Recipes for Living Rev. Mel Ammon

It is extremely humbling to have been called to serve as a District Superintendent. There are 85 churches placed in 44 parishes in the Creston District, served by 15 full time elders, two retired. The balance of parishes are served ably by full-time, part-time, and student local pastors. I will be drawing on many past experiences to fulfill my responsibilities.

I was born on December 28, 1942 in Mitchell, South Dakota. In the spring of 1949, we moved from the farm my father was renting six miles from Mitchell to a farm in Jeruald County, six miles north of my grandparents, who lived at Lane. These were my maternal grandparents, E.W. and Pauline Pate. They were part of the first residents of the community of Lane and were charter members of the Methodist Episcopal Church there. My grandfather was a trucker. He got into that business because he was hauling two hogs a day to Armour Company in a fourwheeled wagon tied behind his car. On the third day he was offered a job as a commissioned buyer and that was how he got into trucking. Through my sophomore year in high school, Grandfather was in the trucking business.

My brother Donald had been born by the time we made that move, and I started to school there that fall. I attended a one-room country school through sixth grade. When they closed the country school, I went into Lane, because the bus came to the end of our driveway.

I didn't get to know my paternal grandparents. They were both deceased. My paternal grandmother passed away when I was two or three years old. They homesteaded in Jeruald County in 1888. My grandfather left Germany during the Austria-Prussian War, not wanting to be "canon fodder for the Kaiser." Today we would call him an illegal immigrant. Grandfather had stowed away on a ship and came into the central Midwest through Canada. He preferred being a machinist, improving steam engines. Grandmother Ammon was a horse woman, great with cattle. Because of her physical appearance and her ability with horses, everyone in rural South Dakota thought she was a Native American. My father’s families were all Lutheran, and mother's side was all of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

During high school, I was active in all sports and, because it was in a small school, I was able to participate in music - band and vocal, and I even got to be involved in drama. My call to ministry came originally as an eighth grader. After listening to a missionary from Africa, I was drawn to that career. However, when I was in high school, I became more involved in the sciences. My father suggested I could farm with him after I graduated from college, so I enrolled in Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, in the area of pre-medicine, particularly pathology. However, while I was in college the call to the ministry reasserted itself. I had to share with my future wife that I wasn't going to become a physician or pathologist, but I was going to enter into ministry. She was surprised but supportive.

My father's first reaction, on the other hand, was not as positive. We were milking when I told him. He kept right on milking until I finally went around seeing if he was okay. He looked up and asked, "What did I do to deserve this?" However, both my parents were pleased, and I've remembered and used my mother's counsel to go and do the best I could. "No one could ask more than that."

I was following in the footsteps of many good, deeply spiritual people from South Dakota who went into the ministry and have come to serve in Iowa. I think particularly of Bishop Rueben Job who became Iowa's Bishop in 1984, and Rev. Bruce Ough who is now also a Bishop. And there are others, many who are graduates of Garrett or Iliff seminaries with a half-dozen or so from Boston Seminaries. When I made my decision, I knew I couldn't afford seminary, so I would go into the approved supply route. It is now called the course of study. As an approved supply, you were neither laity nor clergy. You were serving a church and were expected to be at Annual Conference, but you could not speak for the local church.

Bishop Ed Garrison encouraged me to apply for seminary admittance, and he would help get me in. So I applied at Garrett, Iliff, Candler, and St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. I was accepted by all, but I chose St. Paul because of what they were doing in rural ministry and I saw myself going back to the Dakotas to serve in rural communities. I chose St. Paul because it offered something different than Iliff or Garrett, and I'd be able to drive home to spend the holidays with my family. I have never regretted that decision. St. Paul has the combination of academia with practical functional ministry. I know it was because of the training I received there that I was able to move into the specialized field of children's administration.

I began my ministry in earnest in 1963, the summer of my junior year in college, and during my senior year, I was appointed to serve a four-point charge called the Gregory Larger Parish. In June 1964, my wife Terry and I were married. There did not appear to be an appointment on the horizon, so I accepted a call to Nemo Community Church in the Black Hills, only to have to tell them I could not come because the Bishop appointed me to the Cresbard three-point charge. While we were serving there, our oldest son, Shawn, was born. My wife worked as a floor nurse in a hospital.

During the summer of 1965, the Board of Discipleship invited approved supply pastors to come to Nashville. They expected 150 and were inundated by more than 400 approved supply pastors from all over the country. I believe they did not anticipate the need for this forum that gave voice to frustrated approved supply pastors, who felt as though they were regarded as second class citizens. I'm not sure, but it seems it was out of this event that our local pastors, as we know them today, came into being.

In the summer of 1966, following Annual Conference, I entered seminary at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. I was hired by the Kansas City Metropolitan Police Department as a civilian employee to work in their jail as a jailer. My wife, Terry, worked in the labor and delivery units at Research Hospital. In late August in conversation with the seminary, it was decided I should have a church appointment instead of a secular job. So we moved to Soldier, Kansas to serve the Soldier-Havensville-Buck's Grove circuit. My wife was employed as Director of Nursing Service at Nega Community Hospital.

