Epworth’s Covenant With Jose &
Yolanda
The Rocky Mountain
Conference Committee on Mission Personnel Missionary Action
Team is asking all churches in the Rocky Mountain Conference
to be in a Covenant Relationship with our Rocky Mountain
missionaries. And of the many ways to support our
missionaries, they felt the most important was the ministry
of prayer. So, Epworth has been asked to pray for Jose
Orlando Rirera and Yolanda Argentina- Rivera throughout
2007.
This prayer ministry
will include:
·
Putting
their names in our weekly bulletins.
·
Asking
others to pray for their support in our church newsletter.
·
Encouraging Sunday school pupils to pray for them.
The Conference Committee
believes that at least two benefits will be achieved with
this endeavor:
·
First the
missionaries will receive the prayer support of the people
from Epworth.
·
Second,
there will be a larger awareness of the missionary work
being done through the Rocky Mountain Conference.
Some biographical
information on Epworth’s selected missionaries: Jose Orlando
Rivera is an evangelism pastor serving a three point charge
in the Villa Mercedes Circuit (San Luia and Rio Cuarto). He
has served churches in Puerto Rico and California and on
national UM Boards. He and his wife Yolanda have four adult
children: Michelle Tello, Hugo Leonel Rivera, Mary Tello and
Jessica Marie Rivera.
Yolanda Argentina-
Rivera, a medical worker by profession, is responsible for
developing programs in Villa Mercedes, San Luis and Rio
Cuarto, which is part of the Villa Mercedes Circuit. Yolanda
reflects on her ministry in Argentina:“Through my experience
in a hospital setting, and the training that I have been
privileged to have as a communicator and trainer, I hope god
will help me serve to develop those programs needed for the
(three) communities… I hope that my abilities will be used
by God in that way.”
You can obtain more
information about these two at the Global Ministries web
site, click on “Missionary Biographies” (www.gbgm-umc.org).
As a church that
believes in the power of prayer, let us lift up Jose,Yolanda
and all missionaries in prayer.
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Epworth’s Birthdays & Anniversary
·
Patsy
Trimble-Moore 5/2
·
Janice
Jones 5/4
·
James
Goss 5/13
·
Eugene
Vialpando 5/16
·
LaSondra
Rollins 5/17
·
Manuel
Davis 5/20
·
Vincent
Robinson Jr. 5/26
·
Juanita
Davenport-Brown 5/27
·
Carolyn
Lampkin 5/28
·
Pastor King and Ernestine Harris celebrating
their 47th wedding anniversary 5/28
·
Mona
Anderson 5/29
·
Vera
Castille 5/30
·
Ernestine
Harris 5/30
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Who’s Ushering In May?
·
May
6, 2007:
Grace Stiles & Myrtle Davis.
·
May
13, 2007:
Sharon Davis & Rudy
Robinson.
·
May
20, 2007:
Myrtle Davis & Clarence
Williams.
·
May
27, 2007:
Evelyn Davis & Vera
Castille
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Epworth’s Calendar
·
Morning
Prayer Services. Pastor King Harris is conducting Morning
Prayer services – M – F starting at 6 a.m. in the Sanctuary.
Morning Prayer Services on Sunday starts at 8 a.m.
·
Adult
Sunday school class – Brother Ron is the teacher. Class
starts at 9:45 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall next to the
coffee and donuts.
·
Adult
Bible Study and meal every Wednesday evening starting at 6
p.m. in the Fellowship Hall. (We are still studying the
book of Mathew). All activities end at 7:30 p.m.
·
Epworth’s
Hispanic Worship Service every Sat. at 7 p.m. Services
conducted by Assistant Pastor Marvin Lazo.
·
The
Family-to-Family Program is offering “NEWSED” training every
1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month.
Training is from 5 to 8 p.m. This training is for first time
home buyers and for those who need help establishing good
credit.
