in San Miguel de Allende Hotel Posada de Aldea, Ancha de San Antonio 15 Sundays 10:30am Service Tel: 155-8014 From the Editor… As editor of UU Forum, I will be responsible for posting information on our site—upcoming speakers, special events, new members, and so forth—and keeping it current. Please help me make both of the above worth reading by sending news, humor, essays, comments, and criticism to kendalbusa@yahoo.com or call me at 044 415 103 2312. —Kendal Butler From the President I was right last month when I stated, “You lose some…and you win some!” What seemed like a good idea, the pre-service Juice and Cookies Hospitality Table, has had a fairly swift demise, due partly to lack of patronage, partly to lack of a scheduling coordinator (no one volunteered!), and possibly because its pre-service time slot was awkward. Certainly not because the volunteer regulars didn’t give it a great try! Thanks to them for a fine effort! We’re on the Web! I’m pleased to let you know that our SMA fellowship now has its own website at : here or just go to portalsanmiguel.com and click on Religious Services.  Circle
Cenas, happily, seem to be an idea whose time has come, thanks
largely to Dorie Beach’s steadfast and valiant work on every
detail. If they continue to be polular—and they deserve to!—Circle
Cenas will prove a valuable and enjoyable Fellowship asset. Thanks also to Paul Temple, who agreed to be temporary Treasurer following Rulo Kidd’s recent resignation. Paul will probably not continue after Thanksgiving, so very soon the Fellowship will be in deep trouble if a volunteer is not forthcoming. This office is not terribly time-intensive, nor does it require mathematical genius or bookkeeping skills (Lee Veal is capably handling that aspect.) It does take reliability and responsibility. If we cannot find a volunteer within our group, this will have to become a paid position for someone outside our Fellowship. Any member disagreeing with this approach can either remain silent or come up with a solution.  Lee Veal, in addition to Program Chairmanship and bookkeeping, has, until further notice, taken over weekly Order of Service production from which your Prez recently resigned after lo these many moons. (Lee, you’ll have to grow two more heads to accommodate all the hats you’re wearing! This is another example of too few people carrying too much workload!) Thanks to Judy McKay and Kendal Butler for suggesting, spearheading and carrying through with our very own webpage on Portal San Miguel, a local internet magazine created by Unísono. The one-time US$100 setup cost provides us with a valuable resource to attract visitors and new members and give UUFSMA a greater presence. Something to give thanks for: Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone have generously offered to host our Annual Thanksgiving Potluck at their home, with its spacious and attractive garden patio. Peggy Bell, Florence Ershun and Marge Zap will coordinate. Certainly there are some hidden geniuses out there who would like to contribute poetry, humor, opinions, short stories, whatever, to make the UU Forum more inclusive and varied. Don’t hesitate; send your contributions to kendalbusa@yahoo.com and get to see your name in print! (The Forum will soon be accepting ads, too!) —Bob Hesdorfer President, UUFSMA Chart your destiny with Destinos  'UU Forum editor Kendal Butler, our occasional Spanish instructor and regular language columnist for Atención, is once again hosting Destinos at the Biblioteca’s Teatro Santa Ana. First broadcast by PBS in the early 90s, Destinos is a 52-episode telenovela designed to help Spanish students with listening comprehension. “It has everything you want in a soap opera,” says Kendal. “Romance, mystery, suspense—and on top of that you pick up some Spanish while you watch!” Kendal presents two episodes at each showing, followed by a discussion and question & answer session. Join her for Destinos every Wednesday at 5 pm at the Teatro Santa Ana. Who’s Who in our UU Family: Grandma  Helen
Morris was born in Bixby, Oklahoma, in 1926. She was the only child
of a father who worked in a gas station and a housewife who took care
of the garden, the chickens and the cow. The family was better off
than most people in Bixby and kept a radio in the window of their
house so that neighbors could listen to it.At the University of Oklahoma, Helen got a degree in journalism with additional majors in English and mathematics. Upon graduation she became society editor of the county seat newspaper. Helen met her husband Jess while he was in college. When he went to work in the oil industry, they moved around the world following oil booms—Oklahoma, Texas, California, Venezuela, Nigeria, Scotland and England—by which time Jess had his own service company. Helen taught grade school children in oil camps in Oklahoma and kindergarten in Texas, picking up education courses at the University of Houston. In Nigeria, where they lived for six years, she taught combined third and fourth grades in an Anglican school during the Biafran war. “There was killing all around,” she says. “There was so much cruelty—Nigerians against Nigerians—that death became almost normal. The terrible nights were filled with gunshots and mosquitoes. In the evening all the lights were turned off and the white families would come around and sing to Jess’s guitar.” Helen and Jess wound up in Los Angeles after the Watts burnings, where Helen tried her hand as a substitute teacher in a very tough Watts school. She held a puppet show for reading, brought in slides and native dress for social studies, and had the children do puzzles. She lasted one day. In London she volunteered as a classroom aide and also lasted one day—the union objected. So she collected antiques, imported them into the US, gave some to her sons and the rest to Goodwill. She taught in Aberdeen, Scotland, for two and a half years in an American school for oil field children, as she did in all the oil countries in which Jess worked.
Jess died of a heart attack in 1981, in his early 60s. It was a difficult time, but Helen kept teaching and was involved with her students. Hoping to cheer her up, her teacher friends took her to seven Billy Graham revival meetings where she sat in a daze. But then she read that the UUs were providing sanctuary for El Salvador refugees. “And the UU group was so good,” Helen says, “that I joined it.” When her mother died in 1988 Helen went to San Luis Potosí to be a grandma in an orphanage. She packed her car with clothes and toys, found the orphanage with 64 children, as they took in all needy children. She hadn’t brought enough for all; they needed much more than they had. She couldn’t find a place to live so she went to San Miguel de Allende She stayed in an apartment on Calzada de la Luz for five years and then moved to the Quinta Loreto, working with CASA and going to the schools to help children to read, to distribute pencils and to play with them. She also worked with the Biblioteca helping interview students for scholarships. A few years ago Helen had a chance to help a young college student named David Rico Olalde, a young man from a very poor background who had already racked up an impressive academic record. She agreed to pay the 25 percent balance needed for his college scholarship and to help him find other ways of earning money to cover his living expenses. Helen and David established a very warm relationship; to this day he refers to her as “Grandma.” She taught him to drive her car and during summer vacations sent him to live with her children and grandchildren in the U.S. so he could expand his English vocabulary and learn about North American culture. David majored in accounting and for all six semesters ranked number one in his class. Upon graduation, with the help of Helen and other UU members, David obtained a Fulbright scholarship, with which he earned an MBA at Texas Christian University, once again at the top of his class. In the last couple of years, Helen helped organize Jóvenes Adelante, a UU offshoot that offers university scholarships to bright but needy students from the San Miguel area. We are blessed to have Helen as part of the UU congregation. —Marge Zap Jóvenes
Adelante Celebrates First Graduate Virginia
Wheelwright and Helen Morris traveled to León on October
19 to see the first Jóvenes Adelante scholarship recipient
graduate from college. Congratulations to Ricardo Tovar Tovar, who
graduated from the Universidad Tecnológica del Norte de Guanajuato,
and thanks to the many Jóvenes Adelante contributors who
made his college education possible. Maria Muldaur Coming to SMA |
