ELKHART, Indiana (Mennonite Mission Network)—Mission workers Leabell and Wayne Miller never let go of their love for the Colorado community where they served more than 20 years.
And now, through their adult children, the couple’s estate has helped to ensure that current and future workers with the Alamosa Mennonite Voluntary Service unit that the Millers helped to establish, will have a house where they, too, can call the community home.
Their adult children donated $10,000 from the family estate to retire the remaining balance on the MVS unit home in Alamosa, Colorado. The donation was to honor not only their parents’ wishes, but their fond memories of how the community had shaped the siblings individually. Each of them—Kathy Troyer of Shipshewana, Indiana; Kevin Miller of Ithaca, New York; Jonathan Miller of Washington, D.C.; Jeffrey Miller of Goshen, Indiana; Eric Short-Miller of Bellingham, Washington; and Becky Maves of Grayling, Michigan—have been involved in service as well.
“After our parents’ deaths (Leabell in 2014 at age 82, and Wayne in 2015 at age 87), we learned that they wanted us six children to direct a portion of their estate,” said Jonathan Miller. “In July, we decided that we’d split the bequest between two of their dearest interests, both of which they passed along to us children.”
The siblings donated to the Alamosa MVS unit and to Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp in Divide, Colorado.
The Alamosa home is where MVS workers live together as they serve with local agencies to meet the changing needs throughout the counties in southcentral Colorado. The five-bedroom two-story home can accommodate a married couple and four single volunteers.
Leabell and Wayne Miller were among the first workers with Mennonite Board of Missions (a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network) who came to the area in 1962, and established Conejos County Hospital in the rural community of La Jara. Catholics and Mormons were the main religious organizations there, and also a smaller Presbyterian group was present. Hispanics and Whites (often referred to as “Anglos” in the Southwest) continue to be the community’s largest racial/ethnic groups at roughly 42 percent and 53 percent respectively, according to census data. In the 1960s, Mennonite Board of Missions emphasized health initiatives in rural areas. The agency was invited to partner with local community leaders to establish the hospital, said Alice Price, local program coordinator for the Alamosa MVS unit and member of the planning committee for the original La Jara MVS unit. That unit is now the Alamosa unit.
“This was not a traditional Mennonite settlement area,” Price said. “There were Mennonites in other parts of Colorado, but not in the immediate area around La Jara. Eventually, a number of Mennonite families moved to the area to help with the hospital as healthcare providers and administrative staff.”
The Millers were on the hospital’s leadership team: Leabell was a floor and operating room nurse, and Wayne was the first administrator. They were leaders in the United Church of La Jara—a yoked Presbyterian and Mennonite congregation—and members of the planning committee that established the La Jara MVS unit, which opened in 1983.
Jonathan Miller said that his parents met and married in the 1950s in La Junta, which is in southeastern Colorado. Leabell was in nurses’ training at La Junta Mennonite Hospital, and Wayne was in Mennonite Voluntary Service working as an orderly. They established a home in La Junta. In August 1962, they moved their young family west to La Jara in Conejos County to serve at the hospital.
Price said that by the 2000s, population growth and service needs shifted from La Jara to Alamosa, which is 15 miles to the north. Alamosa had become a regional hub. In the fall of 2010, local Mennonites established Anabaptist Fellowship of Alamosa to provide a spiritual home for volunteers and other residents in the area. Along with this step, a new house in Alamosa was found to replace the Miller home, which had served as the MVS unit house in La Jara since the Millers moved from the area in 1984.
“If we were going to keep the voluntary service unit going, we needed to make sure that the unit was in a location where there were meaningful service efforts that matched the skills and vocational interests of our volunteers,” Price said. “We were able to find a suitable house, but our small fellowship was not in a position to purchase the house on our own.”
Anabaptist Fellowship of Alamosa, Mennonite Mission Network, and Mountain States Mennonite Conference worked together to finance the new MVS home. The purchase became possible by leveraging most of Mission Network’s equity in the Miller home, generous donations of money and labor from members of Mountain States Mennonite Conference, and a bridge loan extended by a member of the local fellowship, Price said.
“Even though we now are based in Alamosa, almost all of our volunteers serve in placement agencies that provide services throughout a six-county region. That region includes services to people who live in La Jara and its surrounding Conejos County,” Price said. While the MVS unit is no longer involved in the hospital, it addresses a variety of important services in the region, which is in the San Luis Valley, including:
- Immigrant Resource Center, a nonprofit providing legal services and adult ESL classes, citizenship exam preparation, and after-school and summer programming for children of immigrant and migrant families.
- Center for Restorative Programs, a youth-focused restorative justice nonprofit.
- Coordination of a network of foodbanks through La Puente, a local homeless shelter.
- Alamosa County Public Health Department, offering a range of health and health education services.
- Rio Grande Farm Park, a land preservation and organic farming project.
- Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project, a river restoration project.
“It (the $10,000 donation) is a lovely concrete thing and really does represent that the Miller home and Miller family have been a touchstone for the work of the MVS unit in this region from the initial vision on through various transitions,” Price said.
“We hope this will remove a financial load from their ongoing work, serving the people they learn to know in the valley we love,” Jonathan Miller said.