·
Family-to-Family is offering “Second Chances”. This program
for teens will be offered every Monday, Wednesday and
Thursday now through June, 2007. For more information call
Epworth and speak to Kat Branch.
·
The
Family-to-Family Program is offering “Parenting Classes”
every Tuesday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Food and Child
care will be available. Classes begin on May 8th
and will continue for 7 weeks. Contact Wallace Yvonne
Tollette at Epworth for more information.
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Thank You Kala Perry
Your Youth did an
outstanding job on Sunday, April 29th. The total
program reflected your love, patience and strong desire for
each and every Youth’s creative light to shine brightly on
the 5th Sunday.
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Epworth’s Health… “Oh Lord Hear
Our Prayer”
·
Health –
Sister Tonya Sharp
·
Health –
Sister Ada Busby who is recovering from knee replacement
surgery.
·
Health –
Brother Chris Davis
·
Health –
Sister Sabrina Wilhite.
·
Health –
Georgette Trimble.
·
Comfort –
Ross Stefansen
·
Comfort –
Allen Clark
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Buck Newsum Finally Gets to Fly
This article was written
by Art Branscombe (A member of St Thomas Parish).
Mr. Newsum has
spoke to the Youth at Epworth UMC on a number of occasions.
In his long military career, Fitzroy (Buck)
Newsum, a St. Thomas parishioner, often endured the
infuriating pangs of racial discrimination. He has now lived
to enjoy the golden glow of homage that makes him “feel
pretty good” about it all.
Newsum is one of a small
band of black Air Force veterans of World War II who wear
the proud title of “The Tuskegee Airmen”. That title salutes
several hundred men who, years before the U.S. Air Force was
desegregated, took it upon themselves to prove, in combat,
that black men could be first-rate fighter pilots and bomber
crews. They did prove it – first at the Tuskegee Institute,
a small black college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and then in
the skies over North Africa and Europe.
This April, Buck and
more than 300 other elderly survivors of those years were
honored by the award, at the Capitol in Washington, of the
gold Congressional Medal of Honor as a unit citation to the
Tuskegee Airmen for their bravery, courage and
accomplishments. A few days later, at the U.S. Air Force
academy in Colorado Springs, Newsum said he was even more
moved when the entire cadet wing stood up during lunch and
applauded a trio of Tuskegee airmen who appeared in the
balcony. “Things like that make you feel real good,” Newsum
said at his home in Southeast Denver the other day.Things
like that were a long time in coming for Newsum. Born in New
York City to immigrant parents originally from Barbados and
living the early part of his childhood in Trinidad, he was
10 years old when he saw his first airplane land in a vacant
lot near Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. He hung around to watch as
the plane took off and landed every afternoon for several
weeks. “I think that’s what I’d like to do,” he recalls
telling his mother.
His determination to be
a flyer never faltered in the many years he remained
ground-bound despite his best efforts. His Brooklyn high
school yearbook noted, rather disparagingly, “And this guy
says he wants to fly!”
Learning that his
chances of becoming a flyer would be better if he had at
least two years of college, Newsum worked his way through
Brooklyn College, a school for working people similar to
Denver’s Metro State College. Then he applied for pilot
training in what was then the U.S. Army Air Corps. His
application bounced back, stamped “Rejected”.
“How come?” he wondered.
He had the two years of college he had been told were all he
needed. So he applied again. Again the papers came back
“Rejected”. Fearing a third rejection would be three strikes
and out for good, Newsum decided, “If I join the Army maybe
they won’t reject me.” So he joined the 369th
Infantry regiment of the National Guard. Because it was
predominantly black, it had fought in World War I as part of
the French Army. The letter rejecting its efforts to join
the U.S. Army had said, Newsum recalled, “It is not the
policy of the War Department to mix black and white
soldiers.”
A recruiting officer
urged Newsum to join the infantry, pointing out that as a
college man, he could become an officer. So he went to
Officer Candidate School, but when he graduated as a 2nd
lieutenant, he discovered he was assigned to the coast
artillery, not the infantry. After tours of duty in
bitterly-cold Oswego, N.Y., and in Camp Fredericks in
Massachusetts, he was in New York visiting his mother on
Dec. 7, 1941, when the radio blared that the Japanese had
bombed Pearl Harbor. His mother chided him for the expletive
he uttered on hearing this news. Two days later his unit
moved with 75 millimeter guns to protect Boston Harbor; four
months later they moved with the guns to Burbank,
California. Then in August his unit was shipped to Hawaii.
“There I ended up being
promoted to battery commander, but I was still yearning to
fly. I was a pretty angry young man, “Newsum recalled, “and
I presented another application for flight training.” But
just as he submitted the application, he was given papers
assigning him to Tuskegee for flight school. He arrived in
Tuskegee on March 23, 1943, and graduated with wings on his
uniform Dec. 6, 1943. During the last two months of
training, he switched from single-engine to twin-engine
planes.During his training, Newsum also received some
instruction in the army’s ways of segregation. He
encountered pettiness and jealousy from some instructors
whom he out-ranked. “At Freeman Field in Indiana, they set
up a separate officers’ club for trainees,” he said. “There
was some other real mean stuff – stuff that was also
illegal.”
But the Army hadn’t yet
finished instructing him in its ways of racial segregation.
In both of his first two assignments, at Mather Field in
Sacramento, California and at Selfridge Field, in Michigan,
young black officers could only eat in a segregated portion
of the officers’ club – so they ate at the PX instead. And
later, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, “We could watch white
(Italian and German) prisoners of war go into the post
theater, but we couldn’t.” The single-engine outfit, the
all-black 99th Squadron, was shipped to
Casablanca, Morocco, where it was assigned to escorting
bombers, but Buck’s twin-engine group was first scheduled to
be shipped overseas in October of 1945 – and the war ended
in August.
Newsum stayed on in the
Air Force after the war, assigned to a four-engine outfit at
McGuire Air Force Base in New York, but he spent a great
deal of time going back and forth to Brooklyn, where the
family of one of his best friends lived. A daughter of the
family, named Joan, suddenly no longer looked like a kid.
He recalls giving her a set of luggage as a Christmas gift
in 1949 and soon afterwards pulled some strings to obtain
permission to be married with one day’s notice.
During the next decades
Buck gradually rose in rank and was given increasingly
varied assignments in Japan and Europe. Joan and their four
children were able to be with him in Europe, but not in
Japan. While a public information officer in Europe, he
learned French, so he could deal more effectively with
French-speaking reporters. Eventually, at Lowry Air Force
Base in Denver, he retired as a colonel.Now 88, Newsum feels
the recent honors for Tuskegee Airmen allow him to end his
career in a warm final glow. “It’s a tragedy that some of
the old fellows (from Tuskegee) are not here,” he said.
“After so many years, it meant so much. Things like this
make up for all the suffering we went through.”
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In Their Own Words
Tuskegee Airmen Overcome
Obstacles:
·
Retired
Col. Fitzroy Newsum,
88, now of Denver, joined the Tuskegee group March 13, 1943,
after three years in the military. Career: Retired
from the military 30 years later, and for the next 18 years
worked for Martin Marietta. Quote: “In this day and
age, young people are killing each other over nothing. Set
yourself a goal you want to accomplish in life… then go out
and fight for it.”
·
Retired
Col. James H. Harvey III,
83, of Denver, trained
at Tuskegee and flew with the 332nd fighter group
in a 1949 Las Vegas dive-bombing competition – a win that
was never recognized. Career: First black pilot to
fly a jet mission over Korea during the Korean War. Later
trained white pilots as a flight commander. First black
manager for Oscar Mayer. Quote: “Tuskegee was the
worst place to put the program. Racism was very bad there. A
bulk of us coming into the training were from the north, and
we were surrounded by racism.”
