Students make their morning devotions in front of Berhane Yesus Elementary School.

Last month we heard a stirring report from Peggy Hill and Trudy McFerrin on their recent mission trip to Ethiopia. Their experience confirmed the impact of our church's support for PCUSA missionaries Michael and Rachel Weller and for the church there, the Western Wollega Bethel Synod of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus.

Since 2005 our church has focused particularly on the Berhane Yesus Elementary School in Dembi Dollo. BYES serves more than 600 children, providing a nurturing Christian environment in which they can learn and grow. Their students regularly achieve the highest scores in the region on the national standardized tests. This learning provides hope for a generation of Ethiopian children whose prospects are otherwise blighted by poverty and national strife.

Our Session has authorized a special campaign this month to raise funds for the daily operation of the Berhane Yesus Elementary School. We can fund an entire year of school-books, supplies, and teacher salaries-for $18,705, or just $87 a day. Every commitment, large or small, will demonstrate our connection to our sisters and brothers in Ethiopia and help children to learn about God's love.

Look for a letter soon that provides more information as well as a response card. Please consider prayerfully and generously the needs of our younger sisters and brothers in Ethiopia.

This Sunday, March 11, is the final registration date for our annual Women's Retreat, to be held at Blowing Rock Conference Center in the North Carolina mountains. Join the women of FPC next weekend, March 16-18, for Bible-based sharing and exploring led by your faithful sisters in Christ. We will have group discussions as well as quiet time, contemplation as well as outings. There will be time for fellowship and for shopping, hiking, or napping.

Flyers and registration forms can be found throughout the church, and scholarship assistance is available. We hope you will join us!

Presbyterian Women will gather Tuesday, March 13. As usual, circle will begin at 11:00 a.m., and Bible study will follow at 11:30, with lunch afterwards. Please make your lunch reservations with the church office, 423-746-7176. We look forward to seeing you!

Steve Fey continues his firsthand report on the new hymnal this Wednesday evening, following the Fellowship Dinner. Come learn more about the process of developing the new hymnal and the reasoning behind it. Steve is giving us a closer look at some of the content, and we're singing some of the hymns. Last Wednesday was both fun and informative, and this Wednesday will cap it off. Be there!

Fellowship Dinner

Menu

Ham

Potato Salad

Baked Beans

Dessert

Volunteers

Morning: Emily Hyder

Server/Cleanup: David & Sherry Worley

Spring is almost here, and it's time to enjoy the bright colors of flowers in the church courtyard. Please consider donating or planting annuals in the courtyard in April. We're looking for red, white, and purple around the cross and any array of colors along the outer edge of the lawn. For more information, contact Tom Daniel at 423-764-7677.

Our first Sharing Christ volunteer opportunity in 2012 is coming up on Saturday, March 31. We are looking for volunteers to make bag lunches, do food prep, serve dinner, and clean up. We will make chicken casserole, marinated coleslaw, green beans, and dessert for 135 to 150 people. We will begin at 4:30 p.m. and work until we've finished cleaning up, around 7:00 p.m.

This year, FPC takes on the responsibility of providing enough sandwich bread and snack cakes for at least 70 bag lunches on each of our service dates. We will also provide the bread or rolls for that Saturday's evening meal. If you would like to donate bread products or volunteer your time, please email Tammy Connolly at lconn4691@btes.tv or call her at 968-3831 (home) or 276-628-7213 (work).

FPC's next two Sharing Christ service dates are September 15 and November 24 (Thanksgiving weekend). The Sharing Christ Mission is located at Sixth and State Streets, Bristol, TN. Local organizations participating in the mission take turns providing a hot, nutritious, free meal each Saturday evening to any in need, as well as the opportunity to worship on Sunday morning.

Our participation in the Fairmount Elementary School snack program continues to make a difference in the lives of children whose parents cannot afford to buy them an afternoon snack. Members of our congregation are now being asked to help the Neighborhood Initiatives Steering Committee stock up on vanilla wafers for these students.

Please bring your donated boxes of vanilla wafers in the Little Red House in the Fellowship Hallway. The committee will take them to the school, and the teachers will divide them into snack portions as needed.

Your loving contribution gives a boost in both energy and dignity to children from low-income families by allowing them to enjoy snacks with their classmates. Say a prayer of blessing as you send them on their way!

Have you ever attended a newsworthy event and later heard the story on television or read about it in the newspaper and felt that the reporter got it all wrong? Judging from the "Letters to the Editor" columns in our newspapers, this seems to be a fairly frequent occurrence. And that's the argument in Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion, a new book that we are reviewing this week. It consists of nine essays written by a diverse group-editors, reporters, university professors, policy analysts, and others. Terry Mattingly, who writes for the Bristol Herald-Courier, is one. Another is Roberta Green Ahmanson, recently a speaker at King College in the Frederick Buechner series.

Their argument is that often the news media don't get stories about religion right. One basic problem is that journalists simply have a poor knowledge of American religious history and contemporary issues. Mattingly quotes one reporter who confessed: "I don't know the difference between evangelical and charismatic, ...I know little about the "born again" experience, ... I've never listened to a religious radio program or attended a church supper. ... I attend Catholic Mass most Sundays, but in my life as a citizen I am a thorough secularist. ... My blind spots blot out half of America. And that makes me less of a citizen, and less of a journalist." Another reporter writing for The New York Times thought that President George W. Bush had made a verbal gaffe when he referred to the taking of the log out of one's own eye before removing the speck in the eye of his neighbor. Neither the reporter nor his editor at the Times recognized that Bush's statement was a reference to Jesus' remark in the Sermon on the Mount.

One can overlook a personal blunder, but it becomes an extremely serious matter, given the high importance and sensitivity of religion in both national and global issues in recent years. Decades ago the American people paid little attention to the religious affiliation of a presidential candidate; today it gets close scrutiny. The First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom have often been before the courts, and they are matters of sharp controversy among the American public. Theological controversies within denominations become headline news. And on a worldwide scale issues such as the nature of Islam and whether it is a threat to American security are all matters of such high importance that the American people must have accurate and timely information with balanced critical commentary. Shoddy and ill-informed journalism about religion is not a matter than can be tolerated these days.

The nine essays in this book deal with contemporary questions that have arisen recently: the misreporting of affairs in Iran and Iraq, evaluating the role of religion in recent presidential elections, an understanding of the papacy and Roman Catholicism. Mattingly and Ahmanson sum the matter up in two concluding essays, "Getting Religion in the Newsroom" and "Getting It Right." You'll find these essays refreshing and enlightening, and it will sharpen your sensitivities for the necessity of "getting it right."