Good Deeds The Angels Of Edwall Church Members Shower ‘Adopted’ Families With Gifts
The angels of Edwall are more Rockwell than Botticelli. More North Pole than celestial heavens.
There’s Jess Kennison, the rosy-cheeked school principal who exudes St. Nick, not Gabriel. There’s JoAnn Moos, chairman of the church board of directors and silver-haired grandma. There’s the Rev. Steve Pruitt, who may be cherubic, but whose navy blue blazer and Beatles haircut aren’t exactly Renaissance.
But they and the other members of their tiny Methodist church in this small town, population 75, are performing an angelic mission this Christmas season.
They, of the town that refuses to die, belong to the church that will not either. This Christmas the church members decided to adopt 10 families, none of whom attend this church, to shower with care and angel gifts, with the gentle hope that some of the recipients might one day join them in the pews.
On a recent afternoon, Pruitt, Kennison and Moos sat in the pinkpainted sanctuary in Edwall, 37 miles southwest of Spokane. A gray winter sunshine gleamed through the stained-glass windows, dappling rose and blue patterns on walls.
They revealed several secrets of the angels of their congregation. The angels sent angel ornaments, cards and bookmarks to their neighbors. They disguised their handwriting, driving to nearby towns for puzzling postmarks. They sent candy, cookie trays, and packets of angel glitter.
“It’s an opportunity for the church to offer a welcome to the community and at the same time to show a little Christmas spirit and Christian love,” says Kennison.
“The only thing we want in return is the warm feelings it engenders in our neighbors.”
The angel project seems to be working.
“I think it’s just wonderful,” says Phillis Smock, 71. She’s having a difficult Christmas.
A stroke left her husband paralyzed on the left side, and he’s now living in a nursing home in Davenport.
John Smock’s stroke shattered the couple’s retirement dreams. They moved here from San Diego six years ago and bought a 16-acre farm.
But the season has been brightened by the gifts that keep arriving from the Smocks’ secret angel. Even John Smock, in the nursing home, is excited, trying to guess who the angel might be.
First a card arrived, then a box of candy, then a gilded gold angel to hang on the tree. The last gift was wrapped so beautifully, Phillis decided to wait to unwrap it.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Phillis says. “I would like to be an angel next year.”
When postmistress Deena Matheny, a recently divorced mother of three, began receiving cards from her secret angel, she wasn’t surprised.
“Edwall seems to be a real close community,” she says. “Everybody’s right there for everybody. So this just didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”
The Methodist church in Edwall, the only church in town, was German-speaking when its building was constructed in 1902. In those days 300 people lived in this town.
English sermons caught on in the 1920s, and the church thrived during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Forty people attended regularly, and 15 sang in the choir.
Moos joined after her wedding in 1955. The church enveloped her with support as she raised her children (in Sunday School they made the white and gold Styrofoam stars that still decorate the church tree this Christmas), mourned her mother’s untimely death, and welcomed her grandchildren next to her in the pews.
“It’s the center of our lives,” says Moos. “I don’t want to think of it not being here.”
It was in 1981, while Edwall was suffering from the demise of the family farm, that the church nearly died. Some Sundays only five members of the Moos family showed up.
Resurrection arrived in the form of a merger with the Davenport United Methodist Church. Today, the Davenport-Edwall United Methodist Church boasts 120 active members, one pastor and two church buildings.
Pruitt drives back and forth each Sunday, conducting services at 9 a.m. in Edwall and 11 a.m. in Davenport.
Attendance is up to 25 people each Sunday in Edwall.
This week, the secret angel recipients received invitations to the 5 p.m. Christmas Eve service.
If postmistress Matheny weren’t expecting company tonight, she just might attend.
“I think it’s nice,” she says. “I don’t feel pressured by it at all.”
Leone Merkel, 84, a former member of the Methodist choir, can’t sing anymore and doesn’t give much thought to attending church these days. But this month she discovered a crystal angel ornament with golden wings hanging in a package from her front door.
“I’ve got a beautiful guardian angel,” she says proudly. “It’s just precious.”
And so the secret angels of Edwall, laboring to keep their church alive, have succeeded primarily in bringing kindness and cheer to their neighbors this season.
“It would be nice to have a wonderful response,” says Pruitt, “but the response is not the only measure of the value of the invitation. … (Even) if someone doesn’t step into this church, their lives will be touched.”
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