It has become my pattern, wherever I serve a church, to become involved in the community and I became a member of a fire department. On Good Friday, 1967, I was severely burned in a grass fire. Recovery from the bums over 70% of my body was long and painful; but infection, which often results, didn't happen and I never doubted that I would be okay. There was a network of prayer within the seminary community and across the nation. I sensed the power this generated, and God's presence was evident to me throughout the time. Our son, Marcus, was born while I was recovering from my bums.

Upon completion of my seminary studies, I was given the choice of selecting either an appointment in the Kansas East Conference or the Nebraska Conference. We accepted the appointment in Nebraska as an associate to York First, which had two small communities outpoint churches - Waco and McCool Junction. My responsibilities were the usual that any associate would have. But the next year, my senior pastor asked me to join him in co-chairing the Child Care Committee of Epworth Village, Inc. This was a children's home owned and operated by the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church, caring for young men and women in their teens who were having trouble adjusting their behavior to society's expectations. For many this was their last chance before being sent to Juvenile Correction facilities.

We moved from the children's home into the life insurance sales business, which also taught me much about administration and caring for people. We left Nebraska late in December, 1979 and became residents of Iowa officially on January 1, 1980. This was thanks to two superintendents, LeRoy Moore and Arnold Herbst, who was my wife's pastor in Deadwood, South Dakota at one time. The transfer officially took place at Annual Conference of the Iowa Conference in 1980. My first appointment in Iowa was at Lewis. During my ministry in Lewis, I became involved in community development in Iowa and was active in laying the groundwork for what is known as Hitchcock House at Lewis. It had been a station on the underground railroad. The Rev. George Hitchcock was the Congregational pastor actively involved in assisting runaway slaves in the late 1850s and '60s.

From Lewis we moved to Hartley where we served for nine years, and again I was involved in many community activities. Foremost was my serving on the Hartley Economic Development Foundation, a committee that I chaired for three years. From Hartley we moved to Fort Dodge Trinity where my ministry focused on the needs of the membership. We did a major building addition which included classrooms, office space, a gathering area for before, during, and after worship, renovation of the sanctuary, a stained glass mural depicting God’s presence from creation through the circuit rider.

Throughout all this our family continued to grow. Our youngest son, Chris, was born in Nebraska at York. He did not take the move to Iowa well. His older brothers, Shawn and Marcus, graduated from high school at Griswold. Chris graduated from Hartley. Shawn graduated from Grinnell College and began working in the medical library at Creighton University upon his graduation. Shawn resides at Carter Lake. Our son, Marcus, graduated from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology as a metallurgical engineer. He met his wife, Megan, at Tucson, Arizona while both of them were working with Chrysalis of the Desert Southwest Conference. They now reside at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa with their eight-month old daughter, Naomi. Chris and his wife, Melissa, reside at north Sioux City where he attended Morningside College and recently is re-enrolling to complete his degree. He has worked with Gateway 2000 in many capacities. Melissa is employed by Iams Pet Food Company.

During my ministry I have been a member of Rotary International and Lion's Club International. I was secretary of the Lion’s Club at Harley, and a member of the Noon Lions at Ft. Dodge. Lion’s Club International of Iowa has a dedication to sight preservation in the state. Lions Club members have been trained by University Hospitals to operate a special Polaroid camera to take pictures of the eyes of preschoolers and toddlers and send these to Iowa City where the doctors can diagnose whether or not the child is having sight problems. This, of course, is done with parental permission. They also provide glasses for school children, as recommended by a school nurse or other qualified persons.

Additionally, Lion's Clubs International have gotten involved in Iowa by establishing a hearing aid bank, providing hearing aids at no cost for persons in need. Just as folks donated their eye glasses, now if there are unused hearing aids available, they may be given to a Lion's Club member. When they learn of a need through area audiologists, a hearing test is done and an aid fitted, paid for by Lion’s Clubs International. Although it is designed primarily for those of limited means, this applies to any age or any income. For these reasons, I have been very pleased to be involved in Lion’s Clubs International.

Friends in the Hartley Lion’s Club surprised me by making me a Melvin Jones Fellow of the Lion's International Foundation, which means that they sent $1,000 to the Foundation in my name. Foundation money is used for a variety of charitable works, primarily now for Sight First, which helps people all over the world regain their sight by cataract surgery or other eye corrections funded by Lion's International.

I have also been a member of the Fellowship of Merry Christians for 10 or 12 years, and have been inducted into the order of Fun Nuns. Sister Mary Celeste, a member of the Sisters of Mercy, is a comedienne who has been on the Bill Cosby show. My district office has a large number of pictures of Jesus smiling, even laughing, and that is the way I picture the Savior.

I began this piece by saying, and I repeat that it is extremely humbling to have been called to serve as a District Superintendent. I have come to realize the depth of spirituality and the closeness with which one must walk with God to be authentic to both clergy and laity as we work together to achieve the opportunities that God has placed before us. May we do so with accountability.