Teach Us to Pray! (Part Three)

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By The Rev. Kyle Mackey, Curate

In seminary, a classmate of mine once made the mistake of calling the 400th page of the Book of Common prayer “Rite III” within earshot of our liturgics professor. The professor then quite crossly explained it to the rest of the class. Page 400 of the BCP shows us how a Eucharistic liturgy is shaped, and its parts in their proper order. All Eucharistic liturgies in the Episcopal Church follow this pattern. The inclusion of this “Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist” was intended to encourage the development of new Eucharistic liturgies by parishes for when a standard from the BCP was simply not going to work. In keeping with the prayer book, our new children’s chapel is based on this same pattern.

The first item on the list is to “Gather in the Lord’s Name.” Children’s chapel begins its gathering in the nave, where on a typical Sunday we hear the opening acclamation (Blessed be God…), the collect for purity (Almighty God to you all hearts are open…), and even the first bit of the Gloria, Kyrie, Trisagion, or another song of praise we may be using. We follow the cross back to the children’s chapel, which like the nave is a consecrated space. We also sing a song as part of our gathering, recently we’ve been using “Jesus Loves Me.” 

While we sing, the candles are lit by a volunteer. These bits of flame help to draw our attention towards the altar itself, as well as serving as a symbol of the Holy Spirit being present in the room. This action in combination with singing together, helps to bring our children together as a worshiping community and helps move the focus towards God. This first step of the liturgy is known by liturgists as the “Gathering Rite.” It begins when we wake up on Sunday morning, and ends with the Collect for the Day.

After the song, the presider uses the ancient greeting of the early church. “The Lord be with you!” which comes from the greeting of Boaz from the book of Ruth. (Ruth 2:4) Then after saying “Let us pray,” a special prayer for the day is used. This special prayer, known as a collect (from the Latin collecta), is used to ‘collect’ our prayers together into one big prayer, focuses us on the occasion we are celebrating, and marks the end of the rite of gathering.

Teach Us To Pray! (Part Two)

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By the Rev. Kyle Mackey, Curate

Patrick Malloy, an Episcopal priest and liturgical theologian, lays out 8 principles of good liturgical worship in his book “Celebrating the Eucharist.” The first and most important principle simply reads as follows: “The entire assembly celebrates the liturgy.” Everyone is a part of this little miracle we witness so often. It is a coming together of many members of the one body of Christ, and there is a beauty within that merging. 

One of the most obvious places where we come together as a church is in the singing of hymns as a congregation. Whether the text we sing is chosen from our hymnal or prescribed by the prayer book, anyone who has been in a choir will speak of the connection that forms when people sing together. This is not a new phenomenon either. The Epistles of the New Testament, some of the closest scripture we have to the life of Christ, mentions the singing of hymns. (Colossians 3:16 comes to mind)

Because of that history of song, when we set out to make our children’s chapel the richest experience it could be, we knew it needed music. Thankfully, we have been blessed by the presence of someone who has many years of experience teaching sacred music to children. Ms. Dawn Harrison. The first thing we do on Sunday in Children’s Chapel is to sing while an adult helper lights the altar candles. This song helps to serve as our song of praise at the opening of the liturgy, much like the Gloria in Excelsis does for the service in the nave.

We also sing a song in the middle of the service. This hymn varies slightly, it may be like the sequence hymn of the service matching the Gospel of the day, or it might be more like a musical introduction to the prayers of the people. Either way, all music that we use in church or chapel, is intended to help bring the all of God’s children together with their focus on the Lord whom we worship.

Children’s Formation at St. Paul’s

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By Susan Payne, Director of Children’s Ministry
It has been said that the way we pray shapes the way we believe. With that principle in mind, we have designed a new way to do children’s chapel that more closely mirrors the way we pray together on Sunday. By organizing the children’s chapel service much like the service in the nave, we are passing on and entrusting our tradition to some of our youngest. You might be asking “What does this new service look like?” Please join Reverend Kyle and Susan in the Children’s Chapel for Children’s Chapel Shepherd training at 9:45 am on Sunday, February 23rd.  This 15 minute training will be for all parents assigned to volunteer for Children’s Chapel and anyone curious about the new format.  
Children’s Sunday Formation is up and running in our new Children’s Ministry space from 9:30-10:45am on Sunday mornings. Developed by Dr. Jerome Berryman, Godly Play, is a Montessori-based curriculum that includes biblical storytelling, interaction, exploration, and creativity to teach and enliven Bible Stories. In Godly Play (age 4-3rd grade) marvelous things happen as children “work, play and wonder together at the awesomeness of God.” Parents are welcome to observe a Godly Play session. Please send a request to the Children’s Ministry Director if you are interested in observing. 
Building Faith Brick by Brick is a faith based Sunday School Curriculum for 4th and 5th graders that teaches Biblical Stories and allows older Elementary School aged children to express their thoughts and analyze stories through Lego creations.

St. Paul’s Holy Bible

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By Bill Tudor

HOLY BIBLE
CONTAINING THE
OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES, AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED AND REVISED
WITH REFERENCES AND VARIOUS READINGS
PHILADELPHIA
PUBLISHED BY E. H. BUTLER & CO.
1859

The above is extracted from the cover page of this Bible. In early 2019, this Bible was found on a high shelf in what was once the sacristy in the original building, now the Children’s Wing.

The binding was damaged, due to old age. It has now been repaired and restored, due to the generosity of a parishioner, and is on display in the Narthex.

No one seems to know the history of how and when the Bible came to be a part of St. Paul’s history. According to a book on Coweta history, the original “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was established in Newnan in 1882 with services first held in Thomas Hall, on the west side of the courthouse. Later a small traditional white frame church was erected on Wesley Street at the intersection of Jackson Street… For reasons unknown, services were discontinued, and the property was sold in 1914… In 1954, Charles Van S. Mottola, Jim Hardin, and Beverly Upchurch conferred with Bishop Claiborne, who consented to establish an unorganized mission in Newnan… To maintain continuity with the original church at Wesley and Jackson Streets, permission was requested, and granted, to retain the name St. Paul’s.”

Teach Us To Pray!

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By The Rev. Kyle Mackey

It has been said that the way we pray shapes the way we believe. With that principle in mind, we have designed a new way to do children’s chapel that more closely mirrors the way we pray together on Sunday. By organizing the children’s chapel service much like the service in the nave, we are passing on and entrusting our tradition to some of our youngest. You might be asking “What does this new service look like?”

After the children depart the nave on Sunday, they follow the cross, much like our altar party follows the cross into the nave, back to the children’s chapel. The worship begins where we left off in the nave, with singing God’s praises! During the hymn, which the candles on our little altar are lit. Just like in ‘big church’ we have candles on the altar!

After we sing, we pray together. The familiar “The Lord be with you” marks the prayer of the day. The leader prays this prayer over us, much like the presider in the nave prays over and for everyone. These prayers reflect the day’s lesson, often asking for God’s help in living up to Jesus’ way while encouraging us to share God’s love with others.

Then, just like in the nave, we read the day’s lesson from one of the Gospels. This reading is paraphrased to be easily understood and is concluded with the familiar “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!” Readings of scripture, and particularly of the Gospel invite the Word of God, that is Jesus himself, to speak in our midst. Rather than a sermon, we have a time of discussion, a participatory and responsive look at the contents of the reading. If only sermons were so much fun, oh well.

Like our service in the nave, our next thing is an affirmation of faith in the form of a Creed. Our children’s chapel version of the Nicene Creed is simplified, but still hits all the same fundamental points of belief. Take a look:

We believe in God the Father, who made the whole world.

We believe in Jesus the Son, who died on the cross for us, and rose from the dead.

We believe in the Holy Spirit who brings life and love to us all.

We believe that the Church is one family, and that one day we will share in everlasting life with God in the world to come. Amen.

Now we sing another song, led by our own Mrs. Dawn! Then it’s time to pray the prayers of the people. We pass out toys that represent the 6 areas of life the prayer book instructs us to pray for each week on pg 383. A cross for the Church, a flag for the nation, a bell for the welfare of the world, cars and airplanes for those who travel in our community, a teddy bear for the sick and all who suffer, and a butterfly for the departed. We also added a singing cupcake as a thanksgiving for those who celebrate birthdays this week. Other prayers can be named and placed on the altar with these. All answered with “Lord, hear our prayer!”

We then say a short prayer of confession. Then we are reminded of God’s grace and forgiveness. Then we pass the peace with each other. What an adorable sight the passing of the peace is! Little ones giving hugs in peace, a vision of heaven if there ever was one. Then we line back up and follow the cross to join the rest of the community for Eucharist. All in all, it is one continuous liturgy through which we are all connected!

Bill and Dawn Harrison: Living Christ’s Words

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By Joan Doggrell

Jesus left guidelines for his followers, many of them in the form of parables. A few are enigmatic, but for the most part, His meaning is quite clear. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to catch the drift of this passage:

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And      when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”

And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Matthew 25, 34-40

In this passage, Christ gives us straightforward instructions of how He wants us to live, but sometimes, following His directions is about as simple as assembling a piece of furniture by the manufacturer’s “easy” steps. It can be a temptation to just give up. However, St. Paul’s is not a parish of quitters. There are lots of folks at St. Paul’s that live out Christ’s love both inside the parish and outside in the Newnan community and the world beyond. Two such people are Bill and Dawn Harrison. I would like you to get to know them.

