who is receiving” inspired one man, who came up to me afterwards to share that he would structure his community’s food outreach differently now.  I do not know if he followed up, but effecting positive change for communities is my greatest hope for these presentations.

Gretchen’s friend Lorene Miller hosted us for the first couple of nights.  While in her care she brought us to her church’s KristKindl Markt, which is like an Oktoberfest for Advent.  The UCC formed from the union of four denominations.  The churches in our native New England were Congregational in origin, throughout the heartland the UCC churches hailed from a German Reformed Church background, as evident in the KristKindl Markt.

At times I wondered if my Congregational upbringing at least partly accounted for my concern for community involvement.  As the title implies, Congregational governance is polar opposite to Catholicism, as grassroots congregations determine their own theology.  Congregationalists were, in fact, the initial cause for public education in this country, so that each person could read and interpret the Bible for themselves.  The Congregational Church was the first denomination to have women and black pastors.  On the other hand, they were also the denomination of Jonathan Edwards and witch burnings.

The KristKindl Markt included a cafeteria and dining hall with carolers for entertainment.  One room featured a craft fair where we were given a table because of a last minute cancellation.  Several rooms provided the opportunity to make crafts, including one devoted to making gingerbread houses.

The gingerbread craft room gained Cindy’s particular attention.  One Christmas tradition for Cindy was making elaborate gingerbread house landscapes with our daughters, the kind that could be a showstopper on The Great British Baking Show.  Other Cindy traditions were making coffee liqueur from scratch and hosting a big Christmas Eve party for our extended family.

The tradition that made Cindy somewhat of a local hero was baking her famous cinnamon and maple walnut breads as gifts for family, friends, neighbors and coworkers.  The list of breads to bake for the holiday got up as high as ninety-six.  While she had the easy part of baking all those breads, I tackled the hard part of driving around town to deliver them on the day before Christmas, frequently invited in for Christmas cookies and hot chocolate along the way.

While at the KristKindl Markt we were introduced to Jeff Whitman, conference minister for the UCC in Missouri.  He encouraged us to use him as a reference for UCC churches along our route in his state, which I did.  We got enough responses  for churches to host us until we got to Illinois, one more link in the long serendipitous chain that started when we met Andy Held.

Lorene handed us off to Phil and Heather Gudgel to host us after KristKindl Markt, who in turn handed us off to Brian and Christy Watson, the next day.  Brian was a teacher at the elementary school where I presented on the first day; Christy was the Congregational Care Director for Rolling Hills Presbyterian church, where I gave my next presentation.  Her duties as Director included helping people adjust to new situations such as assisted living or connecting members with resources they need.

Rolling Hills Presbyterian has about 350 people attending two morning services; their Christmas and Easter collections raise as much as $25,000 for charitable causes such as Cornerstones to Care, a program for young people that age out of foster care.  Both the Gudgels and Watsons assist with the church’s youth group, going on work camp trips to places hit by tornadoes and other hardships.  The youth also get involved in Project Uplift, which provides warm meals, blankets and other forms of assistance to the homeless.

My last presentation was at Prairie View Presbyterian, as one of the programs they held after their weekly community meals on Wednesday evenings. PVP is a large church, with up to 1300 people attending four services on a Sunday. You can imagine, then, that they are involved in large projects. Their food pantry runs almost like a grocery store, serving 1,000 a month with 300 volunteers from the church staffing the store. Something that struck me was one of the sources of their funding. Many of the volunteers are elderly, looking to keep busy later in life. Since the food pantry has been in operation for many years, it has been remembered in the wills of some of these volunteers.

We were hosted our last three days by John and Patty Quick, friends of the Watsons.  All together we spent five rest days and two days of slack packing to the Missouri border while in Kansas City.  “Rest days” became a misnomer for me, considering all the activities of giving presentations, interviewing people, creating blog posts, curating photos, making new contacts for our journey ahead and shuffling between hosts.  In fact, I felt I could not spend enough time with our hosts or even with Cindy.

Fortunately, Ky admirably compensated for my dearth of interaction with our hosts.  Cindy also spent more time with them.  Once upon a time, during her “Gabby Galvin” days, she would have quickly and warmly endeared herself to whomever was hosting her.  Now she was mainly quiet around our Kansas City hosts, once again due to the insecurities of a cognitive decline, aggravated perhaps by all the activities and switching of hosts.  She was particularly quiet by the time we reached the Quicks, which led to an interesting email exchange a couple weeks later.

Gretchen and Ardie came to my final presentation at PVP, as well as took us out for some Kansas City barbecue on our last evening spent in town, forming the appropriate bookends to our entire experience.  Saying goodbye to our “booking agents” was particularly difficult, but their influence on our journey was not over.  The chain of events that actually started with meeting Andy Held in Colorado Would not end until we reached Marion, Illinois.