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Friends United Meeting |
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April 2002
News from Friends United Meeting
Notes from Quaker Hill Bookstore
Hello, Friends. This is the first in a series of letters to Friends everywhere to keep you abreast of what is happening here at Quaker Hill Bookstore.
Financially, the store came through pretty well during 2001. Our bottom line was a little better than break-even. We hope to keep a good balance, this year, between best prices for our customers and fair prices for the store. And it will be done with efficiency on the part of store employees.
This brings to mind the "Quaker Book Club." We can and will provide a good service to our customers by carefully:
—Mailing to friends who are currently interested in membership in the new "Quaker Book Club." We are working on a new mailing list and you can help by clipping the membership coupon on page 24 of this issue of Quaker Life. Please fill in the requested information and return the form to the store.
—Sending selections to our customers on a quarterly basis while providing 10% discount on all titles on the list. Shipping by book rate will keep customer costs down.
—A bookstore goal for 2002 is to increase sales, while keeping expenses in line. We will be effective in this goal if we can continue to fine-tune operation through thoughtful efficiency. Please send in your New Book Club coupon, call our toll free number to place an order, or look for us at our new web site, quakerhillbooks.org. We want to serve you better and often!
Sue Gongwer
Bookstore Manager
Wealth, Poverty and the Gospel
The following excerpts are from the three winning essays by Ambassadors for Christ seminar participants.
In my lifetime, sixteen years, millions have died. Of those millions I have only personally known one. Eight hundred million people are malnourished in the world today. I can't even conceive of imagining that many people. I know what pain it is to see one person hungry and disheveled. I can't bear to see one child suffer, so how can I envision one hundred people suffering or one thousand or one million? I can't see it and I can't feel it. I trust that God is there somewhere in each starving human, and in each person willing to give what they have to help another...
I thought of my family as one on the lower end of the middle class. I thought we were not particularly poor but not especially rich. Then I heard some facts, disturbing facts that made my existence, as it had been, seem presumptuous and unfair... When I heard that almost 800 million people in the world are malnourished I wished that I could give away all my food and money and possessions to people in need...
As a Quaker, I have a feeling I should be living without unnecessary products. I also think that Quakers have a commitment to help those who are in need and those who have less than us. Sometimes I don't know what I can do to help. I can do little things, but on a large scale I don't feel like I make a difference. That's why Quakerism is such an important thing for me. It helps me to know that there are other people out there with ideas and convictions similar to mine, and maybe they are working in small ways, the way I am. Maybe altogether there are thousands of us, working and hoping and praying for the same thing.
Iona Giddings
New England Yearly Meeting
I have only been on two missions trips and they have both been to Cabrini Green in Chicago, Illinois... Though it was a dangerous neighborhood, I felt pretty safe and cared for by the loving people at Cabrini Green. We worked alongside those of the community, both outside in the alley picking up trash and pulling weeds and also inside, painting. We also had some fun with them... The kids were wonderful and we bonded very quickly with them.
Cabrini Green is also a good example of the relationship between poverty and violence. Whereas I don't think that all people living in poverty are violent, I think that poverty is often the cause of violence. People become desperate for money so they often turn to violent ways of getting money, such as theft and drug dealing. Also, kids usually want to feel accepted, so they turn to gangs to feel accepted and loved...
Jesus said, "You must give what you have to the poor, then you will have treasures in heaven." One of my favorite scriptures is: "If you defend the cause of the poor and needy you'll know God better and all will go well with you." (Jeremiah 22:15-16)
Jessica Thornburg
Western Yearly Meeting
The message throughout the Bible is to give everything up and follow God. This, of course, includes wealth and possessions. I personally, have always been well fed, well protected, and well dressed. I do not know what it is like to go without material possessions and certainly not necessities. However, I am told that eight hundred million people are malnourished which eventually ends in death (UNICEF, World Health Organization). This fact astonishes me! How can Christians allow such tragedies to occur?
In Matthew 10:23 and 25, Jesus said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" and "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" I believe Jesus is saying that riches can distract us or keep us away from God. Early Quakers believed this same principle. They lived simply, getting rid of unnecessary objects. Sometimes riches distract us from serving God because we forget what is truly important in life. I often get too caught up in the latest fashions and technology, and I hope these seminars will open my eyes to the world around me, and what truly is important in life.
Erin Moran
North Carolina Yearly Meeting
Lorton Heusel, Former FUM General Secretary, Dies
Lorton Heusel, 75, died December 4, 2001, in San Bernardino, California. A Quaker pastor for more than 40 years, Lorton was also General Secretary of Friends United Meeting from 1967 to 1978. He began his ministry in 1949 at Sugar Plain Friends Meeting near Thorntown, Indiana and also served Vermillion Grove, Illionis, Chicago Monthly Meeting, Wilmington Friends, Ohio, and Indianapolis First Friends as pastor.
Lorton was born on May 19, 1926, to Maude and Henry Heusel in Clay County, Nebraska. Lorton was raised in a hard-working and deeply religious farm family that abhorred the thought of war and the use of violence as a method of conflict resolution. Those values were the roots of Lorton's later resistance to military service.
Lorton graduated from Shelton (Neb.) High School in 1944. After farming for three years, he went to Earlham College, where he was introduced to the ways of the Society of Friends. He also met and fell in love with a young woman from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Joyce Ginzel, and they were married on June 3, 1950.
Lorton graduated from Earlham in 1953 and earned a degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1957. He and Joyce adopted six children—Lowell Kim, David Timothy, Jill Annette Russell, Julie Irene Kappes, Kristin Jo Ann Snider and Jennifer Ann.