They both hail from Pittsburgh. They are high school sweethearts who have lived happily ever after for more than fifty years. They raised their four children in towns and cities from Florida to Maine.  Everywhere they lived, they played major roles in the life of their parishes.

The Harrison family in Baca Raton celebrating the fiftieth birthday of their eldest.

Though brought up in different Christian sects, they have this in common: parents committed to their churches and communities.

“A lot of it gets down to upbringing,” said Bill. “Both of our families were heavily involved in church, and so were we from the time we were knee high to a grasshopper. As you go through life, moving different places, having good and bad experiences with churches – we’ve had both – your faith evolves. You realize that Matthew 25 tells us just what we’re supposed to do.”

“Bill’s right,” said Dawn. “I was taken to church every Sunday by my father. My mother was a sporadic attender. She had a lot of medical issues. But my dad went every Sunday. He was Junior Warden of St. Stephen’s for thirty years. (They didn’t change positions back then.) As a child, I built an altar in my bedroom. I had a little table with candles on it and everything.”

“I married into the Episcopal church,” said Bill. “I was raised Presbyterian. One of the jokes we share is, my mother had a hard time getting used to my being an Episcopalian – all that standing up and sitting down, all that kneeling, candles… my favorite saying of hers was ‘Communion once a quarter is plenty.’”

At St. Paul’s, Dawn leads the Bell Choir and the Children’s Choir and sings in the Parish Choir, as does Bill. She also plays the organ and the piano and occasionally subs for our organist and choir director Mason Copeland. So Dawn makes a major contribution to our music program, not only through her own talents but also by passing on our glorious sacred music heritage.

But that’s not all she does. She is there to help anybody who needs support for any reason: post-surgery, emotional, transportation. And she is a steady guide in personal emergencies.

I like lists. They keep me organized. So, to keep track of how Bill and Dawn are meeting their commitment to Christ, let’s organize their contributions under these hearings:

  1. Give food and drink to the hungry and thirsty.
  2. Welcome the stranger.
  3. Visit the sick.
  4. Clothe the naked.
  5. Visit the prisoners.

Give food and drink to the hungry and thirsty

“As we’ve gotten older, we see a lot of need in the church to reach out to people

in the community,” said Dawn. “Bill and I both deliver Meals on Wheels. I did it in Pittsburgh too, when I had four children. I would take all four of them with me. The people loved the kids.”

Welcome the stranger

I know Bill and Dawn welcome strangers. They were the first to greet Don and me when we walked into St. Paul’s. Dawn immediately recruited me for the choir!

“Just greeting a newcomer to church is a big ministry,” said Dawn.

But Dawn goes further. She understands what it means to be a stranger to human contact, to be alone during life’s trials.

“I was parish administrator at Peter and Paul in Marietta,” said Dawn. “The priest and associate would be gone a lot. Strangers would come in the office wanting to speak to one of the clergy. Before I could say, ‘Would you like me to make you an appointment?’ they would be sitting down and unburdening themselves. And I’m thinking, these people are really hurting. They need somebody to listen to them. And I think that was the beginning of my decision to reach out to the stranger in need.”

Visit the sick

My husband Don has been hospitalized several times since we’ve been members of St. Paul’s. Bill and Dawn were two of many St. Paul’s folks who visited him. And Bill’s Lay Eucharist Visitor ministry brings him to the homes of the sick and the nursing homes of the elderly.

But sickness can mean more than physical disease. Two persistent illnesses of modern life are loneliness and depression. Dawn and Bill, with their kind natures and formal training, are well equipped to treat these forms of sickness and have been doing so for years.

If you are involved in any kind of personal emergency, you want Dawn or Bill at your side. They will know what to do. Dawn attributes their skill to training as Stephen Ministers. The purpose of the Stephen Ministry is to provide companionship to a person going through a crisis: a death, a divorce, a job loss. Dawn and Bill took their training at St. Gregory’s in Boca Raton, Florida.

“Six of us were candidates, and we went through fifty hours of training” said Dawn. “We would visit with people in need once a week for an hour or longer. The main thing was just to listen. But the ministry also taught us how to deal with certain issues if we felt that the person was not quite mentally stable. They taught us to get in touch with the proper authority. That, to me, was very rewarding.”

“When we were in Florida, I had three people I ministered to, and Bill had two. My favorite and last one was the mother-in-law of our associate priest. He felt she would be lonely because he and his wife went to Maine in the summer. He asked me if I would be a Stephen Minister to her and visit her once a week, which I did. Usually you minister to someone for two years. But we became such great friends that after two years, I said, ‘Tina, you really don’t need a Stephen Minister. How about I just come as a friend?’ So I continued to visit her every week, and we just enjoyed each other’s company. In fact, when we moved back here to Newnan, I sent her a letter every week. I usually wrote it on Tuesday, the day I would visit her.

“She passed away in January two years ago. It so happened that I was going to be flying down to Boca Raton on the day of her service. I flew in, and my daughter brought me to the Catholic church where she was a member. I walked in at the Gospel reading. Tina’s daughter, when she saw me, just dissolved into tears. She gave me one of Tina’s little angel statues, which Tina used to collect. I have it on the mantel. I look at it all the time and it reminds me of her.

“The Stephen Ministry is really rewarding, and I would like to see something like that get started at St. Paul’s. We have a lot of people who are widowed, divorced, or having other life crises. New babies arrive, and the mothers may be going through post-partum depression and just need to talk to somebody. Bill and I have the skills to do that because we were taught.”

Clothe the naked

I’m giving Dawn and Bill a pass on this one, in the literal sense. With cheap clothing readily available at Goodwill and the Salvation Army, no one needs to be naked. Nevertheless, there are still clothing needs.

“One of my heroes is a fellow we met up in Marietta at St. Peter and St. Paul,” said Dawn. “His name was Dick Hillman. Every winter he would collect socks from people and go to downtown Atlanta and give socks to the homeless. I thought that was a great ministry. I don’t know how he got all the socks.”

“I used to go with him sometimes to the manufacturers and the retailers,” said Bill. “He would say ‘Hey, I’m doing this,’ and they would give him socks.”

But, like sickness, nakedness might be interpreted more broadly. One could be naked of dignity or respect. Bill and Dawn attend the funerals of babies that die under sad circumstances.

“Generally, it’s indigent families who can’t afford to bury their babies for one reason or another,” said Dawn. “Maybe the child has been beaten. Sometimes the families will be at the burials, and sometimes not. We just go to witness, Bill and I, and David Waldron too. The babies are in individual coffins and are prayed over.

“Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Dunwoody spearheaded this ministry. It really struck a chord with me because I had lost a baby. I was in the hospital and didn’t get to see the child buried. So it just tugged at my heart that these babies would be laid to rest and nobody was going to be there.”

“Fulton County has a fulltime chaplain,” said Bill, “and part of his responsibility is indigent burials, both adults and children. What happens to indigent children and adults in Coweta County? Is there a program that provides a decent burial? It’s important to give them that dignity.”

Another form of nakedness is the lack of a roof over one’s head.

“Bill and I also did a ministry in Boca Raton called Family Promise, which takes in families that are homeless,” said Dawn. “Each church would take several families for a week. Our church had an old rectory where we were able to bring the families in the afternoon. We would greet them, play with the children, help them with homework, feed them dinner, and get them settled for the night. Then a bus would come in the morning and take them back to DelRay where the kids would go to school and the adults were able to do resumes and job applications.”

Visit the prisoners

Has Bill ever asked you for cookies? Dozens of them, six to a baggie? They are for his prison ministry called Kairos.

And what is Kairos?

According to their website, “Kairos Prison Ministry International, Inc. is a lay-led, interdenominational Christian ministry in which men and women volunteers bring Christ’s love and forgiveness to prisoners and their families. The Kairos programs take the participants on a journey that demonstrates the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Kairos Prison Ministry is Christian in nature, although no religious affiliation is necessary to be a participant.” For further information see http://www.kairosprisonministry.org/about-kairos-prison-ministry.php

“The first time I heard of Kairos was at St. Paul’s,” said Bill.  “A man named Ron Gillihan told a wonderful story. He had a son that was murdered. He wound up going to a prison to visit and forgive the person who killed his son. His experience led him to join the Kairos prison ministry.

“Once I started hearing about Kairos, it chased me around,” said Bill. “I was in Oklahoma on a consulting assignment for three years by myself pretty much. God just grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. I was in Kairos up there. Then when I moved back here, I was reminded of it at our men’s breakfast. Jeff Lamb came to the breakfast and mentioned the magic word.

“I was at a Kairos Prayer & Share meeting this morning. That’s kind of my heart, just watching those guys and hearing some of their faith stories. It’s the power of teaching people that there are no Lone Rangers in Christianity. You’ve got to have relationships, and you’ve got to have a group of people you can share with, your concerns, joys, sorrows. And that’s what we try to teach these guys.”

“I went to one of the Kairos closing on a Sunday afternoon,” said Dawn, “And to see the change in those men, listen to them speak, would just warm your heart. The Kairos volunteers hug them and give them the assurance that they’re loved. Some of them have never even touched a person before. That’s sad, because touch is very important to people.”

