The room is awash with light. Streaming in from two large windows, filling the homey space with warmth. Joyce Menchinger herself exudes warmth with or without the sun’s presence. She stands in the entryway. Joyce is soft-spoken and kind. It would be readily apparent to anyone after just minutes that she is the sort of person you’d want to clone in the mental health field. She is patient, humble, and smart as a whip. Before sitting, she offers a tour of the facility. The building was proud. A place to find comfort and treatment for the mind ought to be Read More »

An air conditioner is a simple convenience. Maybe not the product of a transformative gift, or a changemaker in the landscape of our community. But how simple is it, really? When an air conditioner is a stand-in for the simple expenditures of a lean-running institution like Faith Lutheran Church, that simple convenience becomes incredibly complex. And when running lean means changing more lives through faith and practice, that simple convenience translates to community transformation. Such is the story of how the Community Foundation empowered a young pastor and his historic church to spend more time focused on the evolving needs Read More »

In a lot of ways, education is an investment in human capital. For Elkhart County it’s no different. Here, education is an investment in home…an investment in people. The Johnson family has been a mainstay of Elkhart and its members have been generous investors in the community through the years. If we treated people like stocks in the stock market, Leonard W. Johnson, Jr. was like Berkshire Hathaway. He was a great investment. He graduated high school at age 14, the youngest graduate in Elkhart Community Schools history. He went on to get his Doctor of Medicine degree from Howard Read More »

The visitation room at the correctional facility looked like an elementary school cafeteria that hadn’t been updated since 1974. The walls were taupe but for two bold roller-rink stripes of maroon and blue. The tiled floor was patterned to make the room feel busier than it already was. Vinyl furniture was arranged around the room, creating faux privacy for families and loved ones. If not for the heavyset guards at the north end of the room and the steel-reinforced, bullet-proof Plexiglas, you might feel like you were at a support group meeting in a church basement as much as a Read More »

How do you recover from the unexpected death of a child, your daughter? Even more tragic, the brutal murder of your daughter? This is what Phil and Robin Byars and their family have been trying to cope with the past many painful months. On the morning of November 10, 2015 their son-in-law Davey Blackburn went to a gym to work out. Upon returning to their Indianapolis home, he found his wife, Amanda Byars Blackburn, 28, suffering from gunshot wounds after a home invasion. Amanda was 12 weeks pregnant with their second child, a daughter, and both died 24 hours later Read More »

When we think of home, our definition is contextual. It depends on where we are and what we are doing. As we sit on our couch and settle in for a Notre Dame football game, home means that couch and that TV. Home for me is Wendy and I with our kids. As we go to our respective workplaces and schools, home becomes Lusher Ave. or Rivercreek or Bridlewood. It becomes our neighborhoods and our neighbors. As we travel to play a rival team, home becomes Elkhart, Northwood, Goshen, Northridge, Jimtown or Concord. It becomes our respective cities. And when Read More »

How Walnut Hill provides stability to a community in need. It’s 6:40 on a Monday morning and the Bergholz’s home is already in full motion. Sarah’s hair, still dripping from her shower, leaves an imprint, growing on her maroon scrubs top. Someone takes excessively long steams in the morning before she gets up, despite her constant refrain to stop. Her broken, green Revlon pressed powder compact has seen better days, but she applies it conservatively to both cheeks and lightly taps the tip of her nose. David squeezes behind her and makes his way to the opposite end of the Read More »

Click. Click. Click. her Vintage Ferragamo’s, Studded And Black, Clack Across The Empty Stage. Maple Boards Creak Intermittently, Each Filled With Memories Of The Thousands Of Footsteps That Have Come Before. As she slowly edges across the floor, she’s careful to feel each board, she’s careful to feel each imperfection, the result of generations of previous acts. The subtle bend under her foot bounces back with a pulse of history she swears she can feel. The theater is dark. Lights off, her mind is left to fill in the details, to soften the imperfections. The glow from the emergency exit Read More »

Faith takes acts to a new level for Ola Yoder as he works and leads in Elkhart County.