Karyn Colombo moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, after 15 years at Princeton UMC. She had been a reporter and then a copy editor at The Courier News, and from 2000 until she left in 2004, she was a copy editor at an online business-to-business publishing firm.
Past: My years at PUMC are filled with memories of so many people who welcomed me with love and helped me grow in faith, beginning with fellowship friend Barbara Fox, Billie Eicher, and Peggy Fullman. I was involved with Staff Parish Committee, Adult Fellowship, and United Methodist Women. I was a youth counselor, and participated in ASP for three years (with John Powell, Cindy and Ed Bennett, and Lynn Bradley Sloan, among others). Those trips, the Bread & Fellowship gatherings, Sunday School classes (children in my pre-school class now have kids – when did that happen?!), retreats from north Jersey to Ocean Grove, thrift sales, bake sales, Trenton Food Kitchen, Habitat for Humanity, and pot lucks – along with, especially, meaningful worship – continue to influence me.
Every Christmas, when I hang several ornaments from various Advent Nights, I remember my years at PUMC. I have loved visits, and had hoped to see everyone this year after my last trip in 2016. Obviously, plans changed … but I know I will visit again – PUMC will always have a place in my heart.
Present: I moved to Florida to take a copy editing job at The Palm Beach Post and to be closer to my parents, who had moved here several years earlier. That job ended in 2009 amid the recession, and I decided to pursue a long-time interest in teaching. (It was an idea I had explored while still in New Jersey, and PUMC member Karen Longo-Baldwin encouraged my curiosity and helped connect me with a student who needed help with reading.) I completed a teaching certification program in 2011; I have taught Intensive Reading at Forest Hill High School in West Palm Beach for the last seven years.
How my church copes with Covid: I now attend United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches. As other congregations, we are meeting online for Sunday services and Wednesday gatherings. We now also can gather again for drive-in worship on Sundays (motto: come as you are, stay in your car), and the service is broadcast on radio. We also are holding Sunday School via Zoom on Sunday mornings.