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Friends United Meeting |
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July 1998
News From Friends United Meeting
Three Grants Enable FUM Ministry: Medical Services, Communications, Meetinghouses
Maia Carter To Teach In Ramallah
Farewell to Graphic Artist Kathy Kline Miller
Good News Flows from East Africa Pastors' Conference
By Maurice Simiyu, General Superintendent, Elgon East Yearly Meeting
Bookstore Renovated and Rededicated
Three Grants
Enable FUM Ministry:
Medical Services, Communications, Meetinghouses
Friends Lugulu Hospital received a grant of $32,906 through Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to pay for the Lugulu Hospital ambulance. The Committee involved was excited to be able to make such a significant contribution, relieving the hospital of the major financial burden of carrying debt for the vehicle.
Tom Gates (who has served as medical doctor at Lugulu) helped to arrange for the gift, bringing documents from Lugulu and explaining the need to Friends in Philadelphia. In 1996, the hospital's ambulance was a 25-year-old Landrover that was on its last legs. It was (and the new one continues to be) the only means the hospital has to bring critically ill patients to the hospital for treatment. It is also the primary means of transporting staff and medicines to their four remote, rural dispensaries. While it is not equipped the way that ambulances are here in the U.S. (it is basically a large, rugged vehicle with cots in the back), it is a vital ingredient in the health resources that Lugulu Hospital offers the large numbers of patients it serves.
The Obadiah Brown Benevolent Fund granted FUM a total of $3,600. $1,600 was earmarked for Quaker Life-to cover the cost of international rate subscriptions to East African Friends. Six copies of Quaker Life are sent free to each member yearly meeting in East Africa. Additionally, $2,000 was provided for church reconstruction and repair efforts in Cuba.
In addition, Friends United Meeting was excited to hear that in May the
Clarence and Lilly Pickett Fund for Quaker Leadership has awarded Allyn
Dhynes and Nancy Maeder each a $1000 grant for projects related to their
service in Ramallah. Congratulations to the two FUM field staff for the
creativity of their ministry, and thanks to each of these Funds for undergirding
Friends Christian outreach.
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Maia Carter To Teach In Ramallah
Maia Carter has been appointed as FUM field staff
to teach at the Friends School in Ramallah beginning in September.
Maia Carter attended West Richmond Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, and Radnor Monthly Meeting outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is currently a member of New Garden Friends Meeting in Greensboro, N.C. She graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Math, a public state boarding school in Durham. She recently graduated summa cum laude from the University of Richmond, where she double majored in Leadership Studies and International Studies and minored in Biology, Women's Studies, and History. While in college, she was part of an AFSC youth delegation to Japan, a service trip to Honduras with Heifer Project International, and was part of the FUM workcamp in Ramallah. She was a Resident Assistant for three years, and as a Bonner Scholar tutored inner city school children and Bosnian refugees.
Although her travels convinced her that she was destined for overseas work, she did not yet know what she should do. Her experience in Ramallah last summer gave her an answer. That workcamp was different from the others, she realized, because the group in Ramallah worshipped together in addition to working together, and as a result, they were able to support each other in a more complete manner.
Maia says, "I am excited to begin teaching at the Ramallah Friends
School, for it offers me a chance to be involved in international service,
while also remaining part of the Quaker community. Although I do not yet
know what I will be teaching, I cannot wait to begin planning as I anticipate
the challenging months ahead."
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Farewell to Graphic Artist Kathy Kline Miller
Over the past three years, Quaker Life and Friends United Meeting have benefited from the services of Kathy Miller. She came to Richmond, Indiana, with her husband David and their daughters Hannah and Kinsey, as David pursued a Master of Divinity degree at Bethany Theological Seminary. David's graduation and call to serve as pastor of West Richmond Church of the Brethren in Richmond, Virginia, requires the family to move.
Kathy was the leader in redesigning
Quaker Life two years ago, in introducing our full-color covers, and our
move to disk-to-film printing.
Ben Richmond, managing editor, said, "We have been extraordinarily blessed to have had Kathy's delicate design sense and artistic ability. She brought experience and technological knowhow from previous graphics work with the Church of the Brethren and in commercial pre-press. As important has been her commitment to communicating the Good News with beauty which has graced our publications, but which we have also seen in our day-to-day work and in those occasions when Kathy led our staff worship."
Kathy said, "Due to my husband attending seminary, I took the job with Friends United Meeting with the mutual understanding that it would be a short-term experience. I never expected to develop an attachment to the people and the work of FUM. However, somewhere along the way, it happened. I've witnessed daily the dedication of your staff in prayerfully seeking to do God's work. I came to Richmond knowing very little about 'Quakers.' I leave, enriched by having known 'Friends.'"
Good News Flows from East Africa Pastors' Conference
By Maurice Simiyu, General Superintendent, Elgon East Yearly Meeting
The Pastors' Conference at Nairobi Kenya Science Teachers' College from April 11-16, 1997 was a blessing to our yearly meeting-not only a blessing, but also stopped the exodus from our churches to other churches.
Immediately after this meeting, Elgon East Yearly Meeting organized a seminar to equip the pastors locally at Mitua Quarterly Meeting. That was not enough. We organized other seminars to educate clerks and the youth who came to Longaren Monthly Meeting to learn about the same topics.
We taught the importance of worship and how pastors can lead Sunday worship, funeral services, and weddings and not forgetting catechism classes. We also taught how to conduct business on different days apart from Sunday. The lining up at the altar or the old way of seating was removed. We now have just two people to conduct worship--the programmer and the speaker of the day. Churches are now full because of the new program. Pastors for worship and clerks for business, business any other day of the week, not Sunday. Praise God. The church is now a church. It is pastoral.
People have a good time with God. This program is right from the Village Meeting to the Yearly Meeting-with praises, prayer, scripture reading, testimonies, sermon, special prayers and closure.
Worship should carry the outward look. Thus, praises, admiration and adoration. Thanks to God for servants e.g. David Phillips, Davis and others. God bless them.
Bookstore Renovated and
Rededicated
Phil Gulley, popular devotional author and contributing editor for Quaker Life, signed books at the Grand Opening of the newly renovated Quaker Hill Bookstore. "Phil took time with each person, as if they were the only person in the world," noted the delighted bookstore staff.
On Saturday, May 30, the Quaker Hill Bookstore was officially re-opened and rededicated to the ministry of nurturing people in the Christian life in Richmond, Indiana, and around the world.
Since the General Board approved the project at its meeting in February, the staff and a crew from Mangas Construction have been intensely busy moving the bookstore into temporary quarters, completely renovating the store, installing all new fixtures, moving back in and entering all the inventory into computer records. Sue Calhoun, Bookstore manager, repeatedly thanked the staff for their efforts and the Mangas Construction for the donation of their skilled labor at cost.
Friends United Meeting Clerk Wayne Carter recalled the original dedication of the central office in the Spring of 1955 and spoke about the significance of this place to many churches "and little cells of God's people around the world."
In his prayer of rededication of the Bookstore, Johan asked for God's care over the incredibly important work of Christian education in reaching people with the news of God's love in Christ.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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