Dutch Soup and Oliebollen

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Saturday, 13 June 2009 15:06

Volunteer Profile, Mary Cogbill-by Martha Markwat

Each year as spring approaches, Mary Cogbill starts thinking about Dutch soup – 160 gallons of Dutch soup, that is.

“For the past 10 years my partner and I have had a food booth featuring authentic Dutch food during the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan” says Mary. “For the last five years a large percentage of the profits have gone to support Word & Deed projects.”

Mary has been a Word & Deed board member since the US branch was started in2000. Since then she has given her time and energy to organizing several fund-raising dinners and auctions, but her Dutch food booth is by far her largest time commitment during the year. She starts preparing food at the beginning of April. “Five dozen buns a day is my goal,” says Mary.

Mary recruits Word & Deed volunteers and some paid help to run the booth for eight of the nine festival days in May. They currently run their booth at Windmill Island, a Dutch theme park in the city of Holland. The average Tulip Time sees Mary serving up 84 gallons of split pea soup, 75 gallons of Dutch vegetable meatball soup, 100 dozen homemade buns, 1500 oliebollen, 500 Jan Hagel cookies, not to mention croquetten, banket (a long roll of pastry filled with almond paste) and currant bread. Customers are thrilled with the Dutch lunch. “We never get a bad comment,” Mary says.

Even though it is a lot of work, Mary enjoys contributing to Word & Deed this way. “It's really worth while,” she says.

“Mary is very dedicated and hardworking,” says Heidi Pronk, the executive director of Word & Deed USA. “Although you may not see her out in front of the crowd, there are very few Word & Deed events that take place without her involvement behind the scenes.”

As an empty nester, Mary finds volunteering is a good way to stay busy with meaningful things, and she is grateful for Word & Deed's emphasis on making the gospel message available to those they assist.

Mary Cogbill and sponsor child Andrea

Mary has had the opportunity to see first-hand how Word & Deed's partner organization CDA is bringing the gospel as they meet the needs of girls in Colombia. On a trip in 2007, Mary and her husband Kent went on some home visits with staff from the Girls Home in Tenjo. They wanted to meet and sponsor a child while they were there, so the staff at CDA gave them a unique experience. “We were allowed to be part of a ‘rescue mission’ of a 3-year-old girl,” says Mary. It had already been determined that this child was living in horrendous conditions and that her life was in danger. She was removed from her home and brought to the Girls Home in Tenjo. “We were then able to spend a lot of time with her and witness first-hand the joy of helping these little ones,” says Mary. “As you can imagine, it was very difficult to leave her behind.”
After they got home from their trip to Colombia, Mary couldn't stop thinking about how the girls at the Girls Home have no concept of what it means to be part of a healthy, functioning family. “We wanted to give one of the girls that opportunity,” says Mary. “We also knew that if she could learn English she would have a much greater chance of advancement.” After much discussion and planning with CDA, Liliana arrived in Michigan in January, 2008. “Unfortunately, she had not done very well on her English lessons so communication was a huge problem,” Mary says. Things did get better as Liliana learned English and Kent and Mary pray that it will prove to have been a positive experience in her life. Since then, an attempt was made by another family to bring another girl to the US for a similar experience. Unfortunately, the Colombian government has since refused to grant visas.

Martha Markwat is a member of the Free Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and one of the editors of this magazine.