CAMBRIDGE -- Every Sunday morning, Elizabeth and Klaus Amburn drive from their Connecticut home to St. Paul Parish in Harvard Square, tureens of soup in tow.

When they arrive, they put the soup in the oven to keep it warm, then host their weekly pre-Mass reading group. The Amburns are currently rereading "Meditations Before Mass" by Servant of God Romano Guardini. Klaus Amburn, who is fluent in German, is currently translating Servant of God Guardini's works into English.

On June 7, a long line formed inside Mary's Room at the Harvard Catholic Center, where parishioners gather for hospitality after Mass. The adults discussed politics and current events. The choristers of St. Paul Choir School cheered, for June 7 was their last Mass before summer vacation. Everyone wanted a bowl of soup. Klaus Amburn made two chowders, one with corn and one with fish.

"It was great," parishioner Lee Huntington Fenn said of the fish chowder.

As for the Amburns, he said, "They're fantastic. They're the sweetest people in the world, for God's sake."

Elizabeth Amburn made carrot, curry, and coconut soup. She usually makes a soup that's vegetarian and gluten-free. Since one parishioner cannot eat onions, the "three Cs" recipe was perfect for everyone.

The Amburns, both 71, are as integral to the parish kitchen as its oven. On Wednesdays during Lent and Advent, they cook for the local homeless population. They cook entire dinners, from the appetizers to the desserts, from scratch for St. Paul's OCIA classes, the same ones they took when they became Catholic in the parish. They want to make people taking the classes feel welcome. They cook for the annual St. Paul's Oktoberfest meal, and the "Gaelic and Garlic" dinner, a combined celebration of St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day each March.

"It's a big project," Klaus Amburn said. "It takes us all week to cook that food, and it's not something you can do in a day."

They make salad, lasagna with bechamel sauce, Irish stew, soda bread, and bread pudding for dessert, and enough of it all to feed 150 people.

For their service to St. Paul's, the Amburns were two of 101 people who received Cheverus Awards last year. The annual archdiocesan awards, named for Boston's first bishop, honor those who have given long-time, often unrecognized, service to the Church.

"Mr. and Mrs. Amburn have enriched our parish in many ways," Father William Kelly, pastor of St. Paul's, wrote when nominating them for the award.

He added, "They are humble, generous, welcoming, and prayerful."

The Amburns work hard, but to them, it's not a sacrifice.

"We get so much out of it, our family gets a lot out of it," Elizabeth Amburn said.

The Amburns were both born in Michigan -- Klaus Amburn in Flint and Elizabeth Amburn in Westland, perhaps the only city in the U.S. named after a shopping mall. That, she said, gives an idea of what kind of community it was. She described her childhood in the sprawling postwar suburb as pleasant but unremarkable.

"I was determined from a young age to be different than everybody else," she said.

Klaus Amburn's first exposure to Catholicism was during the summers he spent on a farm in Austria.

It was "heaven on earth," he said.

He would attend Mass at the local church and work on the farm, milking cows and literally making hay. Even handling the manure was fun for him. As a high schooler, he became deeply devoted to St. Francis despite being raised Lutheran.

"I really, really wanted to live like, be like in any way I could be like St. Francis, but I didn't quite know how," he said.

He even tried to join a monastery, only to be rejected because he wasn't Catholic. Trying to become Catholic in college, he faced many "stumbling blocks." He and Elizabeth Amburn met as undergrads but weren't particularly close. After graduating, Klaus Amburn spent four years in Nepal with the Peace Corps.

When one of his friends was killed in the mountains, Klaus Amburn joined the group searching for the body, which was eventually found at a much higher altitude. Shaken by the loss of his friend, Klaus Amburn, then 26, returned to the U.S. and reconnected with Elizabeth Amburn. The two have been married for 43 years.

"I think it was interesting that Klaus and I both talked about wanting to be good, so we really shared that goal, and everything else just fell into place," Elizabeth Amburn said.

Work took Klaus Amburn and his wife to Austria, where he taught at an international school; then to Wisconsin, where he and his wife bought a farm ("A disaster," he recalled); and finally to Providence, where husband and wife worked as schoolteachers while raising their daughters. He and his wife tended to their garden and canned its yields.

When one of the daughters came back from college, she told her parents, "When I'm at home, I feel like the world is beautiful and everything is holy and beautiful, but when I leave, I can't quite bear it."

She and her parents needed a faith community to call their own. The Amburns' daughters became Catholic first, followed by the parents.

"We were in our little bubble," Klaus Amburn recalled, adding, "But we didn't have an extended community. So what does Catholicism give me? Very frankly, an extended community. Not just a place to go, a church, but a tradition that reaches back to the beginning, to several thousand years, and has this magisterium, this long history."

He appreciates the Church's engagement with philosophical thinking.

"It's a home that reaches back in time and gives us a place to be, both with the girls and extended community," he said.

The Amburns go to Mass at St. Paul's with their daughters, who live in Boston. One of their daughters was married in the parish last summer. Their granddaughter was recently baptized there. Volunteering is a family affair.

"They come and they help us with the soup, so it's really a bonding type of experience," Elizabeth Amburn said.

Neither she nor her husband could believe they won the Cheverus Award. She said she and her husband believe "you can't serve and only be watching for what other people are seeing."

"It never really occurred to us that there could be any kind of recognition or award outside of people being happy in the church when we brought the soup," she said.

Twenty parishioners rented a bus to see the Amburns receive medals from Archbishop Richard G. Henning at the award ceremony last November.

"It was really nice," Elizabeth Amburn said.

After speaking to The Pilot, she and her husband went to do the dishes.