His tenure at Friends United Meeting often took Lorton to many national and international destinations. While Lorton preferred remaining closer to home, he dutifully fulfilled the missions with which he had been entrusted. One extended trip in the early 1970s took him away from home for many weeks on a route that completely encircled the globe. He made stops in the Middle East, Africa, Australia and India among others.
Lorton, Joyce, and their three youngest children journeyed to Kansas and Nebraska in 1977. On July 5, a car-truck collision at a rural Nebraska intersection claimed Joyc'Ős life. Lorton was also injured and hospitalized for a short time, while Jennifer was critically injured but recovered.
As he approached retirement, Lorton wondered what his life would be like once his days of regular pastoral ministry were over. God provided an answer in 1989 when He sent another gift to Lorton in the form of Magaline Hoops, who had been a missionary in Africa for 30 years with the Church of God. First Friends was filled to the brim when Lorton and Magaline exchanged vows in a traditional Quaker wedding in March 1990. Together they spent more than three years in Uganda mission work.
Still not ready to sit back and put his feet up, Lorton accepted a call in 1996 to serve as interim pastor at First Friends Meeting in Whittier, California. He and Magaline found the Southern California climate to their liking and settled there after a permanent pastor was found at Whittier.
Along with Magaline, Lorton is survived by all six of his children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He also is survived by two brothers, William and Logan; and one sister, Marilyn Eberspacher. A brother, Gerald, preceded him in death.
Ponce Brothers Update, Belize
By Florence Peery
I just returned from Belize and would like to update the article about the Ponce brothers in the December 2001 issue of Quaker Life.
Mike and Kay Cain decided for economic and emotional reasons (two teenage boys eat a lot and, even if they are polite, change the dynamics of a home considerably) they could not keep the Ponce boys another year in their home. Their mother was then faced with deciding whether to transfer the boys to Belmopan to attend high school, move to Belize City so they could continue their schooling there, or have them move to Belmopan and then ride the bus 35 miles each way to go to high school in Belize City. She has a good job in Belmopan and was not sure she could get a comparable one in Belize City.
The boys did not want to transfer high schools, so they are now daily riding the bus 35 miles each way in order to pursue their schooling. It is not an easy thing to do and they are to be commended for their efforts. It is expensive even with student fares on the public system and their mother's income is small.
Friends Boy's School (FBS) continues to provide scholarship help for them at their respective schools. The Cains pick up their report cards, attend the parent functions and, in general, continue to encourage the boys. One or the other usually stops by FBS several times a week for encouragement. The Ponces use the FBS computers to get information for school projects and in many ways continue to benefit from the care and concern the Cains give them.
2002 Friends United Meeting Triennial Post-Conference Tours
Registration for the 2002 Friends United Meeting Triennial sessions in Nairobi, Kenya, is in full swing. Details of the post-conference tours being offered following the Triennial sessions are:
Tour 1—KAIMOSI-LUGULU-NAKURU July 15-19, corrected price $400
Monday: leave Nairobi for Kaimosi. Stay at Kakamega Golf Hotel. Tuesday
and Wednesday: visit Kaimosi Sites. Thursday: visit Lugulu, drive to Nakuru
game park with overnight at Lake Nakuru Lodge. Friday: return to Nairobi.
Tour 2—NAKURU-SAMBURU-KAIMOSI-LUGULU July 15-21, $625
Monday: leave Nairobi for overnight at Nakuru Tuesday and Wednesday: Samburu
Mission Thursday: Samburu mission and return drive to Nakuru Friday and
Saturday: Kaimosi with overnight at Kakamega Golf Hotel Sunday: drive
to Lugulu and return to Nairobi
Tour 3—LODWAR-LUGULU-KAIMOSI July 15-21, $630
Monday: charter flight to Lodwar using Mission Aviation Fellowship Tuesday
and Wednesday: Turkana Friends Mission Thursday: charter flight to Eldoret,
drive to Lugulu and overnight at Kakamega Golf Hotel Friday and Saturday:
Kaimosi Sunday: return to Nairobi
Tour 4—ROAD SAFARI: NAIROBI-NAKURU-MARA July 15-18, $455
Monday: Drive via the Great Rift Valley escarpment, afternoon game drive
in Lake Nakuru National Park, a sanctuary for the rhino. Overnight at
Lake Nakuru Lodge. Tuesday and Wednesday: Masai Mara—the land of
vast migrating herds—Buffalo, Black Rhino, Hippopotamus, Leopard,
Cheetah, Common Zebra, Coke's Hartebeest, White Bearded Gnu, Oribi, Warthog,
and Thompson's and Grant's Gazelles. Overnight at Mara Voyager Lodge.
Thursday: return to Nairobi.
Munch for Miles
Friends United Meeting is now collecting Advantage Miles coupons for help with missions work. These coupons for American Airlines Advantage Miles are on specially marked boxes of Kellogg's cereals. For every five coupons collected, five hundred frequent flyer miles are awarded. Kellogg's and American Airlines have extended their joint mileage promotion until November, 2002.
Eligible products are: All-Bran, All-Bran Bran Buds, All-Bran Extra Fiber, Complete Wheat Bran Flakes, Complete Oat Bran Flakes, Just Right, Mini-Wheats Raisin, Kellogg's Healthy Choice Low Fat Granola with and without Raisins, Healthy Choice Toasted Brown Sugar Squares, Healthy Choice Almond Raisin Crunch, Strawberry, Apple Cinnamon and Blueberry Cracklin Oat Bran, Product 19, Muselix Raisin and Almond Crunch, Nutri-Grain bars, Eggo Waffles and Pop Tarts Pastry Swirls. Please send blank coupons to FUM, 101 Quaker Hill Drive, Richmond, IN 47374.
The Quaker Hill Bookstore website is up and running! Check it out at...
Copyright (c) 2002 Friends United Meeting
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