“We used to joke about how some of them come just for the cookies,” said Bill. “No doubt that’s sometimes the case. But they come for curiosity and then get the good stuff. The power comes when you can see guys of different backgrounds getting together like lifelong friends. At one table this morning there were two Hispanics, one Black and one White. Their heads were together and they were talking. That just doesn’t happen very often, even outside. I’m hoping that the relationship continues, and they can talk about really important stuff.

“One of the things we can do as followers of Christ is to get people to realize that there but for the grace of God go I! It’s so important for prisoners to feel they have somebody to talk to, pray with. It’s so easy to get in with the wrong crowd.”

Final Thoughts

“It’s become very important to me that we acknowledge that there are so many different faiths,” said Bill. “Denominations within Christianity is a whole different story, but we must be able to value other world religions. We are all children of God.”

“Many of the things Dawn and I do are religiously oriented, but there are other ways we can do ministry. For example, Meals on Wheels has no overt religious content. We need to value other efforts too, like the GED program. And then this new ministry that’s starting, NEST, that’s going to be important too.  It’s a joint effort led by the Newnan City Church to provide a warm place to sleep for the homeless on freezing nights.”

“The other dimension is – and I firmly believe this –the joy you feel, whether it’s taking communion to somebody or helping somebody with a math problem. I think we need to be more effective in allowing people to have those kinds of experiences. It’s not altruistic. We joke about it in Kairos. We get much more than we give.

“I also think there’s a fellowship dimension to living that’s important. Not necessarily from a spiritual point of view. That comes in different ways for different people. But I think we undervalue the importance of close relationships. It’s like our Tuesday breakfast, and Daughters of the King – the purpose is to have a relationship and know that there are other people who care about the same things you care about. And even care about you. I can’t underestimate how important that is in living.”

“Somebody said once, God wants us to be more Christlike,” said Dawn. “We can do that. It doesn’t cost anything. Just be kind to people.”

Doing all the things that Bill and Dawn do would wear most of us out. But that doesn’t seem to happen to them.

“We persevere,” said Dawn. “It’s important. You have to think, what would this person do if he or she couldn’t call on me?”

So there you have “The Bill and Dawn Story.” Admirable folks, whom I try to emulate, but not unique. There are more like them at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Come join us and get to know their stories as well.

The Dwight and Kathy Ellison Story: From LaGrange GA to Washington DC and Home Again

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By Joan Doggrell

Dwight and Kathy Ellison are active and beloved members of St. Paul’s. Kathy co-chairs the St. Paul’s Altar Guild and is a Daughter of the King. Dwight is a member of the Men’s Club, is an Usher and Verger and, until recently, trained and directed the acolytes. Kathy teaches GED classes at West Georgia Technical College, and Dwight takes care of his grandson while his mother works outside the home.

These “mild mannered” occupations disguise a far more exciting past. For twenty years Dwight was a United States Secret Service Agent. With Kathy’s support at home, he served in Newark, New Jersey, Atlanta, Georgia, Plains, Georgia, and Washington DC, with other temporary assignments all over the country, and, on numerous occasions, overseas.

Then he had a second career as head of security at Turner Broadcasting. More about that later.

According to the USSS Facebook page, the Secret Service was founded on July 5, 1865. This is their Mission Statement:

The mission of the United States Secret Service is to safeguard the nation’s financial infrastructure and payment systems to preserve the integrity of the economy, and to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites and National Special Security Events.

Dwight Ellison, an innocent young man whose ambition was to teach high school English, wore this badge for twenty years and a day.

While a senior at Clark College in Atlanta, Dwight was approached by four Secret Service recruiters. It seems there was an effort going forth to bring more minorities into the Service. However, Dwight had trained to be a teacher, and he was looking forward to taking a position doing just that. So, he put the application form in his footlocker and forgot about it.

For three years, Dwight pursued a successful career in his hometown of LaGrange teaching high school English, coaching football and Track and Field.

“I enjoyed being home and working to expand my students understanding and use of our language,” said Dwight. “I coached football and was the head track coach, which was my specialty.  I enjoyed that more than anything.”

But then Dwight and his principal had a disagreement.  He loved his job, but just didn’t feel he could stay in it any longer. As fate would have it, he found the Secret Service application where it had lain ever since the agents had attempted to recruit him back in college.

“I called a friend that I’d known for quite a while – I knew his family – who was a Secret Service Agent. He told me there was still an effort afoot to hire minorities.”

Dwight finished his teaching year while applying for a Secret Service position, taking tests and interviewing. In April of 1971, he was notified by letter that he was hired. He reported for duty at the Atlanta Field Office on June 28, 1971. (Dwight has a precise memory for dates.)

“So I went to work,” said Dwight. “After six weeks of Treasury School, I received notice that I was going to be transferred. And I’d only been on the job for four or five months!”

Meanwhile, where was Kathy?

“I was still single,” said Dwight. “but we were dating. I had no idea I was going to be leaving LaGrange. But I was transferred to the Newark Field Office in October of 1971. In December of 1972, Kathy and I were married, and she left college in the middle of her junior year and  moved to New Jersey. I had promised her mom I would make sure she finished school. So she enrolled in Newark State Teachers’ College, completing a semester up there.”

I asked if they had experienced culture shock.

“Well,” said Dwight. “We were both little country kids who moved to New Jersey and made it, in spite of the culture change”

“The agents and their wives always wanted to hear me talk,” added Kathy.  Kathy had a pronounced southern accent.

They spent two years in Newark. “I worked a lot of criminal cases, made a lot of arrests, worked a lot of undercover, and traveled all over the country doing that. Back then, the big deal was counterfeiting and check forgery: Social Security and Veterans’ Administration checks, any check with a Treasury seal on it. We investigated forgery and fraud of those documents.”

“It was hard work involving a lot of all-nighters, a lot of surveillance, and serving arrest warrants. And it was just me and maybe one agent covering me. It was dangerous stuff,” admitted Dwight. “But the good news for me then was that everybody didn’t have four or five guns, and if they had them, they didn’t carry them. We made several arrests where people had firearms in their homes, but there were very few occasions where we had to confront someone who had a gun. Very few. Today it’s commonplace. I wouldn’t want to be an agent today.”

“What did you think, Kathy?” I asked

“It was just normal,” she replied.

Dwight was in Newark until August of 1973, when he was asked to return to the Atlanta Field Office. They needed a minority agent in that office to do undercover work among Black counterfeiters.

“Did you worry about him then?” I asked.

“I never worried about him as an individual,” said Kathy. “One time he came home with tape all over him. I thought something had happened to him. But the tape was from the wire he was wearing. That’s the only time I ever threw a panic. I thought, ‘He’s been shot!’ But I never really worried about him.”

“Most of the time, as long as you remember where you are and what you’re doing and you don’t do something stupid, you’re fine,” said Dwight. “And if you don’t run into someone who is so doggone crazy it doesn’t make a difference.”

“You never really give the suspects money,” Dwight added. “You just examine the counterfeit and then lock them up. You come out of your undercover mode and became a policeman. I was always wearing a wire, and someone was always listening to my conversation.  I wasn’t stranded out there, out of touch. And I had another agent with me.”

His last undercover assignment, however, went beyond his expectations. And not in a good way.

“The last time I worked undercover,” Dwight said, “we were making a counterfeit buy from an old man in southwest Atlanta. He hadn’t manufactured anything, but he had possession of a lot of $20 bills, probably 80 or 90 thousand dollars’ worth. We went to his apartment, Doug James and I, to make the buy. We knocked, and a young lady came to the door. She said she was his intermediary and that we had to conduct the sale thru her. Well, we went inside and made the deal. I said, ‘I need to see the money.’

“She went into the back and returned with a paper bag full of twenty-dollar bills. I opened it. As I was looking inside, she pulled a weapon out of her purse. She said, ‘I want my money now.’ Doug then pulled his revolver and said, ‘Make a choice. Money or your life.’ She dropped the gun, and we made the arrest of her and the old man.

“That was the last undercover assignment I ever worked. I’d never had anyone draw a gun on me before. I said, that’s it.”

Meanwhile, Kathy stayed busy. She went back Clark College in Atlanta, the same one she had left to accompany her husband to Newark – and, still on scholarship, completed her degree in Elementary School Education, graduating with her class and finishing with a 3.9 GPA. She taught for two years full time and then stayed home with their two children.

“I volunteered at their schools. When one of the supervisors found out I was a teacher, he asked me to sub in the children’s school, so I did that. Otherwise I was home with them. Dwight traveled a lot, so somebody needed to be home. We tried to live in neighborhoods where there were other agents with families. Fortunately, all of the guys wouldn’t be gone at the same time.

“When Dawn got sick, Dwight was in West Virginia,” said Kathy. “But a friend of ours, also an agent, was there. We were living up in Upper Marlboro, MD.  The neighboring agent took me to the hospital while his wife kept Kimberly. Dwight was notified and was flown back home within hours.  Usually someone was around who could get in touch with him and let him know what was going on.”

“I doubt seriously that that kind of caring exists anymore,” said Dwight, “primarily because the jurisdiction has expanded so much that agents are in travel status between 60-70 percent of their time. When I retired, we had 45-50 agents in the Atlanta Field Office. Today, they have close to 100. If you were to go into a field office today, you’d be lucky to find 15 people in there. They’re out doing other things: protecting the President, protecting a foreign dignitary, or they’re in school and training. “

Dwight returned to Washington DC in October of 1976. After spending two years in the Intelligence Division, he was transferred to the Presidential Protective Division. Jimmy Carter was President, and Dwight was assigned to his protection. And that led to one of the few times that Kathy worried.

