Getting to Know You - June 2020

Rebecca Mason

Rebecca Mason

“If someone called and said the cows were out, and it’s 2 A.M., you drop everything and go.” Welcome to the topsy-turvey world of cattle breeding, a world with challenges quite unlike those of the everyday world most of us experience. Those nighttime words were from this city boy’s interview of Rebecca Mason, a member of our congregation who came to Turlock in February 2019, to begin working for Trans Ova Genetics. While I do know that milk comes from cows, beef from cattle, and that artificial insemination is an important part of the dairy industry, there were lots of surprises for me when I talked to Rebecca on the phone recently. I had met Rebecca at our evening “Painting the Stars” class, where about ten of us had weekly discussions about faith and science, two topics that often seem these days to reside in separate sections of our planet. Rebecca was a fairly recent graduate from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and I was encouraged that a young person with an interest in scientific matters was attending our church. 

“I’m an embryologist,” she told me. I was quite baffled by the term. I knew that an embryo was something that could grow to become a fetus, and eventually a human being, so I wondered briefly if this cheerful young woman might be working on improving our species, perhaps involved in a sort of biological Frankenstein Project, funded by the government. With further questioning, I learned that Rebecca works with Petri dishes, on cow embryos, that would eventually be placed into cows. Embryology is not exactly the same thing as artificial insemination. In artificial insemination, bull semen is placed into the cow, to join with an ovum, so the cow is the actual mother of the calf. Since I was pretty confused, Rebecca encouraged me to go to the Trans Ova Genetics website. Their explanation was not entirely clear at first to me:

“In Vitrio Fertilization (IVF) is the process of creating embryos from oocytes (unfertilized egg cells) by fertilizing them with semen in a Petri dish. Oocytes are first collected from ovaries of donors by ultrasound-guided follicular aspiration. They are then matured in a Petri dish and fertilized 20-24 hours later. Conventional, sexed frozen, or reverse-sorted semen may be used for fertilization. Oocytes then develop in an incubator for 7 days, at which point the resulting viable embryos are transferred into recipients.”

 After reading more on the website, and consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica, I think I have a primitive understanding of what happens in Rebecca’s line of work. Basically, sperm cells that are gathered (and usually frozen) must be sorted by various methods, so that the embryos that will be made in the Petri dish will be either male or female, depending upon what the customer wants. An oocyte is the name for a late stage in the development of the egg that must be removed from a follicle (which is a set of cells surrounding the egg in the uterus of the cow). Either a veterinarian or a dairy technician gathers the oocytes. After the sperm has fertilized the egg, Rebecca is responsible for monitoring the development of the embryo. The embryo grows in a maturation media for 6-7 days, until the embryo is placed into a cow. So, the cow is called a “recipient,” because it is not the genetic mother. The genetic mother Is called the donor.

 Sometimes, the embryos might be clones, which means that the calf will be almost exactly like the father or mother. The website calls this “genetic preservation”: “A genetic preservation serves as an insurance policy for breeders and owners of valuable cattle by enabling them to extend and develop a specific bloodline when additional production is needed, or untimely losses or reproductive inabilities occur.” [Rebecca’s side note: the genetic preservation is just the 1st step before the clone is actually made; they just grow a cell bank to make the clone from later.]

If you want to know more, check the website, where you can see two amazing photos: the genetic donor next to her clone, some years later, both photos taken at about the same age. 

But, I’d rather go on to tell what I learned about Rebecca.  

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 “I’ve always been into animals: horses, goats, dogs, cats,” Rebecca attested about herself. “I showed livestock through FFA in high school. I did three-day eventing with my horse.” This tri-part equestrian competition, which is also done at the Olympic level, involves dressage, where a trained horse executes precision movements in response to barely perceptible signals from its rider. The other events are cross country, which is “time based,” and show jumping. 

