A Lewiston minister yesterday told the Lewiston-Clarkston Kiwanis Club he found both gardening and jogging were great helps in working out frustrations while serving in his first two ministries in Kansas.
The Rev. J. Edsel White, pastor of the Lewiston First United Methodist Church, told the club some of the adjustments from his earlier life at La Grande, Ore., to the small Kansas plains-communities of Wellington and Harper were a bit difficult at first. In addition to serving as pastor, both communities had begun building programs when he arrived, he related.
In the first, he said. “I found gardening a great help.” Later as he worked with his congregation, he said he found he had “one of the best ministries a man could have.”
“In the second ministry, I took up jogging — two miles in the morning and two miles at night,” he told the club. “Sometimes I’d be out there, after a particularly difficult building committee meeting, until midnight trying to work out those frustrations.
“I sweat blood and tears raising the $50,000 we had to raise that first year ... But now I love those people.”
He said he and his wife decided to seek a ministry in the Northwest because “we realized the need to move back to the mountains we love.”
Mr. White, 30 and slim, drew chuckles from Kiwanians when he said one of the “occupational hazards” of being a pastor is overeating. “The church expects near perfection in its ministers,” he said. “But one sin is allowed — in fact, it even seems to be encouraged — overeating.”
Dale R. Hall, club president, announced the appointment of Charles Bottinelli as general chairman of the annual Kiwanis Kapers youth talent show and John F. Hunt as chairman of the Radio Days Committee. The club met at noon at the Hotel Lewis-Clark.
This story was published in the Jan. 28, 1971, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