As she tells it, “When Reagan was sworn in and Carter departed to civilian life in Plains, GA, Dwight packed bags. He was traveling with President Carter back to Plains. He said he might not see us for a couple of days. A few days later, while we were watching TV, there he was! In Germany. We didn’t know he was going. Afterwards we learned that as soon as Reagan was sworn in, Dwight was on his way to Germany with President Carter. American hostages, who had been held by leaders of Iran, were released and transferred to Germany. Since these hostages had been taken and held captive during President Carter’s term in office, Carter wanted to bring the hostages home.

“President Reagan had threatened the Iranians with serious consequences if the Americans were still being held hostage the day Reagan was sworn in.  Dwight wasn’t gone very long. But we didn’t know when he was coming home.”

Dwight explained, “At that point, President Carter had left office. I was still on the Presidential Protective Detail, but I was temporarily assigned to escort Former President Carter home to Plains, GA. When word broke that the hostages were going to be released, President Reagan sent an aircraft to pick up Former President Carter. We flew with Carter to Germany.”

Why were the hostages released so quickly after Reagan became President? I have always wanted to know. This is Dwight’s explanation.

“When the hostages were taken, Carter was still in the White House. He had been trying to negotiate their release for close to a year. On his watch, an attempt had been made to rescue them, but the attempt had failed. When Reagan took office, his message to the Ayatollah was, if you don’t release the hostages, I will come over and make where you live a parking lot. The Iranians took his threat seriously because they didn’t hesitate to release the hostages.

“We saw all that up close and personal. We were a part of history,” said Dwight.

Dwight was on the plane that flew the hostages home.

After that, a quiet life away from Washington looked very attractive. Dwight volunteered for the former President’s detail, “And then,” said Dwight, “we left and moved to Albany, Georgia, and set up homestead there. We loved it. We were there for three years.”

But the peaceful life didn’t last. Dwight and Kathy returned to Atlanta where he was promoted to squad supervisor. More promotions followed, and another Presidential Protection assignment.

“In 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for President, I was in charge of his detail,” said Dwight.

“We had just moved into a house in Lithonia when he got a call,” said Kathy. “We hadn’t been there two weeks. And I knew, when Jesse said he was going to run, I just knew that’s what they had called about. We had just moved in, and Dwight was gone. Within two days.”

“Jesse and I hadn’t met before that,” said Dwight. “He wasn’t used to the agents and did not fully understand our mission.  He was busy doing his own thing. We had to have a couple of come-to-Jesus conversations. But we got to be pretty close after a while.”

“He told me I had the meanest husband he’d ever seen,” said Kathy. “I told him, you do as he says because I want him to come home! And Jackie wants you to come home.“

Because of Jesse, Kathy very nearly made the cover of the National Inquirer.

“We went to meet him for the first time at the Fulton County Airport. I had my back to the press. I spoke to him, and as he hugged me, I could hear a sound like cattle running. It was the press. I was there with two little girls who just kind of appeared, and they had never seen me before. They were looking for a story!”

Dwight’s next promotion was to the Office of Inspection back in DC. Not long thereafter, he was assigned to Secret Service Headquarters with another promotion to the Senior Executive Service. That is as high as you can go in the Secret Service.

“I was Deputy Assistant Director for a little over a year when the position of Special Agent in Charge in the Atlanta office came vacant. My former boss there had retired. He called and told me he was leaving and wanted to know if I was interested in the job. I said, ‘Are you kidding? I want to get home.’ So we went back to Atlanta for the third time, and this time I was the boss. I spent my last year and a half on the job there.”

About six months before he was eligible to retire, Dwight got a call from Turner Broadcasting. “They wanted me to come to work right away,” he said. “I couldn’t do that because I would lose my opportunity to retire outright in twenty years and get an annuity.”

So, one day a week, for about two months, Dwight spent unpaid time at Turner learning his new job. Although he had planned to stay with the Secret Service another two or three years, he retired on June 28, 1991, after twenty years and one day. The Monday following retirement from the Secret Service, he went to work for Turner Broadcasting, where he would spend the next eleven and a half years as Corporate Director of Security.

Now he faced a new set of challenges.

“Security wasn’t exactly at the top of their list of priorities,” he said. “I had to introduce to them the need for security, especially living and working in CNN Center. Everything is wide open: the public entrance to the facility, that whole first floor lobby area, with private vendors, food service, a fitness center, a sports store and the CNN tours. High profile people on television who receive threats every day faced exposure as they were coming and going.”

The women were especially vulnerable and received the most threats. They all wanted their own security escorts. Though that wasn’t possible, Dwight or one of his employees surveyed their homes, screened their mail and calls, recommended specific security measures, and gave advice about their travel habits. They were given prioritized parking where a security officer was stationed and an escort to and from their cars.

So, using what he had learned in the Secret Service and a large dose of common sense, Dwight became the “security guru” for all of Turner, worldwide, and shared his expertise with other corporations in Atlanta. He retired from Turner Broadcasting in January of 2002 after eleven and a half years.

“I started a little private investigative business. I got a few jobs, made a few dollars, but the rewards failed to measure up to the efforts and time required.”

So Dwight accepted full retirement. “Except for taking care of the baby,” said Kathy.

I asked Dwight how the Secret Service today compares with what it was like when he was an Agent.

“The Service was founded to suppress counterfeiting,” said Dwight. “That is still one of the top investigative priorities, but cyber-crime is now on top of everything else. Counterfeiting is probably still in second place. Today, they investigate a lot of computer crime. In fact, the Service heads a number of inter-agency cyber-crime units. They have participation from the local police, the GBI, the FBI, and maybe one other Justice Department inter-agency is involved on those task forces. They do a lot of preventive work. They find out what is going on, such as bank fraud. But more than anything else now is cyber-crime. We didn’t know anything about that in my day. Then the big deal was counterfeiting and check forgery.”

“I wouldn’t do it today. Everybody’s crazy. Everybody has a gun: eighteen, seventeen, sixteen-year-olds have guns, and they think it’s a rite of passage to shoot somebody. To get into these gangs, you have to shoot or rob somebody or break into somebody’s car, home or business. The majority of the car thefts you see on TV are gang initiations, as are local store break-ins. That’s what you have to do to show that you’re ‘worthy’ of being a member of one of these gangs.”

Though it is not generally known among today’s parish family, Dwight is a member of the St Paul’s Security Committee. He comes with an excellent resume!

Kathy and Dwight joined St. Paul’s in 1991. They had attended church in Atlanta until they realized there was a St. Paul’s in Newnan not far from where they lived. They gave it a try. They received such a warm welcome they decided to stay. And, in so many ways, we are glad they did!

Getting Acquainted with the Mackeys

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Getting to Know Kyle and Mary Rose Mackey

By Joan Doggrell

The Reverend Kyle Mackey has been our Curate for about 18 months now.  He’s been busy: he conducts the Education for Ministry classes every Thursday evening. He meets with the St. Paul’s youth every week and has taken them on numerous outings. He shares worship services with Mother Hazel as they take turns officiating and preaching. He is also a pretty recent bridegroom.

Mary Rose and Kyle were married at St. Paul’s just a few months ago, on November 17th, 2018. We are delighted to claim this young couple as our own, and it is high time we got to know them better.

Let’s begin with Mary Rose.

Mary Rose was raised in Atlanta in the northwestern section, around Chastain Park. “it’s kind of my old stomping grounds,” she said. “I learned to swim at that pool, and I had my sixth birthday party there,”

She grew up with a younger brother and sister, two dogs, and three cats. “I didn’t realize until my teenage years that I was allergic to them!”

Ironically, she calls herself the black sheep of the family because “I became the church-goer. As I was growing up, our family were the Christmas and Easter attendees. I remember hopping between Episcopal and Methodist churches.”

After high school she attended the University of Georgia in Athens. “I only lasted a year. It turns out that college is much more difficult than I had expected. I spent a little too much time investing in friendships and not so much on homework,” she admits.

Considering that she took online classes for her last two years of high school, it’s understandable that she was ready for friendships. One of those friends was Kyle. So obviously her time there was not wasted!

Mary Rose studied landscape architecture at UGA, and then architecture alone at the Southern Polytechnique Institute (later Kennesaw). “I will never look at shadows the same way again. I am still fascinated by them. It’s really interesting to see how different directions and colors of light affect what you see on the ground or on a wall.“

“In my search for friends, the Episcopal Student Center was one of the groups I strongly considered because I was already going to Episcopal churches,” she said. “I went there one day. The door to the house part, not the chapel, was just a plate of glass. It was sunny outside and dark inside. I was reaching out with my hands – I couldn’t see in, but the people inside could see me, and someone let me in.”

She was reaching out for something she couldn’t see. Hmmmm…

“I think the first few weeks were a little rocky as I was getting to know people because before coming to UGA I didn’t really know anybody. However, I liked the people I was with, and I really liked the feel of the hangout spot, the dilapidated house, even though It was in serious need of TLC. There were two circles of couches and a kitchen, and people just hung out there after work and made meals,”

“It was a community,” added Kyle. “I was heavily involved at that point. I spent an inordinate amount of time at the Episcopal Center between 2009 and 2013. I had gotten involved in leadership — I was just around.  I was one of the numbers on the board – in case of emergency, call in this order.”