 Rebecca attended college at one of the premiere schools in the nation involving animals, which happened to be next door to her hometown of Atascadero. It seemed an easy decision to major in animal science: “There’s a lot of flexibility in animal science.” Rebecca worked full time during her last three years at Cal Poly, at a cow-calf ranch, “doing anything and everything that needed to be done.” She and three other people were responsible for the beef cattle on the 3500 acre ranch. “If someone called and said the cows were out, and it’s 2 A.M., you drop everything and go.”

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 It’s a little hard to imagine how much fencing there is on a 3500 acre ranch, but Rebecca said sometimes a tree falls, or it might be raining and a section washes out where the fence is weak. “If it’s rainy, you’d take a horse out. A Kubata (utility vehicle) gets stuck.” I was surprised to hear Rebecca say, “You can herd and move cattle with a Kubata.” As she continued, I started realizing that the era of cowboys and cowgirls has not really ended. Rebecca did roping and branding on the ranch as well. “I took my first horse with me to the ranch but he wasn’t very good.” Rebecca still has the horse she used at the ranch, named Lolly (“like lollipop!”). 

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At the ranch, they did the first breeding of the cows around December, using artificial insemination. Twenty-one days later, “we threw a clean-up bull in there, to cover anything that didn’t take (i.e. get pregnant) the first time.” So, from January through February, “there are three or four bulls with the 350 cows.” When the calves are born, some go to feed lots, depending on what the buyers want. Sometimes the market shifts.

 After graduating from Cal Poly, Rebecca’s first job was in bio-technology in Paso Robles for a company called Santa Cruz Biotechnology. The company produced anti-bodies for research at universities, hospitals, and other big labs. After seven months, she got a call from Trans Ova and was hired in October 2018. “I met my (current) boss at a Cal Poly event. She remembered me.” 

Trans Ova Genetics sent Rebecca to their headquarters in Iowa for training. “I loved living there!” She remembered “blizzards at Christmas time,” which is not exactly the combination we get in California. Basically, her four months of training brought her “deeper into embryology. In college, you just skim on it,” she said. Rebecca now works in the main lab for California, in Turlock. Sometimes, she goes to farms and dairies to work with farmers. “We talk about their girls (donor cows) and their management programs.” 

Rebecca is enthusiastic about her work. “Last year, a cow I made sold for $400,000. That made me pretty happy. I made the embryo and when it was born, the owner sold it for that much.” 

Rebecca loves playing tennis, riding horses, and meeting with her co-workers for game nights.  One of the hardest things she has done was “quitting my first job. I’ve never had to quit a job except for moving on from school.” Vital to her life are “the connections I make with people, and the relationships I form, as well as having animals in my life.

Face Masks

Thank you to everyone who donated masks. We were able to provide over 100 masks to The Salvation Army to distribute through out our  community to essential workers.  We will continue to collect them, so it is not too late. A plastic bin will be out by the main church doors every Thursday from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm. 
If you are in need of a mask please let the church office know.

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Getting to Know You - March 2020

Rev. Mark Wharff

Rev. Mark Wharff

I did not expect to see a sober portrait of John Wesley when I entered the office of our new pastor to request an interview. But I was hardly prepared for the grandeur of the smiling face of Walt Disney in portrait, surrounded by figures of fantasy: Mickey Mouse was casting a spell as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Snow White pranced gracefully, escorted by two dwarfs, Dopey and Doc. Donald Duck, in a sombrero gang of three representing diversity in animal species, was serenading me in the Pastor’s den!

 What kind of soul had consented to lead us for the next eight months? I was enchanted, and as curious as Alice, just fallen into Wonderland after pursuing a white rabbit with a scheduling problem. I could hardly wait for the chance to interview Mark Wharff. I promised him that “Why Walt Disney?” would be my first question.

The simple answer came quickly: “The poster of Walt Disney has been in my offices in churches for years. I find imagination and creativity very motivating.” Mark added that he also has a poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. at home, which he plans to bring to the office to complement Walt.

However, the longer answer is amazing.

