On Sunday, August 22, Board members and guests gathered on the Furlough Home lawn to celebrate the years of service that our building at 1340 Landrum Lane has provided and to look toward the future as we prepare to seek God's will in continuing the mission.
The theme was “Remember, Rejoice and Renew.” Board members conducted the service, which concluded with an ice cream social.
A highlight was when Al Pollock and Jerry VanMarter opened the time capsule, which was full of memorabilia and which will be preserved for possible use in a new time capsule when we relocate. Emily Seeger and Gayle Trautwein organized the event and arranged for a commemorative plate to be given to all in attendance, along with a fan--very helpful for this hot summer afternoon--on which the program was printed.
A slide show of the event can be seen here. For a full account of the celebration, please see this article by the Presbyterian News Service, “Louisville Presbyterian Furlough Home receives a proper send-off."
Fans and Commemorative Plates Available for Purchase
Packing Up 65+ Years
Pam Glaze and Jean Wolph sorted and packed the majority of the items in the four apartments. Between June and the end of August, Jean put unneeded furniture on FaceBook Marketplace. Al and Nancy Pollock coordinated with potential buyers to view and load purchases, occasionally even delivering items for an additional fee.
Pam marshalled a team of volunteers from Harvey Browne as well as Debbie Braaksma and her relatives to organize and price household goods for a yard sale, August 13-14. We cleared nearly $2,000 from the online sales and from the yard sale. A truckload and a carload of items leftover after the sales were donated to New Directions, an organization that works with homeless young women to provide them with skills and set them up in apartments. Many additional boxes were donated to Goodwill.
Pam secured climate-controlled storage space, donated by former Harvey Browne Presbyterian member Dr. David Willey, who is allowing us to use the upper floor of his dental offices. Artwork, paper records, lampshades, and other items that would not fare well in a shipping container were transported there over several weeks' time.
We are thankful for the literally hundreds of hours that our Board members donated this summer to ensure that the Furlough Home building was vacated by August 31, as required by the Seminary.
Negotiations continue concerning the purchase price for our building. The transfer of our funds, once managed by the Seminary, has been completed, however.
Letter from Sherry Ellington
Dear Furlough Home Board and friends --
Our family would like to express our gratitude and warm memories of several times spent living at the Furlough Home. Other than grandparents' homes and an uncle's house, it has been our two sons' most consistent US home over these past 16 years of mission service. The "boys" are now ages 23 and 19, but lived there for part of 6th and 2nd grade in 2009-2010 and for all of 10th and 6th grade in 2013-2014...plus a couple of other shorter stints.
Our first stay was in December 2007. This was our first furlough after three years in Egypt. We naively thought we didn't need a "home base" and could just travel non-stop for the whole 6 months. That proved so exhausting that we pivoted and asked if there might be an apartment for us for the final month. Mercifully, there was.
Our next desperate arrival was in 2009 after we had been forced to leave Egypt. The Furlough Home was a place of re-joining as a family, having been split up for 3 months, and of some healing and restoration, and of receiving a new call...to Zambia.
And we had a very helpful year-long planned stay in 2013-2014, when our sons were able to attend a year at Manual High School and Meyzeek Middle School, be involved in sports and activities, and do a full winter worth of sledding down the hills on the LPTS campus.
Thank you for all of the care that has gone into providing a home for us, our sons, and many other families like us over the years. We so appreciate your ministry to us and people like us, as we seek to minister to others.
Sherri and Dustin Ellington (and Clayton and Christopher)
Presbyterian Historical Society
The PHS has agreed to be the repository for Furlough Home records and memorabilia. Co-Moderator Emily Seeger recently retrieved scrapbooks and old checkbooks that had been stored in the Seminary library. She and husband Don also have combed through records that had been stored in basement filing cabinets at the Home in order to organize and secure historical items and information.
Cedar Ridge
The Fall Fundraiser for Cedar Ridge Camp is scheduled for Saturday, October 9 at 5 pm. They will have an open-air cocktail party with music, drinks, appetizers, entertainment and dessert. We have been blessed by the Camp allowing us to place our packed shipping containers on their property until we are ready to move into a new facility.
Thank you, Hugh Ella!
Hugh Ella Robinson (at right), who celebrated her 85th birthday on September 24, will be moving to Atlanta in order to be nearer family. We will miss our Furlough Home Ambassador! Hugh Ella has been a longtime Board member, serving in many capacities over 28 years, including Vice Moderator, Moderator, Admissions Chair, Publicity Chair, and Historian.
Next Meeting: Wednesday, October 20, 2021, 10 a.m., via Zoom
Zoom link: https://tinyurl.com/y23mm59t
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