c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Sister Elias Freeman is an unlikely scavenger. But scavenger she is, her habit billowing in the chill of a January breeze, glasses glinting in the light, as she cajoles bigger and richer churches to give up their old bits of holy things so that those bits can find resurrection in other churches from Newark to Nigeria.

On their way to new life, those items _ candlesticks and choir robes, incense holders and crucifixes _ pass through her hands and her house in Mountainside, N.J., hold a jumble of shelves and cabinets and drawers loaded with catalogued items, including linens with tags noting dimension and condition. Her garage holds choir robes.

Freeman, an Episcopal nun, started her work in 1994, when a priest from Nigeria was visiting Trinity Church in Woodbridge, of which she is a member.

“As he described his own ministry, it turned out that he had been making do with virtually nothing _ one old shabby vestment,” she said of the ceremonial clothing worn by priests, ministers and choirs during services.

So she did something. She called priests and churches and sisters and friends and asked for the retired items.

“They came up with enough for three or four churches, and we sent Father back to Nigeria with extra suitcases,” Freeman said.

Then, she didn’t stop.

She found that an Episcopal religious order had founded a similar nondenominational exchange, but that it was inactive. She asked whether she could continue the work and keep the name, and The Vestment Exchange moved to her home.

“It’s the kind of ministry that comes out of your soul,” said Brother James E. Teets, a member of the Brotherhood of St. Gregory, the order that created the exchange in the late 1970s. “Some people like to play cards. Other people like to work with old vestments.”

Freeman has built on the work of Brother John Nidecker and then Brother Christian Williams, who ran the exchange for 15 years before he retired, Teets said.

“When we came into contact with Sister Elias, it was a gift. It was a godsend, because the work could go on.

“Everybody could see that there was an international need, but nobody had the space, and to spend the time! To dedicate yourself to doing this, it could overwhelm you,” Teets said.

“She is better than we were at it,” he added. “She gets the word out even broader than we did.”

Freeman scours the Internet for inventory and has a Web page (use your favorite search engine to find “vestment exchange”), and sends mail missives when she can afford the postage. In 1997, she pinched her pennies and took herself to the Episcopal General Convention in Philadelphia, where she snagged rectors and asked outright for contributions while distributing literature.

If you didn’t understand by now, this is a mission, not a business. The right clients _ and that would be churches or synagogues or temples, not people _ get the stuff for free.

Elizabeth Geitz discovered when she became interim vicar at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Dunellen, N.J., that there was no white altar set for funerals, or even a funeral pall to cover a casket. The Vestment Exchange came to the rescue.

“It was just wonderful,” said Geitz, whose Tennessee roots still slip into her voice after living in New Jersey more than 20 years. “The entire altar guild went over there and we went through everything, and the women picked out what they wanted.”

Now, they are finishing alterations on a frontal, a piece of fabric that goes on the front of the altar, adding ribbons to its white brocade.

St. Francis Episcopal is a mission church, but it’s not the only one in need.

“There are a lot of inner city parishes that were once prosperous, but the population shifted,” Freeman said. “Now they have huge churches that they’re barely able to keep open, and no money to replace things that wear out.”

For example, she says, there’s the purificator, a little piece of linen about the size of a napkin used to clean the chalice _ in a catalog, it may cost $25.

To complicate matters, very few churches have members who know how to make the vestments, or repair them when they’re damaged.

That’s why a priest from Barbados was shopping for a floor-length white robe the other day. Freeman couldn’t help him, but now it’s on her ever-growing list of needs that is topped by two items: the thurible (the ball on four chains that holds burning incense) and the monstrance (a sunburst on a pedestal that holds a communion host for exposition during a special church service).

“I almost never get thuribles and monstrances, but I’m willing to bet that within the Roman Catholic readership … there’s 50 of them lying around, unused, in sacristies, back closets, attics and basements and they may never be used,” she said.

She has 22 churches on the monstrance waiting list, but in the last year or so was able to mark one off, delivering it to Father Douglas Freer, rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Rahway, N.J., just a few minutes before he began a Lent service using a borrowed-for-the-night piece.

And if you get a yen for one of these things to decorate your den? Not a chance.

“Some people have wanted these things for Halloween costumes,” she said, horror touching her lullaby of a voice.

Her current emergency, between running the soup kitchen at her church, is helping those churches in Honduras, many of which were destroyed by Hurricane Mitch. The corners of her house are cluttered with opened boxes, their contents rifled for items that could go to help those ravaged churches. Some of those boxes are from St. Francis Episcopal _ after that church received, it found plenty to give.

But delivery is no easy feat, either; Freeman scrounged up a ride for the vestments by learning there might be some room in a cargo container leaving for the stricken area sometime in February.

Freeman tracked down the particulars.

“I heard from her through the Internet,” said the Rev. Jack Stanton, rector of St. Matthew Episcopal Church of Paramus, who agreed to fit those vestments into a container leaving his church parking lot on Feb. 13.

Still, her garage is packed high. She has two cubic yards more, ready for the ride, when she can find one.

DEA END COOK