“Being a pastor in one church is not the same as being a pastor in another,” observed Mark. “I’m an introvert. Coffee time is most difficult. Approaching people and striking up conversation does not come naturally to me.” After a few weeks in his position as pastor at the FUMC in Modesto in the 1990’s, the members of the Staff Parish Relations Committee noticed that Mark was not meeting their expectations for coffee hour. “The SPRC in Modesto wanted to encourage me, so they told me to find a book to study and ‘get back to us.’” Mark went to the library. “There was no book for how to be more outgoing.”

When Mark returned to the committee, they did not seem happy with Mark’s response. Their simple answer seemed to be to “seek someone out I knew who had overcome my ailment.” Mark checked with seven pastors he knew, three of whom were “naturally outgoing. They feed on it, talking with others. I, however, expend energy talking with others.”

The committee suggested Mark take a course on changing one’s personality. “I came back and told them there were no classes at MJC about being more outgoing, but I might be able to get a job at the Disney store, where I could get training on greeting people, where I could exercise social skills.” Most pastors have something they do on their day off, a hobby or such. “Rather than play golf on my day off, I told them, I’d work at the Disney store. I would try it for six months, eight hours a week on off time.”

“They weren’t very optimistic,” but the committee consented to the experiment. Mark took a position in retail sales at the Disney store one day a week at the Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto.

Mark’s idea to try Disney to help his ministry had not come out of the blue, under pressure from an impatient congregation: “All things Disney have been fun, interesting. When I was in elementary school, we’d have a night in the auditorium where we would see one of the Disney films: White Wilderness, The Vanishing Prairie. My imagination was stimulated. My curiosity grew, watching polar bears or prairie dogs.”

“In ministry, after I graduated from seminary, with a commitment to continue education, I came across Walt Kallestad, a senior pastor of the Community Church of Joy.” This church of joy is a Lutheran “teaching church.” Mark said that Walt had been “sitting on a bench at Disneyland, watching families interact, enjoying being, and asked ‘What does Disney understand about creating an environment in which people can experience joy, that we can use to learn to help people?’” Furthermore, Mark’s wife, Laura, had worked for the Disney corporation, beginning in 1994 at Serramonte in the Bay Area.

On their journey through life, with careers in ministry and education, Mark and Laura went to Florida and Anaheim, to attend training events with the Disney Corporation. Such events are generally attended by executives of corporations, to help them with corporate culture. Mark found some of the strategies used at Disney theme parks applicable to his calling, such as training greeters and ushers in church. “Disney has a scientific process for when visitors park at certain times of the day.” When a visitor in the afternoon can’t remember where she parked in the morning and asks, the attendant can say, “When did you arrive?” Since the visitors are parked sequentially, by time of arrival, the attendant can say, “Oh, take the tram to the Dumbo Lot in rows 7, 8, and 9.” Mark offered this as an example of how Disney strategies can help church planners to think out strategies to make things go well.

Mark mentioned “bean counting” with Sally Cooper, the preparation of year-end statistical reports for our local church. A lot of pastors have little interest in recording who has attended services, but Mark finds attendance an important element in making church a welcoming experience. Our new procedure for name tags, with the rack being placed in the narthex (convenient for the service) but then moved near the social hall, to encourage people to wear their name tags for coffee hour is just one example of Disney-inspired innovation. While this new policy may seem like just an irritation for some of us old-timers, the simple habit of wearing our name tags during coffee hour sends an important message of welcome to new visitors to our church.

Essential to the Disney culture is to make people feel welcome. This includes providing “helpful information for people. Keeping the facility clean.”  The training “got me to thinking of institutional aspects” for church. Disney “treats their workforce as most important in the organization. Disney makes it fun, encourages people to reflect on how we can help people feel valued. People are regularly affirmed for their positive behaviors. Disney language centers on reward and recognition. The company actually captures these stories and shares them as examples. They will show these videos at corporate training to show that just one act of kindness towards a guest matters.”

In Disney training, “it’s fun being a cast member. When you work for Disney, you’re part of ‘the show.’ If you’re working in the stockroom, you’re ‘backstage.’ In sales, you’re ‘on stage.’ When you’re on stage, you have a badge. That’s a way of being outgoing for the ‘guests’ (that is, customers at the Modesto store). I was expected to initiate conversation with anyone who had wandered into the store. I would tell them about upcoming shows. ‘You can buy tickets here!’ I could tell them.”

