THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 10, 1995 TAG: 9505090060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 210 lines
Where sprawling suburbia meets rustling meadow in south Virginia Beach, a small group of plain-living families meets each Sunday for worship.
In their church, women sit on one side, men the other. They sing songs in four-part harmony without instruments. And, amid the soft shuffling of feather-thin Bible pages, they find the basis for living.
In the little community that makes up the Kempsville Mennonite Church, traditional family values never went out of style.
The members don't allow divorce. They prohibit television and radio. Parents either teach their children at home or send them to the Mennonite schoolhouse that adjoins the church.
Surrounded by a society where fast-paced schedules seem to run the lives of families, the people here put God and family first.
But, though it's conservative even for Mennonite congregations, the community is changing. High land prices and urbanization have forced many Virginia Beach Mennonites, who traditionally worked the land as farmers, to move to rural areas in Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina.
In the late 1940s, the community comprised about 100. It's down to about 20 now. Many of the men who remain have taken up building trades like roofing, cabinet making, carpentry and plumbing.
That's done two things: One, it's connected them more closely to the suburbanites around them. As farmers, they were largely self-reliant; now they work for others.
``We're not nearly as isolated from the non-Mennonite community as we used to be, and I think that's good,'' said Alva Yoder, whose ancestors have been here since the early 1900s.
At the same time, it's given people outside the community a glimpse of a simpler way of life.
Dorothy Zeller, a 42-year-old divorced mother, stumbled onto the community three years ago when she was looking for a school for her sons, David and Donnie.
Both boys had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorders and took daily doses of Ritalin. Zeller hated the side effects. She believed the medicine made her sons irritable and prone to angry outbursts.
A counselor told her if she took her sons off Ritalin, she needed a learning environment with small classes, and a place where the boys could study at their own pace.
He mentioned the Kempsville Mennonite School on North Landing Road.
She had never heard of it.
When she went to visit, she liked what she saw.
It was a two-room schoolhouse with 22 students in grades one through 12. One teacher and an assistant. A self-paced curriculum. Home-cooked meals once a week by the mothers of the community. Weekly devotions by fathers of the community. Recess time where students of all ages played kickball and baseball together with teachers.
Zeller wanted to enroll her older son first. The school principal, Marcus Kauffman, said there was one condition they needed to discuss before David enrolled.
``I thought, `Oh no, you have to be Mennonite,''' Zeller recalls. ``But what he told me was children who come to the school couldn't be under the influence of television.''
No problem: Zeller was trying to cut back on her kids' TV time anyway, so she appreciated the support from the school.
A semester after Zeller enrolled David, she enrolled her younger son, Donnie, as well.
``The school is peaceful,'' she says. ``They work at their own pace. It's ideal for what they need.''
Biblical exhorations on learning and living well adorn the walls of the sandy-brick school house.
``Whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things.''
``Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser. Teach a just man and he will increase in learning.''
``Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.''
The children begin arriving shortly after 8 a.m.
``Good morning, Nathan,'' principal Kauffman says.
``Good morning, Marcus,'' Nathan responds before going to his desk to slide a Bible in the book slot.
By the time the morning bell rings, Kauffman has greeted each child by name. The school day begins with prayer and a capella hymn-singing. The high voices of the younger children intertwine with the tenors of the teenagers.
The God we serve rules over us. He heeds the cry of great and small. The God we serve is with us now. We will not bend, we will not bend, we will not bow.
Then on to school work. It proceeds quietly, the children studying self-paced instruction books at desks separated by partitions. When a student has a question, he places a small flag on his desktop. Kauffman and Linda Zook, his assistant, go from desk to desk, whispering help to students.
The school teaches reading, math and history, but it also emphasizes development of good character traits: Getting along with one another. Respecting each other. Responsibility. Forgiveness. Humility.
Few of the students pursue education after high school. Most of the boys follow in the footsteps of their fathers or other relatives; the girls usually marry and care for their children.
``We see the value of a father role in the home and a mother role, which is no less important,'' Kauffman said.
Television is prohibited because the Beach Mennonites feel it erodes morality and creates lazy minds. ``If it were governed by people with great morals, it would be a wonderful tool, but it isn't,'' Kauffman said.
The Zeller boys have noticed a difference between this and the other schools they've attended.
``The kids are nicer,'' said David, who's 12. ``They have more of a sense of responsibility. And the older kids play with the younger kids.''
More than 100 students attended the school in its heyday in the late '40s, but enrollment has shrunk to a quarter of that size. Not just because people have moved away, but also because a growing number of Mennonites teach their children at home.
