As we usher in 2024, we can officially celebrate 200 years of Quakers worshiping in Spiceland! This year also marks 150 years of Friends gathering in our beautiful brick meetinghouse. Plans are being made for several ways to mark this milestone, culminating with a celebration Saturday & Sunday, September 28-29. We are preparing a booklet of memories and testimonies of current and past attenders.
- Do you have a long family history with the meeting? Tell us about it.
- Have you only been attending a short time? Tell us what drew you to come and why it’s important to you.
- Who in the meeting had a big influence on your spiritual life, long ago or recently, and in what way?
- How have things changed?
- What are some of your favorite memories?
- What impact has Spiceland Friends had on you or your family?
Write down your thoughts and drop it in the Suggestion Box in the welcome center, hand it to Janet, Eric, or Nancy, or email it to the church office. If you don’t like to write, someone will be happy to visit with you and jot down what you would like to share. Just let us know!
Check out the memory board below.
The faces have changed over those 200 years and the meetinghouse has experienced some growth, but the practice of worshiping the Lord and following the leading of the Spirit remains the same. Please share what Spiceland Friends means to you!
We invite all members and attenders, past and present, to come and be part of an event that not only celebrates the ways God has blessed us and worked through us down through the years, but we also look forward in excitement as we consider what God is calling us to do in the future as we continue to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
Memories of Brian Kiger
Dear Spiceland Friends,
200 Years! Very exciting. The fellowship has touched so many, and I am grateful for such a safe forum to express one’s faith and seek guidance from trusted witnesses. Spiceland Friends has touched me from the days of being in the nursery, to my father’s passing, bearing witness to my wedding, helping me determine the effects of my career and even most recently with my stepfather’s passing. I truly believe that the outreach of each of the members influences and moves others toward the path of His plan.
With Love,
Brian Kiger
Memories of Irene Goodwin
For nearly 75 years, Irene Goodwin has been a presence at Spiceland Friends Meeting. Her father, Earl Prignitz, was brought to faith in a small Quaker Meeting in Iowa. In the late 1940’s, sensing the call of God to become a pastor, Earl and his wife Ethel picked up their family and moved from Iowa to Indiana so he could enroll at Earlham College. In 1950 he became the pastor at Spiceland Friends. When Irene first walked into the meetinghouse in Spiceland, little did she realize that many years later she would still sit in one of those pews. Irene remembers the meeting as always being an active one blessed with wonderful music. There were many children and adults involved in Sunday school and dozens of community ministries. When her dad took another pastorate, Irene stayed in Spiceland, raised her family, and eventually retired from a teaching career, all while serving the church. During her years here Irene has been involved in almost everything but most significantly left her mark on the many children she taught and mentored in her decades of teaching Sunday school. Today, Irene is one of the meeting’s most faithful members. In her apartment at Raintree Square, she sits at her “card writing table” quietly sending out cards of encouragement and praying for those who are ill or just need a lift. She takes her ministry seriously and demonstrates what she believes Spiceland Friends has long been about – following Jesus’ example of looking out for one another.
Memories of Spiceland Friends Meeting
My husband, George A. Lacy, retired from the United States Army in August of 1984, after serving for 24 years. He became aware of a position teaching JROTC at the Knightstown Children’s home and since we were both raised in Indiana he decided to accept that position. We looked for a home and decided on a house in the Spiceland area, which turned out to be a very good choice. We were welcomed by the community and within a few weeks were invited to several churches. Lewis and Iola Rutherford invited us to their church, Spiceland Friends Meeting. They not only invited us but also picked us up and drove us to church the next Sunday and introduced us to many members. George had been raised in a Nazarene Church and I had been to a Baptist Church so we had no connections with the Quaker faith and beliefs. We soon became regular members and as we learned about the beliefs and organizations of the Meeting we became very active in many areas of their ministry, which has continued through the last 40 years.
Barbara Lacy
(Note: George enjoyed gardening and for many years he would bring fresh vegetables to church on Sunday mornings to share with whomever might like them. The only thing he asked in return was a freewill donation that he then gave towards the Meeting’s new addition. The congregation was doubly blessed with fresh produce, grown with love, and extra money in the building fund.)
Agricultural Missionary in Africa - submitted by Ralph Adams
Regarding my parents’ decision to go on the mission, my recollection is that, one evening in early summer of 1957, my mother had attended a meeting at the church (Spiceland Friends Meeting). A gentleman from (Indiana) Yearly Meeting was speaking and talked about the need for someone to direct the farm project on the mission. She came home, told my dad, and the rest is history. I was not privy to their discussions that led to their decision to go, but soon after, I was informed we would be leaving in the fall.
In the evening of Thursday, November 7th, 1957, under the glow of a full moon, my parents (Ellis and Sue Adams) and I (Ralph Adams) left New York harbor aboard a 12,000-ton freighter called the SS Moormack Wind. The ship carried 9 other passengers, all missionaries bound for various missions in Kenya. For my parents it was the start of an almost 2 month journey culminating in being agriculture missionaries in Kaimosi, Kenya, East Africa for another 3 years. For a boy of 11, I saw it as the beginning of a grand adventure!
After 4 days and three stops to take on freight, we left Jacksonville, FL and 52 days later we would arrive in Mombasa. The crossing between Jacksonville and Cape Town took 18 days, mostly good weather except for a couple of storms. We saw only one other ship during that time, and no land, it was good to see Cape Town! We would be another month working our way up the east coast of Africa, stopping at several ports off loading freight. We anchored in Mombasa harbor Dec 26th and on the 30th we finally tied up and our truck and goods were unloaded.