Mark explained Jung’s theory of personality regarding extroverts versus introverts. “An extrovert derives energy from contact with others. An introvert expends energy.” Jung thought that by understanding the primary polarities of personality, “we can avoid pain. The major use of these tools is to help know oneself.”

“Over time, I’ve become less uncomfortable doing these behaviors. I’ve retaken the Meyers-Briggs test in some form (These personality tests include a measure of introversion/extroversion.). There has been no movement in how the test places me on the scale. I continue to be a bury-the-needle introvert. I am, however, less uncomfortable in behaving like an extrovert when it’s called for. One thing I learned is that you don’t have to be an extrovert to be a pastor, but it helps. A lot of ministers are introverts, and it is incumbent upon people who minister and are introverts to learn how to perform extrovert behaviors.”

Mark’s efforts to deal with introversion seem worthy of consideration, for all of us, perhaps applied to aspects of ourselves that have nothing to do with introversion. “It’s a reasonable expectation that a congregation have its pastor reach out, particularly towards guests and newcomers. Such behavior comes naturally for some people, but not for everyone.”

Being uncomfortable at times may be an important part of being a practicing Christian. “The important thing in life is love,” said Mark. There was a campaign some years ago using billboards that presented messages from God. Mark remembered his favorite: “That love-your-neighbor thing? I meant it. – God.”

“There is not much about Christianity that’s complex. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Loving people who seem hellbent on being unlovable is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do.”

Mark had been enjoying retirement for two years and had received a request to preach from our pastor, Charles Smith in May, 2019, after Charles’ first treatment for cancer. Mark and Laura were preparing to depart to France, as a celebration of Laura’s recent retirement, when he received a first call concerning the possible need for more substitute preaching. [See last month’s article for details on the Wharff’s travel adventures!] “We were in the Loire Valley when Charles passed away. We got up one morning in Alsace, and there was a message from District Superintendent Debra Brady in a private Facebook message asking if I would be willing to serve as interim pastor for the Turlock FUMC for eight months: ‘Please pray about that, and let us know what you’re thinking.’

“We’d had a warm feeling for the congregation, and I had agreed to be supportive of Charles. It was humbling to have the Board say this is an important congregation who has suffered a great loss. We flew home on Monday and met the SPRC at June’s (Coppinger) house. The welcome has been overwhelming. The leadership here is extraordinarily strong. They know where they’re going. There seems to be a commitment to carry on from Charles’ ministry.”

So, now, luckily or through God’s grace, we have Mark and Laura with us until June. Though Mark is not exactly either John Wesley or Walt Disney, he is, for a while, our own sorcerer, so far working Disney magic, for faithful purposes.

Getting to Know You - February 2020

Getting to know Laura Wharff by Randy Huth

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“We took advantage of chaos, and did our laundry.” This was not what I expected to hear from our new pastor’s wife, when I conducted an interview a few weeks ago. Laura Wharff, who has lived with her husband Mark in Modesto for twenty-five years conducted me through time and space as she told me of her life.

Laura, whom you can meet at coffee hour most Sundays at our church, retired recently from being an educator. “I haven’t figured out retirement,” she said, but with their full lives together, I suspect that having a retirement as fulfilling as her career will not be a problem.

Laura started college as an international studies major, which reflects her interest in travel. She and Mark have taken eleven trips abroad since 2004, beginning with “London, our first foray across the pond, as they say.” The list goes from Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and most recently France, where the Turlock FUMC managed to have her and Mark kidnapped and brought back for Mark to serve as our interim pastor for eight months.