Kyle and Mary Rose met in her freshman year, which was the year Kyle graduated, in the fall of 2013. “If it weren’t for the Church’s campus ministry presence, we wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said.

“Kyle and I started dating in the spring of 2014,” added Mary Rose. “We’ve been together coming up on six years. Other than the first two or three weeks, we were in a long-distance relationship. I was living in Atlanta while he was still living in Athens.”

Two years later, Mary Rose’s relationship with her parents reached a crisis point while she was attending Southern Poly.

“I was living at home and commuting to and from college. In 2016 I moved out and crashed on a friend’s couch while I figured out my next move. When my friend had a medical mishap and moved back in with her parents. I took her slot in the apartment one of our mutual friends. I joined the working class, becoming a Waffle House server to pay the bills.”

“My parents and I haven’t had the greatest of relationships. So, when I moved out, there was more of a separation. It was my time to be out in the world by myself. I was twenty-one. But for all that experience, I think I can say now that my parents and I have kind of made peace. We’re okay now with being different families. They have their life and I have mine.”

“I’ve always liked cooking. I like to eat! When I was living in the apartment, I had to provide my own food, buy my own groceries, etc. outside of work, because I was able to eat on the clock, which was nice. Kyle also was kind of nudging me to further my cooking skills, so I decided to try. I soon found out that I liked cooking.”

Today, Mary Rose works as a cook at Meat and Greet in downtown Newnan. She sings soprano in St. Paul’s Parish Choir. And she supports her new husband in his first ordained position.

Now that we know something about Mary Rose, let’s hear from Kyle. The following is mainly in Kyle’s own words.

Kyle’s story

I am from a little town called Dudley, Georgia. I didn’t grow up there – that’s the nearest city. I‘m a son of Laurens County, through and through. From home, the drive to anything meant being in the truck for at least 20 minutes and passing by more cows than people.

I’m a convert to the Episcopal tradition. My family were staunch members of the Baptist Church in Dudley. That was my initial introduction to the Christian faith.

I can remember being ‘incentivized’ (or bribed) to memorize all the books in the Bible in order and to recite them. I was in the third grade. And the prize was – get this – three dollars, paid out completely in dimes. Exactly thirty pieces of silver. I don’t know what to make of that. I think about spiritual things – I think about the Bible a lot, and I blame it on that experience.

Our family attended this church every time the doors were open – it was very moderate, middle-of-the-road for a Baptist church. Our pastor, The Rev. Bill Weeks, was a very kind, sweet sort of guy, a wonderful man. He passed suddenly from cancer when I was eleven or twelve.

It was the new pastor that got me going. This was after the big change of guard in the Baptist convention in the 1980s. The fundamentalists took the fire and brimstone to the next level. There is Jonathan Edwards “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and then there’s the stuff I grew up with!

The new Baptist message was not Old Testament based – I’m a huge fan of the OT. They were doing a very poor reading of the Book of Revelation, and cherry-picking passages of Paul. We rarely heard from the gospels. When I was in high school, there was a huge focus on eschatology, the study of the End Times. Their version was heavily influenced by sources like the Left Behind* series. There was a lot of that Rapture kind of focus. For instance, ‘if you died right this second where would you go?’ was a constant question we were asked. I was about fourteen when that trend was huge. It was a very not-okay place to be. My initial problems with how I was raised started in that time frame.

I was a bit of a clever kid – I liked to read – I liked to figure things out. So, I recognized that there was a logical inconsistency in the Rapture belief. If God’s ultimate goal is to save as many people as he can, then snatching all the true believers out of the world before he destroys it definitely doesn’t mesh with the Jesus of the John who came not to condemn, or the Jesus of Matthew who is here to fulfill the Law and make everyone righteous.

I brought that concern to my Youth Pastor. He told me, wisely, to read the Bible. If you’re having doubts, just read some more scripture, and you’ll understand. So, I did. I’m probably one of the few who hear that advice and actually heed it. Over a year and a half, between weeding and watering the garden, I just read. It took me the better part of a couple of years, and I had to put J.R. Tolkein’s The Two Towers on hold. But all that reading didn’t help – it made my confusion worse.

The Bible is a library; it’s not a unified text, and even some books are built from different authors writings. It is a collection put together over thousands of years, so I didn’t find what I was being taught in any one place. it finally dawned on me: this tale of the Rapture has been constructed from a snippet here and a snippet there. What they’re predicting is not anywhere to be found.

That was the beginning of the deconstruction of my faith. When I was at UGA, several years later, I ran into a good friend from home, who ended up hanging around the Episcopal Center because I was there. He figured it must be legit because I had gained a reputation back home as a fire-breathing atheist. ‘Don’t go near him. He will destroy any understanding of God you have.’ I was pulling apart the faith that had been given to me. It was inadequate. It didn’t speak to me in a way that was helpful. So, by the time I went off to college, I called myself agnostic. I was a functional atheist.

I will credit my first visit to the Episcopal Center to a friend I had as a freshman. She, the art major, took pity on the chem major that had grown up in a faith that was not working for him. I was railing pretty hard at organized religion as a whole. She wanted to show me something different. So, I went begrudgingly to the Episcopal Center for Evensong. It was gorgeous. but I wasn’t there yet. I wandered off to “da woods,” metaphorically speaking.

About a year later, I became an RA (Resident Assistant). I was in charge of a floor of fifty or so residents. Mostly freshmen. Good people. I loved my second year as an RA, when I got to know everybody and became close to their lives, struggles, hopes, and dreams.

What set me over the edge, however, was an experience I had one night. I was off duty, trying to get some sleep, when I heard a knock at the door. It was maybe two or three in the morning. If you’re an RA and someone knocks at your door at two in the morning, you know it’s not good!

I hopped up, slapped on my shorts, opened the door, and standing before me was one of my residents. He had his arms crossed over himself and a cellphone up to his ear. He handed me his cellphone.

“Hello.”

“Hi, is this Kyle Mackey? And you’re the resident assistant at Payne Hall on the first floor? “

“Yes.”

“OK. (name omitted) is one of my patients. I’m with the Mental Health Services on campus. I’m concerned that this student will harm himself. I need you to sit with him until the police arrive to take him into protective custody.”

“OK – I can do that.”

“If you need me, my number is —.”

I hung up the phone, and we went outside to sit on the steps. I don’t think I said much. I just remember sitting with him on what must have been one of the worst nights of his life. I had nothing to go on, nothing to go to. We just sat there quietly. Eventually the police showed up and took him away. He’s fine. I keep up with him on Facebook. He made it through that night.

But what that night triggered in me was different. It started a spiral. That same semester, my parents got divorced, my grandfather developed lung cancer, and I took quantum mechanics for the third time. What I was trying to do was not working. Toward the end of that semester – and you have to maintain a certain GPA to be an RA – I was getting really tired of the paperwork – long nights – having to be everyone’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time – and so as that stress built up in me, the first thing I did was signal to my friends that I was getting out of this business. My supervisor – my go-to person – did not give a rip. She was useless.

One night sometime in the spring, the floodgates broke, and God and I had a very long, very one-sided conversation, very laced in profanity and accusatory in tone. For example,

“Why, dude, why would you do this to my friends, my family, the people I watch out for? Why would you create a world that is so broken? And then do nothing about it?”

I raged at God all night. But the strangest thing was, the window in my room faced east. I stayed up talking to God so late that I noticed the colors in my window starting to shift. I thought, I’ve never just sat and watched the sun rise. So, I went outside, sat down, and watched the sun come up. As that top band of the sun broke the horizon — I hesitate to say I heard a voice — but I did. It said, “I am as steady as the sunrise. I have been with you, in this, the whole time. You are the one who turned your back. You are the one that chose not to see me.”

I was no longer agnostic.

A week later, a friend of mine called me up.

“I remember you saying something about trying to get out of the RA business. You still looking for a place to live?”

“Yep, you got it.”

“Cool. You want to room with me? You care where?”

“Not really.”

“I’ll bring you the lease tomorrow.”

I signed it without looking.

He took me around to show me the place. The Presbyterian Student Center. They had rented out a house in the back to generate income for the ministry.

I’ve never been one for the Presbyterian approach, but the guy they had interning for the campus ministry – I’ll never forget him – was Episcopalian, but I didn’t know that. We got to talking one day and he said, “I think I’ve got a place you might like, and I’ve got some people you should meet, by the way, there’s free dinner on Wednesday.”

My faith had been deconstructed, and this was the beginning of its reconstruction.

We take a walk down Lumpkin Street to the Episcopal Center at UGA where I had been three or four years before. I go in – it’s a Wednesday and a Eucharistic night – it was dinner before and service afterward. We had dinner – I recognized a few people – and the priest, Fr. Dann Brown, – he’s still active in the Diocese – walks up and says,

“Hey Kyle, it’s been a long time. How have you been?”

This guy remembered me from three years prior. The light bulb lit up – something is going on here.

We went through a Rite II Eucharist, and the liturgy just came alive. It feed some part of me I didn’t realize existed. That night I found a home, a place I had been without for years. So that’s how I wound up in the Episcopal Church. And that’s where, a couple of years later, I met Mary Rose.

How Kyle became a priest.

