Story Details - Halftime

120 HALFTIME
ERNA PENNER
If you’re like me,
you want a life of
significance – not just
at midlife, but you
want to finish well.
At age 84, Erna
Penner is not exactly
at Halftime, but she
sure inspired me
when I first met her in
Calgary, Canada.
In fact, her story moved me to tears. So I want to share it
with you as we wrap up this book.
Her life is what I want my life to look like at age 84.
Erna’s life-story is riveting, but what grabbed my heart most
is that she is excited about the future – about the women and
kids she is serving today. To fully appreciate where she is and
where she’s going, however, you need to know where she’s been.
She was born in 1923 in Ukraine near the Black Sea. Think
about it – that was in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution
and during a time of brutal Soviet rule that left millions in
THE SECOND HALF 121

Ukraine dead or starving. Her father died
when she was three-months-old, and her
mother carried out his plan to bring the
family to Canada. Finding themselves in a
strange country with a strange language,
the family battled poverty. And while her
two brothers and two sisters married and
started families, Erna stayed home and
cared for their ailing mother.
When her mother died, Erna, by then
33, enrolled at a university and eventually
earned three degrees in education. She
taught and served as a principal in Calgary
schools until retiring when she turned 65.
That’s when she really got going.
“Don’t ever retire,” she says with a
twinkle in her eyes, “it’s too busy. I wake
up at five o’clock, do all the morning rou-
122 HALFTIME
tines, have an early breakfast and dig into
my days.”
Among other things, Erna’s days include
organizing efforts to help the poor in
Ukraine and speaking to and mentoring
women around her home in Calgary.
“You know, your heart gets so full when
you can give,” Erna says. “And not until you’re
knee deep can you really experience the
joy of giving. … When you invest in people
and look outside your pleasures and your
interests – and that doesn’t mean to annihilate
them – but you know, you get revived
totally.”
When she retired from the school
system, however, Erna wasn’t sure what
she’d do with her remaining years.
“I got my retirement package, and I
was totally at loose ends,” she says. “So
now what? I have a lot of built in energy.
That’s a gift. So what do I do? I had no
family; I never married.”
Then one day she got an e-mail from
Lloyd Cenaiko, a successful real estate
developer who fell in love with Ukraine
while on a trip to trace his family roots. In
the mid-1990s, Lloyd founded HART, a
nonprofit that supports missions and
relief efforts in Ukraine and other parts of
Eastern Europe. He wondered if Erna
could round up some folks to knit some
hats and mittens for poor kids there. As often
happens, her second-half calling started
out small and grew to serve thousands of
kids in Eastern Europe while engaging
scores of others in service.
“ When you invest in
people and look outside
your pleasures and your
interests – and that
doesn’t mean to annihilate
them – but you know,
you get revived totally.”
THE SECOND HALF 123

124 HALFTIME
Perhaps her core strength
is her ability to get other
people to think “beyond
themselves.”
I wish you could see Erna’s eyes as
she talks about sending loads of small
running shoes (with the little lights that
shine when you walk) for those children
– it is priceless. Today she’s an honorary
grandmother to more children than you
can shake a stick at – like she said, “God has
given me a family like you won’t believe.”
Using the stories of those poor children,
she teaches a unit on Ukraine to elementary
students at schools in Calgary, inspiring the
next generation to care. Those efforts usually
end with a donation drive that yields
boxes of shoes, toys and other supplies
that are shipped overseas by HART. She
also speaks regularly, teaching everything
from gardening to practical living skills to
coping with singleness. People often stop
at her yard to comment on her flowers. So
now she teaches gardening to groups of
women and uses it as a platform to encourage
and mentor them. The seed that
Erna planted in my mind (no pun intended)
is to look for ways to combine things you
love doing that also could serve others.
“My calendar looks like a dog’s breakfast,”
she says with a laugh.
Perhaps her core strength is her ability
to get other people to think “beyond
themselves.” When she speaks to single
women, for instance, she reminds them
that their identities aren’t in their “singleness”
but in being children of a living God. “He
had a purpose for me, and He has a purpose
for you,” she tells them. “Let’s find it.
If God sends a companion across your path,
great! And if not, life doesn’t stop there.”
She inspires groups of women who
meet just to socialize to integrate a greater
purpose to their time. “Find a purpose
outside even your homes or your immediate
family, focus on the broader world and let
God open the doors,” she says. “God opened
so many doors for me I don’t know which
one to walk through first.”
Erna no longer struggles with “loose
ends.”
“So that’s my life,” she says. “You say,
‘Where is your reward?’ I tell you, it comes
back to me with all the people, my family
of God.”
Now that’s a life-long journey from
sacrifice to success to significance – what
an inspiration! HT
For additional information and helpful Web links related
to Erna’s journey from success to significance, visit
www.halftime.org/thesecondhalf and click on her name.
THE SECOND HALF 125