Roy Winter is on a trip to Puerto Rico this week to assess needs following Hurricane Maria and to meet with Church of the Brethren leaders in Puerto Rico District. Winter is associate executive director of Global Mission and Service and Brethren Disaster Ministries.
Global Mission and Service invites participants to join a workcamp organized by Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria). Workcamp dates, including travel to and from Nigeria, are Jan. 5-22, 2018.
Among other business accomplished by Northern Indiana District at its district conference this year was the affirmation of the resolution “We Reaffirm that Racism is a Sin Against God and Our Neighbors.” The conversation was characterized by a unified desire to express the pain felt by the gathered body on the heels of the protests and counter-protests witnessed in Charlottesville, Va., and in other places around this country.
Children’s Disaster Services (CDS) has deployed a specially trained team of Critical Response Childcare volunteers to Las Vegas, Nev., following the mass shooting there. The team was requested by the American Red Cross, and are serving in a Family Assistance Center, reported CDS associate director Kathleen Fry-Miller.
HURRICANE UPDATE
1) Children’s Disaster Services prepositions team in Florida, in advance of Irma
2) Brethren Disaster Ministries monitoring hurricane situation in US and Caribbean
3) Material Resources ships relief to Texas, seeks urgently needed donations of clean-up buckets
4) How best to help: Advice from Brethren Disaster Ministries
ACTION ALERT
5) Office of Public Witness Action Alert on DACA
The following release from the World Council of Churches (WCC) notes an unprecedented honor for a member of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria). Rebecca Dali, founder of the Center for Compassion, Empowerment, and Peace Initiatives (CCEPI), has received the 2017 Humanitarian Award from the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation at a ceremony at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Many Brethren across the country have been involved in prayer gatherings, prayer walks, vigils, and other gatherings responding to the events in Charlottesville, Va., while others have helped issue a variety of statements. Here is a sampling.
“It was extremely grim and sobering to be face-to-face with such hatred and racism–and more so because of what seemed almost an inevitability about the clash between white supremacists and others,” said Kim McDowell, pastor of University Park Brethren and Baptist Church in Hyattsville, Md. She was one of the clergy who provided a presence in Charlottesville, Va., during the white supremacist rally on Saturday. She was not aware of other Church of the Brethren clergy who may have been present.
Samuel K. Sarpiya, moderator of the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference, has shared this reflection in response to the weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Va. This is the first in a series of reflections on the 2018 Conference theme, “Living Parables”:
While we rightly call attention to the awful atrocities of Boko Haram in Nigeria, we often overlook the other great tragedy of trafficking in girls and women from Nigeria. The Central Mediterranean Route report show that nearly 80 percent of Nigerian girls and women, between the ages of 13-24, arriving in Europe are victims of sex trafficking.
