Jeanne Chamberlin

By DAN SPEIRS
Assistant Managing Editor

KEARNEY - Jeanne Chamberlin volunteers to see children smile.

Chamberlin, the winner of the 2003 Freedom Award in the Religion Category, volunteers in the nursery at First United Methodist Church. She will receive the award at a banquet April 3.

She provides a wonderful service so more people can be active in their church, said Judi Sickler, who nominated Chamberlin for the award. "And she is a wonderful influence on these children with her fun songs, her bulletin boards with their prized drawings and her big hugs hello and goodbye. Jeanne really has a knack for making kids feel important and touching their little impressionable hearts."

Chamberlin said she is being honored for doing what she loves.

"I adore the younger children, the babies and the toddlers, and I taught the 4- and 5-year-old Sunday school class for many years."

She said she has worked with children since she was in fifth grade.

"I just love being connected with children. I hear a child's voice, and my ears pick up, my eyes brighten, my heart skips a beat or two or three. It just warms my heart to be with children," she said. "I just adore being with children and seeing how they develop and mature.

"Being around a child is just a jump-start. Sunday school and Sunday morning are just a jump-start for my week."

She has volunteered in the nursery for eight to 10 years. She reluctantly admits to having been involved with children in some way in the Methodist Church for more than 40 years.

"I still have children that I had way, way, way back who are now graduating from high school, who are graduating from college, who are still coming back," she said.

Chamberlin said she is in the nursery every Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to about 1 p.m. and hasn't missed a Sunday for years. She is there at least two or three evenings a week as parents attended committee meetings or other events at the church.

Evenings "re-apportion" everything. " I can have a rotten day at work, and to be with a child, I forget everything," she said.

She estimates 15 children are in the nursery on an average Sunday morning. On Ash Wednesday, she had 27 children.

Confirmation class and Sunday school students help her.

"If I don't have any help, I'm OK with that, too. ... I can pretty much change diapers, feed bottles and still watch what's going on," Chamberlin said.

The nursery is for children 5 years old and younger, but she doesn't turn anyone away. Having the nursery means parents and grandparents "can go and get something out of the church service and know that the children are well taken care of," Chamberlin said.

While in the nursery, the children sing songs or songs with actions and play games. Everything is Bible-based.

"It's a little Sunday school class in itself," Chamberlin said. But the nursery isn't tightly disciplined.

"If the children aren't quite behaving, I say 'Would Jesus want us to be like this?' At that age you kinda go with the flow, and it's to be expected.

" ... I don't expect them to be perfect," she said.

"I just go in and love every child that comes through my door and see that they are taught to share. You just show them that it's a loving environment," she said. "I just want them to have a strong Christian background to want to go to church to want to learn all about it."

Parents tell her that "kids go by the church and say: 'Jeanne's church, Jeanne's church, are we going to Jeanne's church?"

"I honestly know how Jesus felt when he said 'Let the children come to me.' I never had any children of my own, but I have had thousands of children that I have taught or had in the Sunday school or in the nursery," she said.

Chamberlin graduated from Kearney High School in 1966 and from Nebraska Wesleyen University. She has been a substitute teacher in the Kearney Public Schools, an administrative assistant, a legal assistant and since 1990, the secretary for the University of Nebraska at Kearney's department of computer science and information systems.

She said she will continue to volunteer in the church nursery "until I can't even sit any longer, until they get tired of me. They're going to have to get tired of me."

e-mail to:
dan.speirs@kearneyhub.com