Profile: Myrtis Parker
Myrtis Parker serves as UMW conference president and chief cookie wrangler.
"This has been a great opportunity for our conference to join together for a common cause."
Myrtis Parker, United Methodist Women's president of the Central Texas Annual (regional) Conference and a member of St. Andrews United Methodist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, says the work and mission of UMW "can't be beat."
The true purpose of United Methodist Women is caring for women and children. "Many people don’t realize that that’s the major purpose of United Methodist Women, working to make the lives of women and children better," she says.
 "I've been in the Methodist Church since birth, even before it was United Methodist," she says. "My mom was in the Methodist Women's organization and she carried me around with her everywhere she went."
The organization has also provided Parker with an opportunity to "get to know like-minded women and establish relationships with them."
"It’s provided spiritual development for me, leadership training for me, more of an education on missions and what women’s needs are around the world."
Parker will end her four-year term as president just as her home conference hosts the biggest event of the denomination – General Conference. More than one thousand delegates from around the world will gather at the Ft. Worth Convention Center, just eight miles from her home, and make major decisions in the life of The United Methodist Church. Myrtis will be there, too, for ten days of deliberation and celebration.
“Oh yes, I’m a delegate. I was an alternate delegate last time, and I went to Pittsburgh for a little while and I saw the cookies. And I mean, if you were late you didn’t get a cookie.”
 A cookie?
Traditionally, it has fallen to the United Methodist Women's groups of the host conference to supply the denomination's largest legislative body with cookie fuel.
Cookies are baked and brought to the conference center for the 1,000 delegates and hundreds of other visitors to munch on during breaks in debates and discussion on church policy.
Laughing, Parker says, "You know this is Texas so we're called cookie wranglers down here."
The Texas Cookie Wranglers are busy rounding up 1,200 dozen cookies in time for the April 23 opening of the conference.
Even though cookie baking isn't on the official list of chores for United Methodist Women, Parker says when you need something done it is natural "to take it to an organized group of women."
 "We just have faith that these great ladies in Texas will get this done. You know, this is the biggest and the best. So we have to do it. It’s just a challenge. And I just know we can meet the challenge."
“One can view cookies as healthy depending on the ingredients, and that provides an opportunity for communion in that we join each other in breaking bread and drinking beverages as a community of God’s people. And we can all agree on it. We have the opportunity for fellowship, and I think this is good for the soul."
For Myrtis Parker, and United Methodist women in churches all across the Central Texas Conference, the ingredients they mix and put into their ovens will become more than a treat; they will become food for the soul, a sweet grace for those who deliberate, and celebrate, and contemplate the church of the future.
The following people contributed to this Profile:
Audio story by Mike Hickcox; print story by Kathy Gilbert.
UMC.org Profiles are produced by Pam Price, 615-742-5405.
Myrtis' Spiritual Gifts
- Knowledge
- Administration
- Giving
- Servanthood
- Compassion
- Exhortation
Learn more about your spiritual gifts
Myrtis' Recommended Resources
Remedial Christianity by Paul A. Laughlin and Glenna S. Jackson
Inclusion: Making Room for Grace by Eric Law
What's Love Got to Do With It? by Donna L. Franklin
The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton
Response Magazine
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