Back about 2011, there was still a program running in the diocese called Vocare, which is based on Cursillo …but since it was aimed at college students it was about vocation – what is God calling you to do?

I had never considered any ordained vocation, much less the priesthood. However, looking back, there were signs. The first one occurred the night I got baptized. It was weird, because I was sitting in a Sunday night service by myself. Mom was leading the Children’s Choir, and Dad was an usher. I was eleven. In the middle of the last hymn of the evening, I just got an inkling, a nudge. “Hey, go up there and get baptized because I’ve got plans for you.”

For some reason, I stood up and went through the baptismal ceremony. Both my parents told me later it was quite a shock. They were proud and happy but did not see that coming. That was the last I thought about my “calling” for a long time.

The second “call” came when I was attending Vocare (from the Latin, ‘to call’). I hadn’t fully joined the Church. I would be received a month or two later.

I arrived Friday night. There had been a worship, a couple of talks, and then a night of silence. We said Compline and went to bed. I didn’t know what I was getting into. That’s when I got my first rosary, Anglican style, with instructions, thank God! I sat outside, played with it for a bit, then went to bed.

I had a dream. I’m not one who remembers his dreams, so when I do it’s usually significant. I was in some church – I’ve yet to match it up to a real one. I was in a procession. There were people in the pews. Way out in front of me was a cross with torches. Then a couple other people, then someone bearing the Gospel. I woke up that morning and didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think about the fact that if you’re processing behind the Gospel, that’s an ordained position. I just pushed it off and ate my breakfast.

The second day of Vocare is a series of talks. The main question of Vocare is, what am I being called to do with my life? One of the speakers was a young priest who said he had asked God for a clear sign. That night he had a dream.

“I was cruising along, and there were all these diners, and they had different jobs pinned to them. I found myself in front of one that said ‘Priesthood.’ Maybe I should explore that.”

I thought, ‘You’re kidding!’ He talked about being called to the priesthood through a dream literally on the day I had dreamed about being ordained. Then in our small group discussion he turned to me and said, “Hey Kyle, ever thought of becoming a priest?” Literally. I believe I said something like, “I’ll get back to you on that.” That kind of got me started.

The diocese at that time had a “Young Priests” program that I went through in the last year of college. I went to monthly meetings at the Cathedral, meeting with people from the Diocese such as Zackery Thompson, Kim Jackson, and the Bishop right after he was elected. I watched the ordination of the new Bishop. We did a series of experiences including spending time with the homeless and writing reflections about it. I got a positive recommendation at the end of it and was told that my next step was an application letter. This was in 2012. I had a year to work and get my life together.

Mary Rose and I had met. In 2013 I decided to begin the process. It took me until the spring of 2014 to get the paperwork done, meet with the Commission of Ministry, etc. The Bishop told me, “You can go to EDS (Episcopal Divinity School, since closed); GTS (General Theology Seminary in NYC); or Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA which is where I ended up going. That year, all the GTS faculty resigned. Virginia said, “If your net worth is under $15,000, we will pay for you to go here.” We Have A Winner!

This was after the discernment in the young priest program, a year-long process. Then the next year was a parish process, and then came the Diocesan process. I got a positive recommendation from all the right people. Meanwhile I worked for Jimmy John’s making sandwiches. So, with VTS offering to pay me to go, I went to Alexandria. That was hard for Mary Rose and I because if we had gotten married before I went, it would have cost us over $100,000 between housing, moving, and fees. Or, if we could squeeze out three years of a long-distance relationship, it would be nearly free.

“I’m sorry for all I put you through, Mary Rose.” Kyle said as he turned to look as his bride. “We had started seeing each other starting in the spring of 2014. We been dating for less than a year when we had to make this choice.”

“We were dating through most of his discernment process,” said Mary Rose.

“I warned her up front that this was a real possibility. But still – really sorry about that. I’ve gotta give her credit,” he said.

“Well, I’m still here,” she replied.

Many of Kyle’s new congregation attended his ordination at the Cathedral, and we were delighted to be guests at their wedding.

“You know they split us up before the wedding. Me and the boys were down in the office. Hazel lays the marriage license on the desk and tells me to sign it and sign the marriage register. I do those things, people take my picture, and I take my phone out and put a reminder on the day, with a month’s notice. I programmed it that day. I didn’t want to be that stereotypical guy that forgets his anniversary. Then the reverse happened! We are so atypical.”

Mary Rose ordered her dress from Amazon. Kyle read the directions for taking the measurements from Goggle!

She walked down the aisle on Kyle’s arm. She looked stunning.

*According to Wikipedia, “Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling religious novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins dealing with the Christian Dispensationalist End Times interpretation of the Biblical Apocalypse.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind

Several books in this series were best sellers. I read most of them because I was intrigued that a writer could take a fantastical Biblical account and turn it into a cheap but engaging thriller. I didn’t take the books seriously – they were just entertainment. I didn’t realize that this saga had become the basis for a whole religious movement!

 

 

 

 

What Do You Know About St. Paul’s Outreach?

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What do You Know About St. Paul’s Outreach?

By Joan Doggrell

Before talking to Crystal McCollough, I knew very little about St. Paul’s Outreach program. I knew that Outreach was responsible for disbursing funds to deserving recipients. But I thought the Outreach committee was a single entity headed by a Chair and the usual officers. How wrong I was. That may have been its previous structure, but not anymore.

And why was I talking to Crystal? Because she is Chair for the Community Grants Ministry. More about that shortly. But first, a bit about Crystal. She runs a small business from home, Beautycounter, “a clean beauty brand for men, women, & children.” She is married to Micah McCollough, and they have five children: Ariel, thirteen; Micah Jr, eleven; Eli, nine; Aaron, seven; and Samuel, two.

“And Joey (the Golden Doodle puppy) makes six!” said Crystal. “It’s like having toddler twins when Sammy and Joey are in the house together. One’s running this way, the other’s running that way… It would be easier if they were one species – they would both either sit and color or they’d both play Fetch!”

It’s easy to see she has her hands full. Nevertheless, “I’ve always enjoyed being a servant,” she said. “Father Allan pulled me out of the pew with my newborn Aaron and told me I needed to join the Committee. And I’ve been here ever since.”

Today, Outreach consists of four permanent ministries: Community Grants, The Work of our Hands. Stories of Grace, and Monthly Mission Market. As Christmas approaches, a fifth ministry, Angel Tree, goes to work.

And who is in charge of all these ministries? Why, our own Hazel, of course.

The Community Grants ministry is “tasked with receiving grant applications and voting on whether or not to grant those funds,” said Crystal.

According to St. Paul’s website:

“St. Paul’s makes grants to nonprofit programs that provide basic needs to the most vulnerable of our neighbors. In addition to small grants (typically $2,500 or less), the Community Grants Ministry provides funds to organizations with local or regional affiliation, especially organizations with an Episcopal affiliation, organizations founded by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church or organizations impacted by significant parishioner participation.”

This ministry has been busy this year. Here are the organizations who have received grants to date.

CORRAL, $2,500, to the equine therapy folks. According to their website, “We collaborate with local, referral community partners who identify our at-risk girls and then we pair them with rescued horses.” Check out their website at https://corralriding.org/. They have inspiring stories to tell.

I-58 Mission. “This organization is in Senoia,” said Crystal. “We gave them a grant of $7500. They are like One Roof and Bridging the Gap, only on the other side of the Interstate. That’s a whole community that is part of Coweta County, that we have never touched. They were new the first time we heard about them. We have kept an eye on them, and they’ve grown exponentially. They are doing some wonderful things in their community. We’re really excited to help them out this year.”  https://thei58mission.org/

Kairos, $750, the St. Paul’s prison ministry led by Bill Harrison. The Kairos website says, “By sharing the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, Kairos hopes to change hearts, transform lives and impact the world.” http://www.kairosprisonministry.org

“…I was in prison, and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 25:36)

Coweta Samaritan Clinic, $2,500. Our own Lou Graner played a major role in getting this health care facility started and served as its Executive Director for almost eight years. The clinic serves uninsured Coweta County residents with limited incomes. https://www.cowetasamaritanclinic.org/

One Roof. “We have a special relationship with them,” said Crystal. “St. Paul’s started the Food Pantry right here in our building. So we have always had a vested interest in One Roof’s success. We do a quarterly grant to them of $2000.”  https://oneroofoutreach.org/

“One Roof recently opened a new facility they call The Lodge. When asked to help with that project, we said we would see how we could get other congregations involved to help sustain this. Luckily, they got a large amount of support from some of the downtown churches, so now they are open. We helped support them with a grant of $6,000.”

“The Lodge will house two families at a time for thirty days –  women and children coming from homeless  situations. The Lodge is a sub-program under the One Roof umbrella, headed by Frankie Hardin. One Roof covers the food pantry, the thrift store, and now The Lodge.”

“So that is how we dispersed our money for this year,” added Crystal. “We still have a good bit yet. We are waiting to see what Angel Tree comes out at. And we may have more grant applications.”

The Work of our Hands ministry, chaired by Joshua Wieda, identifies ways parishioners can go beyond writing a check. The ministry encourages hands-on participation.

According to Crystal, St. Paul’s participated in Bridging the Gap earlier this year, and Backpack Buddies is happening in October. A couple days of the week, Bridging the Gap provides a hot meal and food distribution. St. Paul’s volunteers provided a hot breakfast on March 9 of this year, during Lent.

