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Friends United Meeting |
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October 2005
FUM News
Action Minutes from the FUM Triennial Sessions
FUM Welcomes Tuloi and Uganda Yearly Meetings to Full Membership
Action Minutes from the FUM Triennial Sessions
The following items were approved by the 2005 FUM Triennial Sessions:
1. Accepting the invitation from North Carolina Yearly Meeting for the 2008 Triennial to meet in North Carolina.
2. Approved as corrected the document, “Friends United Meeting Organization and Procedure, Revised According to the Actions of the 1999 Triennial and Replacing the Document known as ‘Chapter V.’”
3. Acceptance of Uganda Yearly Meeting as a full member of FUM.
4. Authority given to the FUM Trustees to work with the Board of Trustees of Ramallah Friends School to move forward in principle with the development of shops to generate
money for the schools and with the required collateral for a loan to start this project.
5. The FUM General Board approved the following officers for the 2005-2008 Triennium: Brent McKinney, clerk; Gary Farlow, assistant clerk; Kay Record Carter, recording clerk; Carol Holmes, assistant recording clerk; Jane Mung’ede, reading clerk; John Norris, treasurer; and Fred Allen, Jim Cradler and Don Garner, trustees.
6. Calls for the following executive staff were approved: Retha McCutchen, General Secretary; Colin South, Director of Global Ministries; and Paul Smith, Director of Administrative Services. (However, Retha McCutchen submitted her retirement date effective March 1, 2006.)
7. Minutes of appreciation were approved for Don Garner, outgoing treasurer; Ben Richmond, outgoing North America Ministries; Joshpat Lime Jiveti, FTC treasurer; Iowa Yearly Meeting for these Triennial sessions; and the FUM Clerks for the 2002-2005 Triennium.
Friends Theological College (FTC) is located in the highland rainforest of Western Kenya, which once stretched across the continent of Africa along the equator through Congo, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. A great deal of the forest has been cleared for farming, but a large remnant remains near Kakamega, with a small pocket of the same forest in the Kaimosi Friends mission area.
Indigenous trees are protected in Kenya, and in May, FTC students and staff planted nearly 100 indigenous seedlings on the campus in areas adjacent to the mission road.
With hopes of raising ecological awareness among students who are Friends leaders, along with others in the Kaimosi community, the plantings will increase the habitat for birds and wildlife unique to the area, including the black and white colobus monkey, the red-tailed monkey, the black and white casqued hornbill and Ross’ turaco. Indigenous trees in Kenya form a canopy about 150 feet high, and they promote ample rainfall for subsistence farmers nearby.
Among the trees planted are: Olea capensis (Elgon teak), Ficus exasperata (sandpaper tree), Albizia gumifera, Croton megalocarpus, Maosopsis emenii (mutere), Celtis africana and Prunus africana. Trees were selected and purchased at the Kakamega Environmental Education Programme (KEEP), with the advice of the center’s director, Wilberforce Okeka.
Yearly Meetings to Full Membership
A highlight of the 2005 Triennial sessions was the welcoming into full membership of Tuloi Yearly Meeting in Kenya and Uganda Yearly Meeting. John Muhanji, FUM Africa Ministries Representative, received these memberships on behalf of the absent yearly meeting representatives. The presiding clerk of Friends United Meeting, Brent McKinney, will present plaques to Tuloi Yearly Meeting and Uganda Yearly Meeting at the General Board/Africa Meeting in January 2006.