An intense week and Indiana winter!

It is a sunny, quiet Sunday afternoon, and time for an update on our Sabbatical news here in
Elkhart. The six pastor's here on Sabbatical (the others are all from Canada) were all honored by a tea held for them with seminary faculty and staff on Tuesday.

Thursday was a big day for me, when I presented some of my thoughts about rural community to a forum for the seminary community during a noon luncheon at the Lambright Center, where lunches are served every day. I was disappointed that a major snowfall the night before kept my brother Maynard from coming down from Bangor to hear my presentation. (We plan to go visit he and his wife in a week or so.) During this forum, I shared my vision for rural, local, sustainable communities of faith as being the setting in which humans can best fulfill God's intention for particpating with God in the unfolding of creation and history. I put my "thesis" in pretty provocative language, claiming that the primary mission of the whole church should be the formation and revitalization of rural, sustainable communities. Predictably, that thesis was perceived to be quite controversial here in this setting where most people think of mission primarily in terms of the city. But that was the reason for my being as provocative as possible, so that I would get useful feedback on my "thesis", which I think I did. (See picture above, left.)

Now I'm "done" with my formal "duties" here at seminary. I anticipate spending more time reading and researching my "thesis" here at the seminary, and visiting with several professors. Actually, this next week will be a "transitional week" in our stay here, being Pastor's Week, when some 150-200 pastors from across North American will gather here from Monday through Thursday. Loretta and I will be participating in most of the Pastor's Week activities.

I continued my weekly "spiritual retreat" day on Friday. This time Loretta and I went to Camp Friedenswald, the Central District Conference camp just north of Elkhart in Michigan. It was quite a bitter cold day, and had snowed 4-6 inches the day before, but it was sunny, and gorgeous with the fresh fallen snow in the "peaceful woods" (Friedenswald). I made my place for reading and journaling in "The Meeting Place" (pictured above), and still spent one or two hours on the camp trails throughout the day. I observed a gorgeous sunrise through the trees and across an open field with a farm beyond.

I did cut my retreat day short by an hour so that Loretta and I could attend a presentation in Goshen by two women who had been on a CPT delegation to Israel/Palestine last November, both women in their 70's. It was good to hear about their experiences. We also received a large packet from CPT this week about our March delegation, including the other ten or so participants. So we are busily reading that and trying to get to anxious and scared about the next stages of our four month sojourn!

Today we went to Eighth Street Church where Herb Fretz pastored after leaving the South Church and where several Freemanites worship, including Geraldine and Bob Peters. They actually invited us to join them and others from their SS class for dinner!

There is lots more I could say, but this is enough for an update. Roy