“We had over thirty show up to help serve breakfast, with casseroles in hand, some gluten free – we were very conscious of that. There was also a set of volunteers in the warehouse who were dispersing the food. But we were there to give that touch, Hazel was on hand to give a sermon, and the Children’s Choir was there. I was really pleased to see that turnout,” said Crystal.

Their next project will be Backpack Buddies. “This is an organization that sends underprivileged children home with easy-to-heat and eat food,” said Crystal. “We have a large population of children who are on free or reduced-cost lunch. Backpack Buddies discreetly packs bags with canned ravioli, Ramen noodles, peanut butter crackers, anything children and their families can easily heat so they can have a nice meal over the weekend. The only place these children get a hot meal is at school.”

The school identifies the children who need food, typically from the list of those getting free or reduced-cost lunches or whom teachers recognize because they’re hungry.

I had to ask: “Don’t their families get welfare and Food Stamps? Why are so many children hungry?”

Crystal did not attempt to explain. Wisely, she simply helps to supply an obvious need. “It’s just the way things are,” she said. “A lot of hungry children are in Coweta County, and the only way they eat is when they are at school. So Backpack Buddies exists to meet that need. This ministry also provides food over school breaks. For example, for Thanksgiving break, they get a larger bag of food. Parents are encouraged to come to the school to pick up these bags.”

St. Paul’s volunteers will be packing bags on Tuesday evening, October 15. On Thursday and Friday, volunteers will take them to the schools for distribution.

“I toted bags for awhile,” said Crystal. “But then when I had Samuel, I couldn’t carry the bags and him too!”

“Arranging for people to come out for those bags is really big,” said Crystal. “Backpack Buddies gets a lot of donations. People just go to BJs and get big pallets of ravioli, chili, and things of that nature to be able to send the babies home with something.”

“I really love Backpack Buddies,” she adds. “The woman who started it has this big, beautiful heart – she’s the owner of the Senoia Coffee Shop. She just saw a need, and went for it, and by the Grace of God, she has had people constantly donating food and money and a constant stream of volunteers to pack up these bags.”

The Monthly Mission Market ministry (MMM) offers opportunities for all parishioners to “assist local nonprofit programs with in-kind gifts by bringing in needed items and placing them in MMM’s shopping cart.”

“We decided on our Monthly Mission Market activities at our first meeting of the year,” said Crystal.

These are the organizations St. Paul’s MMM currently supports with parishioner-donated supplies:

  • The Coweta County Food Pantry. Several times throughout the year we request parishioner donations. “I think with the surplus of food we have in this country there is no reason for people to be hungry,” said Crystal.
  • Meals on Wheels. Foods such as fruit cups and juices are requested.
  • Animal shelter supplies.

  • Drive for Backpack Buddies. None was conducted this year.
  • The Boys and Girls Club. This year, after-school supplies were donated to Ruth Hill.
  • Ansley House. According to their website, it’s “a school for children of families who have experienced homelessness in Atlanta.” “It’s a safe place for them to go and get some education,” explained Crystal. “It’s part of the Episcopal church – St. Luke’s donates the space. Hazel and Jane Murdock learned about it at Diocesan Convention. The school doesn’t have a lot of space to store collections, so we ended up giving them a $500 donation.”
  • The I-58 mission or One Roof in December “depending on who has the greatest need for cold weather gear,” said Crystal. “We were able to split those donations last year so both would have coats to hand out, for free, to those who needed them.”

  • School Necessities in January, which is “geared more towards teachers because by that time of year they’ve run out of their tissues, hand sanitizer, etc. The plan is to be able to replenish those supplies.”

The Stories of Grace ministry, chaired by Mark Bulford, is tasked with telling “the stories of how St. Paul’s is serving Jesus in our community and will broadcast the stories as appropriate via news media, social media, the blog, and The Lamp.”

According to Crystal, “This ministry is supposed to be a way of sharing what Outreach is up to. But we’re having trouble with that.”

Anyone want to volunteer to make sure such information gets in The Lamp, on St. Paul’s website, and in the Blog?  Just raise your hand.

The Angel Tree ministry, chaired by Carrie Wendelburg, functions seasonally. During Advent, the Angel Tree is placed in the Narthex and covered in tags describing Christmas list items for needy individuals and families. Parishioners are invited to take a tag and return the unwrapped item to the collection basket in the Parish Hall. The Angel Tree team uses the items to create a display of generosity in the Parish Hall until the items are distributed.

“Names of deserving persons – those who would have a barren Christmas otherwise – come from DFCS,” explained Crystal. “Then it’s a matter of making sure each child and needy adult has a slip, then sorting through and making sure nothing was left off.”

“Last year we did pick up several bicycles,” added Crystal. “We weren’t given as many bikes as were requested, so we picked some up with Outreach funds. We signed up to provide these gifts, so we need to take care to do so.”

“Carrie Wendelburg is getting ready to start the Angel Tree project this year, so she will need volunteers to help with that. It’s a lot of work, and Alise, her daughter, is off to college now, so Carrie will need some extra hands.  Hopefully she will be asking for committee members soon to get Angel Tree up and running.”

Outreach Needs Help!

Crystal’s concluding remarks:

“Volunteering to serve in each of these outreach ministries gives meaning to why we do what we do outside the walls of our church. Now that our committee is split into subcommittees, we don’t have as much participation as we did previously. We are looking for new members. We would like more people for Work of Our Hands and Stories of Grace. Stories of Grace is supposed to be a committee to highlight the goings-on at Outreach as well as let the Church know about other volunteer and service opportunities that they don’t necessarily need to do through the Church.

“Last year we did the agricultural initiative in Haiti. We talked about it a bit, but I feel there was so much more we could have done. I think people would want to know that in Haiti we helped plant a crop of trees so recipients could be sustainable farmers and grow and sell their own crops and make a better life for their families. We have a relationship with these families, but we don’t talk about it.”

The following write-up appeared a newsletter from Bethlehem Ministries, the organization working with Father Bruno in Haiti.

One of the lucky families high in the mountains got help from some Bethlehem Ministry families to plant trees and crops on their steep land.

A year and a half ago some families at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Newnan, Georgia and at First Presbyterian in Athens changed the life trajectory of some Haitian families by giving them the resources to plant their steep land with agro-forests. With that jump start, those families scored. Tree and crop cover are up, erosion is down, and optimism for their kids’ future is growing, all of which has given us the confidence to expand the idea to other communities – four of them in fact. The goals remain the same – help the land produce more, protect it for the future, and build household income using new cropping techniques and equipment to make value-added commodities. Juice from guava fruit, roof rafters from eucalyptus trees, bread from manioc roots, soap from Jatrofa seeds – there are so many plant-based possibilities because Haiti is in the tropics. When farm communities can tap those possibilities, their economy improves. Bethlehem Ministry is helping them do that. Thank you all. JP’s new project, called Land and Livelihood Transformation on Steep Land, is a three-year project focused on 500 participants and beneficiaries with economic benefits reaching many more. It is ambitious, but on the strength of the St. Paul’s /First Presbyterian trial balloons, we know we can pull it off. One of the lessons I learned watching Pere Bruno build St. Barthélémy from a dream and an empty lot is, stick with it even if you don’t have everything in hand.

Rob Fisher

Director, Partner for People and Place

“I feel we have a lot of people who want to do good things but don’t know where to get started. I think it’s the job of the Outreach committee to let people know what’s available,” said Crystal. “I’m not going to be the Chair next year, so I’m looking for some more people to help out.

“People see our budget come up on the Annual Report. But how are we spending the money? I think we ought to be held accountable by sharing that information. And I want to brag on the goodness of St. Paul’s.

“My grand vision is to see forty or fifty parishioners out there with “Work of Our Hands” on the back of their shirts. Just out there doing good things.”

 

 

 

Kathy Brown: Helping to Keep Food Production Safe and Legal

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Kathy Brown: Helping to Keep Food Production Safe and Legal

By Joan Doggrell

Kathy met our former governor, Sonny Perdue, at an expo in Savannah

Have you ever wondered how those beautiful fresh vegetables and fruits get from the farms to your grocery store? Well, it’s a multi-stage journey. St. Paul’s Kathy Brown is familiar with the early stages of that journey. She plays a role in bringing documented workers into the United States to harvest crops. She is an H2A consultant who works for farm labor contractors and farmers throughout the United States. An H2A visa allows a farmer or a farm labor contractor (FLC) to bring workers into the US legally for a limited period ranging from two months to a maximum of 10 months.

Her focus is vegetable and fruit farms. She is quick to state that she does not work with livestock farmers. Her job takes her as far north as Michigan, as far west as Texas, and south into Florida.

Kathy helps farmers and farm labor contractors ensure that they are in compliance with the US Department of Labor and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. She also assists them with Workers Compensation, general liability, insurance, and housing. In addition, her job includes follow-up visits to the farms to make sure the workers are being treated with compassion and that the workers themselves are meeting their obligations to the farmer.

“It’s a two-way street,” said Kathy. “I make sure the workers are doing what they promised to do and that the farmer or the farm labor contractor (FLC) is fulfilling his promise to the worker.”

“I’m there when they get off the bus,” she adds. “Somebody has to sign the paperwork that makes them employees of the farmer.”

