United In Service

Holocaust Memorial Center

By David Begg

On October 23rd a small group from Trinity Church went to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI.The visit was part of an on-going United in Service project called "Peace Works". This year we have been exploring the issues around the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The trip to the Holocaust Memorial was intended to help us understand the historical narrative that shapes the Israeli posture and perspective. Needless to say, the experiences was very powerful.

The Holocaust Memorial Center is America's first museum dedicated to the remembrance to the tragic events of WWII and Nazi Germany. In a front page story The Wall Street Journal said in reference to the provocative nature of other Holocaust Museums that the Holocaust Memorial Center "may be the most provocative museum of them all." I have visited Israel's Yad Vashem, the world's largest Holocaust museum. I have also visited United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. I can say without hesitation that Michigan's Holocaust Memorial ranks among the best. We spent over two hours there, and we all agreed it was not enough time. We will return, and we hope others will join us.

The tour guides are excellent and they provided a wealth of information. The exhibits are compelling in a way that drew us in. In one hall there is a facsimile of an agricultural rail car, a "cattle car" as they are often called. Our guide pressed in among a few of us, then asked us to imagine the car being so filled with people that we would all be pressed in together so tightly that there'd be barely enough room to move. It stopped us. We wanted to spread out and put some space between ourselves. We also wanted to stay, to linger and ponder.

The horrors of the Holocaust are unimagineable, and yet they are terribly true. Within the story there is also great courage, even righteousness. In part, the Holocaust represents the worst in us, the worst in all of us. It also represents the best, the Light within us that can not be extinguished.

I had the boldness to step quietly into a room where an old man had just made a presentation. He was answering questions from a group of Jewish school children. His name is George and long ago he was a young Jewish boy in German-occupied France during World War Two. He told of an incident when his mother, he, and his baby sister had to cross a German checkpoint. They carried false identity papers to hide the fact that they were Jews. His mother feared the Germans would discover their papers were fake, and they'd be arrested and sent to Death camp. In an instant his mother conjured up a plan. "Just as we approached the solders". George said, "Mother pinched my sister's rump. She pinched her hard using her finger nails. She pinched so hard the baby bled, ...and screamed". His mother told the soldiers her baby was sick. "The baby will get worse if she is not given medicine immediately", his Polish born mother explained in perfect French. She quickly flashed the false identity papers and told the soldiers, " I have my papers as you can see. Please let me go over there and give my baby her medicine. That will calm her down. Then I will come back and give you the papers". The soldiers agreed and they let her go. George, his mother and sister never looked back. They just kept going.

George later told the group of young students, "I saw many things. People abducted and beaten. I saw women and girls raped. I saw people killed. I saw things to horrible to tell you. Things I will never forget".

We too will remember. That's the point of the Memorial. Tragically, horrible things are still happening in the world today. Genocide is still an evil that exists in places like Darfur. We should not look away.

The Holocaust Memorial Center is not a fun time. In some ways, it is not an easy trip to take. Nonetheless, we're going back on November 20, 2011 and you are invited to join us. For more information about the field trip please call the Trinity Church office at (269)781-7881 or email United in This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Marshall Residents support Native American Vision Clinic

By DONNA DAINES

Staff Writer

The Marshall Lions Club, Marshall United Methodist Church, Trinity Episcopal Church and the Marshall Knights of   Columbus Council 5999 are partnering   with “We're All God's Children" (W.A.G.C.), a Christian non-profit group, to provide new eyeglasses to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota through its fourth annual mobile vision clinic.  The groups’ collaboration will provide free vision clinics to the Lakota - Sioux tribe.

Two of the counties being served by this project are the two poorest counties in the United States.

New sunglasses and new reading glasses (or cash to buy them) are needed by Sept. 7, since the group is departing for South Dakota on Sept. 9.   Inexpensive dollar store glasses are fine.

The clinic will begin Sept. 12.

Drop-off boxes for the new glasses and sunglasses are at Trinity Episcopal Church, at 101 E. Mansion Street; Marshall United Methodist Church, located at 14711 Old US 27 North;  Marshall ad-visor&chronicle at 514 S. Kalamazoo, and downtown at Zarzuela Restaurant,  at 301 E. Michigan Avenue, and Salon Essentials at 110 W. Michigan Avenue.

“We connected with W.A.G.C. while looking for an alternative way to get eye glasses to Zambia,” said David Begg of Marshall, founder of a local volunteer group “United in Service”.   “We had set an ambitious goal of sending 2,000 pairs of eye glasses to Zambia in 2011.  One of the groups we were working with was not able to take as many glasses as we had hoped.   Rather than discouragement we actually felt excited.  We knew God had a perfect plan, even if we didn't know what it was.  We spoke with Carol Fanelli, president of W.A.G.C. and she was delighted to hear from us.  She too felt God's Spirit was moving to bring us together.  Their group needed more glasses for their Zambian clinics.

“What we never could have anticipated was W.A.G.C. was also conducting vision clinics on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  Besides our eye glasses program, United in Service has been developing a Native American initiative program.

“Earlier this summer we helped send youth from the Salem Indian Mission Church to a Native American leadership camp.  We were looking for another Native American outreach project.  Well, it found us!”

Both in Zambia and on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the vision clinics distribute used eye glasses.   United in Service volunteers in Marshall collect, sort and clean them   then send them on to other groups.

“Although we accept all types of glasses, we are especially eager to collect reading and sunglasses for this Pine Ridge Clinic,” said Begg. Even inexpensive reading glasses and sunglasses will be appreciated.  Many discount stores have these glasses available for as little as $1 each.

In addition to shipping eye glasses to W.A.G.C., some of the Marshall   United in Service members are hoping to join the W.A.G.C. team in South Dakota for its trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation.

“‘United in Service’" is the name we use for the local volunteers,” continued Begg.   “Collectively we are a kind of Marshall Laypersons Association.   Like the U.S. Mail or United Parcel Service, we connect the donors with the people who need the donations.

“In 2009 the group began collecting glasses for a United Methodist Eye Clinic in Cameroon.  Then this year as it stretched itself to supply thousands of pair of glasses to clinics in Zambia.  United In Service has also provided hundreds of pairs of glasses for clinics in Mexico. Currently talks are in progress with a group in Tennessee that needs glasses for clinics in Sierra Leone.”

The Marshall Lions Club, along with other area Lions Clubs, supplies the bulk of the used eye glasses.

The Pine Ridge clinics have also become an extension of the mission work done by the West Michigan Diocese of the Episcopal Church.  Marshall's Trinity Episcopal Church is partnering with the project.  The Episcopalians have been sending mission teams to the Pine Ridge Reservation for several years and have seen firsthand the devastating effects of poverty on the Lakota people.

“The Marshall United Methodist Church has become Eye Glasses Central,” said Begg.  “That is where most of the work on the glasses is done, and where the glasses are stored.  The Methodists have also been an important link to other groups who operate free eye clinics.

“I think it is fair and accurate to say this is a Trinity Church project,” Begg continued.  “It is certainly a Marshall United Methodist Church project.  It is definitely a Lions Club project.  The Knights of Columbus are credited for supporting the largest project we've worked on, an incinerator project for a hospital in Cameroon.  Their support of the eye clinics is greatly appreciated, so it is fair to say it is their project too.  So whose project is it really?  It is the project of the One who moves us all to serve with joyful hearts!  Can I get an "Amen"? concluded Begg.

The deadline for donations to the clinics on the Pine Ridge is Sept. 7 but United In Service will   gratefully receive donations year round and add them to its general inventory.

For more information or to make a financial contribution please call 269-781-9627 or write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .