Friday, April 01, 2005

Meeting Verda at Last

Verda Glick is a Beachy Amish missionary in El Salvador. She is also a writer who has organized about 17 writers groups by mail and email. About 10 years ago I joined one of these groups and Verda and I instantly hit it off. We have emailed over the years--she sends me all her updates, I send her mine, even though I quit the writers group about 5 years ago.

I often wished I could meet Verda but it had never worked out. Then last year she and her husband and son took a break from their work in El Salvador and went to work with the Beachy Amish mission in Kenya for three months. This happened to be right over the time Paul went to Kenya to get Steven, and to my great envy, Paul and Steven stayed at Eli and Verda's house. Verda took excellent care of them and sent me glowing stories about Steven.

Well. Time passed and meanwhile my sis Becky and her family had to leave their home in Yemen and come to the US for medical reasons and they decided to go to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where they have a supporting church. Harrisonburg also happens to be the home of Christian Light Publications, which happened to be putting on a writers conference on April 1 and 2, and it just happened that Verda was invited to speak. So. I came to Virginia for a double treat, seeing Becky and Co., and taking in the writers conference and finally meeting Verda for the first time. She is a wonderful lady and said, "Oh, I didn't do much," when I thanked her for all she had done for Paul and Steven.

Quote of the Day:
"Fine."
--my nephew Jason's answer to his mom's questions of how was school today, how was the ride on the bus, how was your geometry class, how was P.E., etc.

4 comments:

  1. I was hoping to come to H'burg and attend the Writer's Conference too, but work and life had other ideas. I too wanted to meet Verda as I had heard so much about her circle of writers. Now I find that I have missed a chance to meet two writers I've heard about, oh well, may be some other time. I enjoy your posts very much, thank you for sharing your family experiences.

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  2. Did you get to meet Leon Yoder at the Writer's Conference? He's my uncle.

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  3. Darin, I know he was there but I never figured out which guy he was.

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  4. I think he was supposed to teach one of the workshops or whatever they're called.

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