Voices of EPUMC: Jake and Donna Meyer

Jake and Donna Meyer aren’t afraid of a little hard work. Both grew up on farms and learned from an early age how to roll up their sleeves and dig in. 

“On the farm you can’t just run to town and get something to fix something, says Donna. “You’re too busy. You do with what you have, you work with what you can, and you get it done.” 

That can-do attitude, cultivated since childhood in western Nebraska (Donna) and Ault, Colorado (Jake) has turned out to be a blessing for Estes Park United Methodist Church. The Meyers jokingly refer to themselves as “church mice,” parishioners who work behind-the-scenes to keep the grass mowed, the weeds pulled and the toilets running, among other thankless tasks 

Jake and Donna have done all those things and more. “The steps coming up to the parking lot, they were wobbly,” says Donna. They’re rock solid now.” That’s because the Meyers shored them up with a little help from Home Depot. They also fixed the splintery banisters for those steps, topping them with Trex, the popular wood alternative. 

They once answered an emergency call from a bridge club meeting at the church when the men’s toilet stopped working. They had just arrived home after hours spent weeding the church grounds. “We told them to jiggle the handle,” Donna recalls. When that didn’t work they consulted YouTube videos to figure it out. They found the needed parts at Ace Hardware, drove the six miles back to church and fixed it. No plumbers needed. Just like on the farm.

Jake: “You feel a sense of accomplishment.”

Donna: “And when you figure out how to do something that most people would go to a professional to do, it’s a challenge but it’s also a joy.”

It’s not uncommon for the Meyers to finish each other’s sentences like that, responding to questions with a rapid-fire back and forth, sort of like verbal ping pong. It’s clear they are a true team. The couple has been married since 1966 after meeting in Greeley. Their work lives took them all over the country and beyond. First Florida, then Missouri and then…in an unlikely move…to Panama. Jake accepted an offer from the U.S. Army to work a civilian job in computer systems there. They laugh when they look back on how little they knew about the country before moving there.

“Remember, this was before you could google countries,” says Jake. “You couldn’t really find much out about it.” Naively they thought it might be like the country they’d most recently visited. “We thought, well, we just came back from Mexico and enjoyed it,” he says in a trademark deadpan. So they moved to Panama. After working for the army for a year Jake then took a job doing similar work for the Panama Canal Company. Donna worked as an x-ray tech and later taught swimming. (the latter paid more!)

Jake says living in the Canal Zone sheltered them from the worst of Panama’s poverty, but dire conditions were “almost next door.” They saw many Panamanians living in shanties, he says, just trying to eke out a living day to day. When the Meyers moved back to the U.S. in 1984 they had gained new appreciation for the country they’d left 12 years before. “It made us so thankful for what we had back home,” says Jake. 

The couple then lived and worked in the Denver area until Jakes’s retirement in 1997. Now they spend the summers in the vacation cabin they bought back in 1980, located in the Big Thompson Canyon just outside Estes. They spend the winters in a small town a half hour north of Corpus Christi, Texas. They belong to a United Methodist church there too.

“We were church mice there too until the pandemic,” says Jake. Many church members at their Texas church, however, weren’t fond of masking. “It’s Texas,” Jake says. “'Nuf said.” So, the Meyers stayed home during the pandemic and zoomed the services at EPUMC. 

Neither Jake nor Donna grew up in the United Methodist Church but say they were attracted to the church’s motto “Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds. “I thought if this was a group of people who really practice what they preach that’s something I would want to belong to,” Donna says. Of course, the church hasn’t always lived up to that motto but the Meyers believe it’s getting closer. “Basically Jesus said love God with everything you have and love your neighbor,” says Jake. “My goodness. That takes care of it right there.”

“I still have a major problem with love your enemies,” Donna adds with a wry smile.  

Jake and Donna also usher and greet and help in the church kitchen when needed, along with serving on EPUMC’s Congregational Care Committee. “We go overboard in the summer because we’re not here in the winter,” Donna says.

They’ve been at EPUMC long enough to have been led by four pastors, including Pastor Ann. Their enthusiasm for her and Ann’s wife Agnes is clear and they both say they feel a true sense of belonging and love at the church. “You know, not having children, this kind of becomes your family,” says Jake.  

When asked where they consider home, Jake quickly answers. “Home is here,” he says. “That’s because he’s a Colorado boy,” Donna interjects. “I’m home even if we’re in our motor home.” In other words, wherever they’re together.