Dear Edgeboro Family & Friends,

Over the last few issues of The Envoy, I have used a three-part writing template that I’d like to once again return to this month. For this article, my three parts are: A Prayer Concern, A Thing I Learned Last Month, and A Piece of Edgeboro History.

A Prayer Concern
Unfortunately, many people in our part of the world are currently experiencing hurricane season. As I’m writing this, many in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are living with the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona – reporting one to two feet of rainfall, power outages, a lack of drinking water, and much more damage. Please continue to pray for those in the wake of this storm and other storms.

If you’d like to make a difference in addition to prayer, please consider making a donation to the Board of World Mission for Moravian Disaster Response. Your gifts help the Board of World Mission give aid in times like this.

A Thing I Learned
Last Month On September 13-16, I attended a racial justice pilgrimage in Montgomery, Alabama with dozens of my Moravian colleagues. I want to share with you two Moravian names that I learned about on this trip because I think that we should all know about them.

The first is Mary Prince (1788-1833). She was born in Bermuda, but sold into slavery as a child. In her late 20’s, while still a slave in Antigua, she joined the Moravian Church. A decade later, she lived in London, and with the help of a writer, she published The History of Mary Prince in 1831 – the very first written account of a black slave woman published in the United Kingdom.

The second is Rev. Dr. Charles D. Martin (1873-1942). After being born in St. Kitts, he founded the Fourth Moravian Church in Harlem, NY and became the first black pastor of the Moravian Church. He was most known for being one of the organizers of the NAACP’s Silent Parades in New York City in 1917.

You can find Mary Prince’s book on Amazon. You can see the original flyer for the Silent Parades that Charles D. Martin wrote online with his powerful words titled “Why Do We March?” You can find them both on Wikipedia. These are two Moravians that changed the course of history. Please look them up.

A Piece of Edgeboro History
On October 25th, Edgeboro will celebrate its 108th anniversary. I could tell you a number of things about Edgeboro’s history – like how Edgeboro has had 14 pastors, and four of them accounted for half of that time (Christianson, Gross, Engelbrecht, and Kuhfahl); or that Edgeboro’s first every gathering (a Sunday school class) took place at the home of Harvey Freeman at 635 Washington Ave. But what I want to share with you is a headline from the October 1949 issue of The Envoy, written by Rev. Reuben Gross. It said: “COUNTRY FAIR realized over $300.”

That may not seem like much at first. After all, we now receive that four times over on the slowest of Sundays. But $300 in 1949 is now worth over $3,700 in 2022, which puts this event right up there with the fundraising efforts that are coming up this fall like the making of pumpkin rolls and beeswax candles, the Christmas Extravaganza, and the Christmas Putz.

I chose to highlight this headline to show that though its 108 years, Edgeboro has always had a great history of supporting the life and mission of the church with its ministries. That history helped get this church to where it is today. More opportunities are coming soon for each of us to carry on that tradition and do the same. We hope that you can be a part of the life and work of Edgeboro!

In three greater things – Faith, Love, and Hope,
Pastor Dan