Old Picture Leads To Time Capsule Find

    What once was lost, has now been found.
   Members of the Calvary Chapel of the Lakes congregation in Umatilla put on their archeology hats on Wednesday, June 22, to find a time capsule that had been buried back when the church was still known as the First United Methodist Church of Umatilla. The time capsule had been buried on August 16, 1992, and was originally scheduled to be opened one hundred years later.
   But it had been forgotten until a member of the Collins family, Leslie Oaks discovered the capsule’s burial ceremony in an old church publication. She made contact with a member of the current church, and it wasn’t long before the search was on to find the buried history.
   Working from a picture of the original burial, a group of about ten volunteers took to the shovels last Wednesday afternoon. Nothing here, a root there, a random piece of concrete. It was over half an hour of searching before the screwdriver probe struck the right spot, a large slab of concrete that covered the burial site, about eight inches below ground.
   From there, it was just a few minutes of digging to reveal the large, PVC cylinder that was encased in a terra cotta tube. The sealed cylinder was taken into the church sanctuary, where it was opened by Steve Berry.
   Even though the time capsule appeared to be well sealed, its contents had suffered various levels of water damage.
   But much of the capsule's contents were able to be identified, including a large, three-inch wide phone book from the days before cell phones, a Betamax tape, a hymnal, a Methodist Book of Discipline, a Bible, paperwork from church expansion in the 1950s and 1980s, a 'Life' magazine, as well as newspaper clippings concerning the church's activities.
   Also included was a letter from then church pastor Charlie Peck, written to whoever opened the capsule. As an aside, Oaks was actually able to find Peck on the phone Wednesday, with the former minister offering insight about the capsule.