That's one way the non-Mennonite world has influenced the Mennonite community. As the home-schooling movement has grown, so have the materials available to teach children at home.
At one time nearly all the children in the congregation attended the Kempsville Mennonite School. Now almost half the families with children home school.
Alva and Susan Yoder began home-schooling their children four years ago when they moved to a new home that was further from the school. They wanted to spend more time with their children and felt home-schooling would strengthen their family.
``I always remember seeing my oldest son go off school and how that made my heart ache,'' Susan Yoder said.
Each weekday morning about 7:15, the Yoders' six children gather in the living room of their log house to begin the day's study. Eleven-year-old Kristi and 8-year-old Mary Beth curl up together on a sofa with their school books while Luke, 16, and David, 13, sit shoulder-to-shoulder across from them.
The youngest children, Vincent, 4, and Heather, 2, sit in their mother's lap while Alva gives the ``character lesson'' of the day.
He turns to the word ``ermine'' in the encyclopedia and tells them about a breed of the small furry animal whose white winter coat blends with the snow to protects it from predators.
``We become what we focus on,'' he tells the children. ``If our focus is on impure things, things that are not edifying, we will become impure. If we focus on God's purity we become pure like he is.''
The transition from farming to building trades and other occupations has done more than force new contacts with non-Mennonites.
Farmers could drop their work at a moment's notice to help a neighbor in need. But carpenters and cabinet makers work for people who are on a schedule.
Although they still help one another - Yoder built his own house with the help of other men in the community, and the congregation built the church - the members are not quite as dependent on one another as they used to be.
Even the families who moved away to continue farming have had a hard time maintaining the traditional agrarian lifestyle. Alva Yoder's family, who founded Yoder Dairies here, moved to Montezuma, Ga., when Alva was 3 years old.
They now have two dairy farms, but they don't make enough to support themselves. So they opened a restaurant. ``It's in the middle of farm country,'' said Alva, who moved back to Virginia Beach after he married. ``But people come from miles around to eat there.''
``I've learned a lot from the new people coming in,'' Susan Yoder said about members who joined, rather than grown up in, the church. ``It makes you sift through the things you believe to see what's really important.''
Once Dorothy Zeller started taking her son to Kempsville Mennonite School, she became interested in the church and community as well.
``I was seeking a deeper walk with the Lord,'' she said. ``I wanted to live a more conservative, low-key lifestyle. I wanted to put the brakes on life.''
She began taking her sons to Kempsville Mennonite Church and adapting some of the Mennonite traits. For instance, she began wearing the modest, solid-colored dresses and white head ``coverings'' that other women in the community wear.
Most of the women don't work outside the home. But Zeller, who works for the city of Virginia Beach, says the fact that she's divorced and must work to support her sons has not brought her condemnation by the community. ``It's not exclusive. That's what surprised me, their openness to other people,'' she said.
Zeller had always belonged to conservative churches, so the Mennonite style of living was not a dramatic change. Still, she found the closeness of the community and the simpler style of living to have a profound impact on her children's lives.
Before, they seemed to be in a whirlwind of activity, rushing from one event to another after school and during summers.
Now they spend more time together as a family. They meet more often with other families just to talk. They've stopped listening to the radio and contemporary music, and they've cut out TV, movies and videos. Zeller even calls restaurants to ask about the background music they play before going.
Soon after both boys were enrolled in the school, Zeller started taking classes to learn the basic tenets of the Mennonite faith, a first step toward formally joining the community.
``I had no intention of joining at first. But my focus is to serve the Lord, to put God first and my family. The Mennonites put the Bible into practice in all areas of life and that's what I wanted.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff photos
Amy Bowdoin, 7, peeks out of her cubicle during class at Kempsville
Mennonite School in Virginia Beach.
Clockwise from left: Susan Yoder home-schools her children, Heather
and Vincent; JoAnne Brenneman, 10, plays kickball in the shadow of
sprawling Kempsville Mennonite for a more peaceful learning
environment.
[Color Photos]
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff photos
Teacher Linda Zook comforts Amy Bowdoin during a minor incident on
the playground.
TOP: Girls from Linda Zook's and Marcus Kauffman's classes sing in
the Mennonite Church. Left: Zook oversees the work of barefoot
Donnie Zeller. Students are permitted to go barefoot for comfort's
sake. Right: David Zeller chats with teacher's assistant Theresa
Hersheberger between assignments. David says the kids at the
Mennonite School are nicer.
by CNB