We love Barb and Hattie!

A Tale of Two Envelope Secretaries

As of Vestry 2021, Barb Popham and Hattie Hogeterp have retired from being the Parish Envelope Secretaries. They have served the Parish for a combined 33 years. We are so grateful!

Lin Neifert managed to connect with them both. 

Barb Popham

Barb has been attending St. Dunstan's church for approximately 30 years. She started helping Thelma Hamilton with the offering envelopes about 25 years ago. Original responsibilities included counting the Sunday offerings, preparing and distributing the quarterly statements, notifying people if their pre-authorized debit (PAD) changed or expired, or cheques bounced and giving out tax receipts.

Barb liked to introduce herself to new people to put faces and names together. An unforgettable moment was when Thelma Hamilton asked Barb to help her with the envelopes. The best part of the job was meeting new people and visiting them as a part of the Stewardship drive. Hattie Hogeterp came on board when Paul Guiton was the minister. Hattie was a great help to Barb. Barb would write up the reports and Hattie would edit them. Throughout  Covid times Sherry was a wonderful help and would email the offering sheets to Barb.

The future? Barb and Rich are considering helping with the Thursday meal when life settles down and things get back to normal. Barb has always been a vital part of St. Dunstan and there is no doubt she'll be back in the thick of it soon enough.  Thank you for your service. 

Hattie Hogeterp

Hattie started attending St. Dunstan's around 1998. She started coming because they had been attending Christ the Redeemer in Cloverdale (Bruce's old church), but they didn't get there often enough. They thought their son Ben,  nine at the time, should be at church a bit more regularly. Their neighbour Lynne Haber and son Brad, Ben's best friend, and Mr. Fox were attending St. Dunstan, so Ben didn't mind. Ben and Brad were altar servers for a while under the watchful eye of Rev. Beverly Stewart and Kim Prokopchuk.

Hattie volunteered to help Barb Popham with the Envelope Secretary duties around 2012. As it turned out the job didn't entail much for Hattie, because Barb Popham was so efficient, she needed little help. Barb can tell you more about the job than I can, but it required a lot of record-keeping. One of the things that isn't part of the official envelope secretary job, but which Barb did with loving care, was building relationships with people in our church community. People would ask Barb about their gifts and often about how much they felt they could give. Barb would always listen with sympathy, understanding and respect and would suggest other ways to help the church like serving on a committee, volunteering to help with Sunday coffee, Sunday school or  nursery. People totally trusted her to keep such conversations in confidence. Hattie felt her main job was "to have Barb's back". The best part of the job was working with Barb. Hattie also learned more about church finances and why it was so important to make sure all monetary giving was properly recorded.

As for the future, Hattie doesn't have any new projects in mind and it's difficult to tell what things will look like once we can be back in our beautiful building and doing things in person, but I'm sure there will be things to keep us busy. Hattie will continue with the newsletter, sides person, and helping Jackie Betts organizing the coffee hour. Thank you for your service.