After going through customs we left Mombasa on New Year’s Day 1958, driving inland to Kaimosi. There were no paved roads except in the towns in those days, and the road between Mombasa and Nairobi was pretty primitive. Our first day on the road took us 370 miles through Nairobi to Naivasha. Along the way we saw giraffe, zebra, and many baboons. Welcome to Africa! The second day, we made it all the way to the Kaimosi mission, going through Kisumu, which is on Lake Victoria and where we went for major shopping for the time we were there.
The mission had several houses for missionaries, a girl’s boarding school, boy’s boarding school, a hospital, church, an industrial shop, and a sawmill, all surrounded by forest. The boarding schools were for African students, and there was also a day school, through 6th grade, for mission students. The mission as I recall was a very beautiful place, with lots of flowers and flowering trees. One of the most memorable things for me was that we heard drums almost every evening coming from one of the African villages around the mission. On many evenings the monkeys would come to the edge of the woods and play around in the trees and make a racket — all good entertainment.
There was a church on the mission that we attended. Services were very much like ours today. People on the mission took turns delivering Sunday sermons. Many Africans attended. They also had a silent meeting for those that preferred which I believe took place on Sunday evenings.
The Ag program was sponsored by the Quaker Men of America. We were originally supposed to be there for 2 years, but my folks were asked to stay another 9 months, which we did, returning to Spiceland the middle of August 1960. The mission consisted of 1000 acres, most of which was forest. The farm area was about a mile from where we lived, with a milking shed and little else. Dad’s job was to clear and bring under cultivation as much ground as possible to help provide cereal grains and vegetables for mission residents, schools, and the hospital, and also help local Africans learn better and more efficient farming methods. We milked by hand, about 10 cows most of the time. The milk was brought to our house, strained and sold to people who brought their own containers. The money went back in the farm fund. The equipment already there was minimal, a Fordson tractor, plow, disk, and a D2 bulldozer which required a lot of TLC to keep it going. The planting and cultivating was done by hand through contract labor of Africans. A further description of the activities at the mission is contained in the letter written by Fred Reeve, mission secretary, summer of 1959 in the accompanying article.
As I mentioned before, the school at the mission only went through grade six, so what’s to become of Ralph’s education? There was a boarding school about 190 miles away that was run by Mennonites and used the American curriculum. The school was located in Tanganyika, now called Tanzania. This would be my home for 7th and 8th grades. We attended 3 months at a time and home a month, year round. The first trip down there is best described by a letter my mother wrote back to the church after the trip.
“On September 20 we left Kaimosi to take Ralph to Mara Hills School in Tanganyika, about 190 miles from here. That night we stopped at a Pentecostal Mission in Kenya near the Tanganyika border. Here we spent the night with friends from Alabama we met on the boat coming to Africa. After having Sunday lunch, we started on the remaining 20 miles of our trip. After crossing the border, the road seemed to disappear. We followed what appeared to be cattle paths until they became so deeply rutted (about 3 feet deep) that we were forced to drive through the brush just to get through. The worst part ofthe journey was fording the rivers. We could see no sign of another vehicle having gone this way. After fording three rivers we came out on a main road. We asked some Africans the way and we seemed to be going the right direction. After going a short distance we asked another African who spoke good English and we thought we were getting along fine. After driving 11 miles we came to a gold mine where we found out the African had misunderstood us and sent us to Mara Hills Mine instead Mara Hills School. The man at the mine told us we had only been 2 miles from the school. After getting two gallons of gas at the mine, we started back over the same road. We finally arrived at the school around 6pm.“
Needless to say, the school was kind of in the middle of nowhere. After that trip, I usually took a steam freight ship on Lake Victoria to return home and to school. This was accomplished by the “school parents” taking me 60 miles to the lake port of Musoma where I boarded the ship in the morning, and traveling that day and overnight to Kisumu where my folks would pick me up, and then 40 more miles on to the mission.
Life at school was good. We had 26 to 35 students depending on that particular term. We had two teachers. One room had grades 1 through 6 and in the other 7th and 8th. Many of the students were children of missionaries as well as of farmers and miners in the country. We all had chores to do according to our size and abilities. They raised hogs and big gardens in the 11 acres that were bordered by a tall hedge with two openings for the driveways. We butchered hogs usually twice a term, curing the hams and bacon and storing the rest in freezers. The freezers were powered from a generator that was run 4 hours an evening. There was no electricity the rest of the time. Our water was from rainwater captured in a cistern, then pumped to an overhead tank, thus providing us with running water in the kitchen and washrooms. The privies were outside pit toilets.
About a mile away was a very small Mennonite mission, where the two teachers lived, which also had a nurse and small dispensary. The school was run by a Mennonite couple from northern Ohio. They were referred to as Aunt and Uncle by the students. About every other term “Uncle Levi” and a couple of other men from the mission would take a ton and a half truck down along the Mara River to hunt game animals for our red meat. They would come back with a truck load of animals which was looked forward to by myself and another boy, as we were the oldest there and always got out of class to help skin and process everything for the freezers. The animals usually were wildebeest, hartebeest, and topi, all good meat.
Our trip back was by airliner from Nairobi, with brief stops in Athens, Rome, Switzerland, Amsterdam, and London before crossing to New York and on to Indianapolis.
I am very proud of my folks for taking the opportunity of a lifetime, and their accomplishments while there. I am also forever grateful for having been a part of that and the lifetime memories it gave me.