“I knew I wanted global perspective,” Laura observed about herself at age 18, “but I had no options, almost.” Laura was born in Madrid, Spain, her father serving in the U.S. Air Force. “I was speaking Spanish when we left, just under age three.” Years later, she picked up Spanish quickly and was “immediately paired with new exchange students in high school in Atwater.” About college, Laura said, “I knew I wanted a global perspective to the extent that I feel the connectedness of the globe, that what we do here matters, across the world. What we do locally, at the state level, and as a nation has the ability to impact the world favorably.” But, Laura succumbed to the family tradition and became an educator. “My grandmother, mother, and aunts were all educators.” Laura ended up as an Assistant Superintendent in the Sylvan Union School District in Modesto, having raised four children together with Mark, currently with five grandchildren. Along the way, there were “no pets.”

As a retired educator myself, my first conversation with Laura was to ask her what she thought about the recent challenges to public education to introduce the Common Core. In my experience as a teacher, we were frequently subjected to elaborate outside training that often seemed burdensome and alienating. Laura’s  statement about meeting test expectations test for a school site was heartening for me:  “All you need is a set of teachers who know their content well and like kids.”

            Her comment may seem simple, but evidently the strategy worked for her. “I got to be principal of a brand new school as my first principal job. The building wasn’t done. Teachers (22!) and classes were spread out at five different sites, some year round, others on traditional schedule. This was literally the worst way to open a school. I had just finished a master’s degree and an administrative credential.” The school thrived, and “grew huge . . . a thousand students in five years!” They won a California Distinguished Schools award for elementary schools for 2006.

Through the struggle as a principal, Laura learned “flexibility, patience, and not to take  myself too seriously.” She also believed in three r’s: “Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships.” The term “Relevance” is regarding the students, “to the world they’ll step into.”

 “I learned the importance of Relationships when I was principal for a middle school. By middle school, time, schedule, competing interests, and kids trying to figure out who they are” make school especially challenging. “Students know if you care about them.”

Rigor is, of course needed, but apparently by “Rigor” Laura does not mean just that the curriculum should be difficult for difficulty’s sake. “We’re not training kids for today, we’re training them “to be ready for tomorrow. Not dumbing down. No crayola curriculum.”

Laura was teaching when Mark and Laura first married. “Our honeymoon was in Disneyland. We both worked for the company. I worked in the stores in 1994-5, in retail.”

Laura also worked as an administrative assistant in a Conference Office in the Glide Memorial Methodist Church building in San Francisco. The “full time gig” involved grants, loans, and various new congregations. “Ethnic congregations,” “social justice divisions,” and “emerging congregations” were some terms to describe the church work Laura was involved with in the 1990’s, terms which have apparently “morphed,” she said.

One of the couple’s travel adventures happened in Venice, Italy in 2007. Venice, of course, is a city where the streets are water. Problems can occur at “aqua alto,” when the water level rises at high tide. In 2007, they found themselves in a rain storm, with a full moon, and a Sirocco Wind blowing from North Africa up the Adriatic Sea. The Venetians have had the sea level rise “three and a half feet,” Laura told me. “They put up walkways on planks. They know it’s coming two hours before. A siren warns them.

“A guide explained to us that the water emerges from drains. There is basically no shore in Venice. We walked on planks, which was crazy. We took advantage of chaos, and did laundry. We went over bridges and across canals, trying to read Italian directions. A woman told us, in three different languages where the laundromat was. This was the best laundry experience I’ve had.

“We meet people in laundries. We’ve met Vietnamese people in French laundries. Laundry is something mundane. We all have to do laundry. In Bristol, there was a laundry in a café! For me, those are the stories I will never forget.”

Travel looms in the eyes of Laura. She describes herself as “a voracious reader” of, especially, historical fiction and biographies. Laura likes gardening (she has been pruning their fruit trees lately). She and Mark “like to cook together, experiment with different kinds of foods.” In answer to my questions about what is important in life, Laura responded with two references, one from Michah 6:8 and one from The Lord of the Rings: What the Lord requires is simply to practice justice, kindness, and to walk humbly with the Lord. And what the wizard Gandolf said: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

For now, Laura and Mark will be rooted in their home in Modesto, gracing us with their presence. After Mark re-retires (from being our minister) in June, they plan to continue with travel abroad for a few years, then through the U.S.