Celery farm workers in southwest Florida

The H2A program

The US government started the H2A program during World War II when a lot of the men who worked on the farms or owned the farms signed up for the war. There was a shortage of pickers to harvest the fruit and vegetables, so the government started bringing foreign workers into the US to help with the harvest. This was called the bracero program. That’s where migration began generations ago. Then after the war, the government started the H2A-B visa program for migrant workers. H2A visas are agricultural, H2Bs are non-agricultural, and then there are student visas. All carry different conditions for the employer.

“My maternal grandmother’s family owned a blueberry farm in Michigan. This was her with the fruit harvesters.” Kathy

A contract is signed between the worker and whoever is offering the job, the farmer or the FLC. The contract specifies what is going to be harvested and how much the worker is going to be paid. Every state has a different hourly rate. Florida’s is $11.24 an hour. North Carolina’s is $12.25 an hour. Workers must supply the government with the address of every farm where they are going to pick, what type of produce, and what they are willing to minimal pay the worker, sometimes it is a piece rate that makes it more profitable for the farmer and the worker. They will have to be paid the minimal H2A hourly rate, which changes from state to state.

“I would estimate that around 15% of the agriculture workers are here with H2A visas,” said Kathy. “The rest of the workers are undocumented or unemployable in other business sectors. However, the H2A program is growing, especially in Georgia right now, which is the top state for H2A applications. Ten years ago, the program brought in over 95,000. I think last year it brought in more than 170,000 people.”

Many of these people have been college educated in Mexico and are paying off student loans. Most are young, usually under 25. They are here to work.

To bring somebody here legally in the H2A program costs $1500.00, which is paid by either the contractor or the farmer. “A lot of the contractors don’t like bringing the same persons after three or four years,” said Kathy. “They get so Americanized that their productivity does not keep up. They don’t make money either if the men or the women don’t pick enough. Everyone has to work together.”

Farmers’ obligations to workers

The workers’ housing is regularly inspected by the Federal Housing Authority. Farmers who don’t own homes for the workers rent hotels. The rules are very nitty-gritty. Trash cans must have lids, there must be sufficient rolls of toilet paper for every worker, etc. Farmers are fined if any of these areas is deficient.

Furthermore, the Department of Labor (DOL) can show up at any time of the day for an inspection. So if a worker didn’t put the lid on a trash can, that means a fine for the farmer of $250.00.

“The workers come from a third world country,” said Kathy.  “Many of them don’t like certain living conditions such as the screens on the windows. They will take them off. So when the DOL comes in and inspects the housing, the farmer gets in trouble”

“But I like the program,” Kathy added. “I think it benefits everybody, although It’s very expensive. The farmer has to have a serious labor shortage to want to do this.”

How Kathy became an independent contractor

Kathy first got into the migrant worker business when she lived in central Florida, the citrus capital of the world. She started out working for a company that verified paperwork for domestic workers. As the company grew, she added more skills, including unemployment processing, accounts payable, and finally Workers Compensation.

“My dad had a Workers Comp claim when I was growing up, so I felt I was doing something good this time. I understood what a family should receive,” said Kathy.

Kathy worked with Workers Compensation for fourteen years.

“During that time, I learned about compliance, risk management, and OSHA,” said Kathy.

Then 9/11 hit, and everything changed.

“Before 9/11, my boss worked with H2B workers. He had maids in hotels and people in manufacturing. In the wake of 9/II he had to send all these people home. Several apartments for them were rented in his name, and he couldn’t break the leases. He had to keep paying. It was bad, but we struggled on.”

Then in 2004, four hurricanes went through central Florida. The crop was almost wiped out.

“We struggled. We all cut back on our hours. But the company never recovered. My boss lasted another eight years,” said Kathy. “But In 2012 he closed up shop. I really thought I was done with agriculture; maybe it was my time to do something different.”

But within three or four months, she had clients coming to her asking for help.

That was when Kathy first became an independent consultant. Within six months, she had fifteen clients. But then Harbor America offered her a job doing what she loved: Workers Compensation. That job lasted until disaster struck again; the company was bought by venture capitalists. They structured things differently in the company, and the clients missed the service that they had come accustomed to. So Kathy decided it was her time to move on.

“I had run the agricultural segment of the business for five years,” said Kathy. “I’d doubled it. Our Workers Compensation claims, which were at a 130% loss ratio, went down to 30%. But after the venture capitalists took over, I’d be on the phone from Thursday night until Sunday trying to correct mistakes they had made. The workers live check to check. If they earn $500, $400 goes home to their families. That money has to be there. Also, part of the DOL regulations state that workers are always paid on the same day of the week. If they don’t get paid on time, the farmer is not in compliance, and I have just cost him a fine.”

“I no longer loved my job. So I told my boss I quit.”

But she wasn’t idle for long. She soon had clients again, calling her and requesting her services. There was plenty to do.

“The hardest thing for the FLCs and the farmers to obtain is Workers Compensation,” said Kathy. “Nobody wants to insure these workers because every day they’re in a school bus with forty-five people or a van carrying fifteen, and that’s a huge liability.”

When they harvest, they get up at 6:00 am. They can be driven up to fifty miles a day without being paid an hourly rate for their travel time.

“When we bring a group of workers onto the program, we inspect the buses, making sure the tires are good. They don’t have to have seatbelts because school buses don’t have them. But the tires are a big thing. A lot of times, the buses are driven so much that their tires will be showing metal. And they’re transporting lives every day. So we’ll go in and make sure the school buses are up to standard. The good thing with the H2A program is that before the FLCs bring people over, they have to get their vehicles inspected. That’s what I like about the program. There are so many safety standards that the farmer and the FLC have to meet.”

But undocumented workers are not so fortunate.

“There’s a whole other side to the business which we try to avoid,” said Kathy. “Sometimes people actually pay to get these jobs. They will go borrow money from family – they have this idea of the American Dream, and they want to come here. It’s illegal, and a horrible scam where these people are taken advantage of, but the practice goes on all the time.”

“On a farm in South Georgia that was next to one of the farms I was working with, they had fifty women working out in the heat and living in a two-bedroom trailer. These women were sleeping on the floor. That was in 2018. It still goes on.”

She also sees the consequences of illegal transportation practices.

“You don’t see it so much where we live because there’s no farming here – we’re in a metropolitan area. But in Florida there are orange trees everywhere. In South Georgia you see the school buses where they are harvesting watermelons. They overload the buses because if they can put four or five extra workers in the bus, they don’t have to pay for another driver or fuel.”

“In the mid-2000s, a fifteen-passenger van with twenty-three illegal domestic people flipped on a major interstate. All of them either died or became wheelchair-bound.”

Kathy is in a position to observe first-hand what the rest of us only hear about through the news media.

“We’re going on a third generation of Hispanic people born in the United States,” she said. “They are not picking anymore. They are doing landscaping or construction, where they can make more money and work in a safer environment. A lot of the women are employed in the fast food industry. Although these jobs usually pay only minimum wages, the workers are not out in the heat, and they have benefits such as health insurance.”

“False documentation is easy for undocumented workers to come by. They will get a fake Social Security card and a driver’s license. The scary thing is, you can go into these mom and pop gas stations in rural areas and buy IDs for ten dollars. They’ll get their ID and take a job just harvesting. When they fill out their W2 and W4, they will put in ‘married, 8 children’ to minimize the amount held back by the employer. But they are still taxed for Social Security, and they don’t get to claim it. They never get their contribution back. It’s a side of the taxes most people do not talk about.”

Do migrant workers take jobs away from Americans?

This is Kathy’s answer to that question.

“People ask, why do we bring these people here to work when Americans need jobs? It’s not true that they’re taking Americans’ jobs. These are hard-working people who do jobs that Americans won’t take, such as butchering animals. That is an emotionally draining thing to do. The H2A workers are no different from you and me. But they take these jobs because they need to earn money for their families back home.”

“Oranges are picked in huge sacks. Full, they can weigh up to 90 pounds. Carrying a 90-pound sack around your neck and up a 20-foot ladder is hard labor. I don’t know anyone that wants to do that or to sit in the sun and pick fruit or vegetables.

“Alabama passed a law about ten years ago that enforced the use of E-Verify. Crops were left out in the field. Of course, it was illegals that were picking the product. Because the state made the farmers use E-Verify, I don’t know how many hundreds of acres of crops were lost.

“If you had American workers picking fruit, there would be Workers Compensation claims, unemployment claims. And you’d probably be paying eight dollars for those two tomatoes you paid three dollars for.”

Those Pesky Food Safety Regulations

We hear a lot of complaints about regulations that hamper business. Kathy has first-hand experience to share on that subject as well.

“The food standards of safety in the US are ten times better than those of any other country. I’ve never been to the farms of Mexico and South America, but I’ve seen pictures. Believe me, you don’t want to think about that stuff.

“Through my position on the agricultural side, I got invited to one of Publix’s food safety class. Publix periodically goes into farms in the US, and they swab everything. They look for listeria, e-coli, just as an extra safety concern. That is why the shelf life for their products isn’t as long because they take that extra step. We should be grateful for the US food safety standards, because for the amount of food that is picked and harvested here in the States, there should be a lot more illness. But our government has almost perfected keeping us safe”

So the next time you buy fresh produce, remember Kathy. She works in an imperfect system, but she does her best to protect the people who harvest our food – and indirectly, she is protecting you.