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Section of the Americas
October 5, 2013
In This Issue
QYP: impact for decades
Report from Executive Committe
Which consultation will you go to next year?
Do you have IRA income?
Quick Links
Greetings!

Maps are reassuring: by shrinking things to a manageable size, they make sense of our known world and convince us the unknown world is within reach.  I feel that way when I look at our map of Finding Quakers Around the World.   

 

FWCC is charged with mapping the Quaker universe, and we can't do it without Friends like you as our local guides.  Visit fwccdirectory.org and check your meeting or church's listing: is it accurate?  Do you know a meeting or church that was recently created or laid down?  When you make an update via your meeting's listing on the website, it goes to me for processing, so I'm waiting to hear from you!

 

Currently our online directory covers meetings and churches in the US and Canada, but we keep records for all Quaker worship communities in the Americas.  As the Quaker body responsible for connecting all these Friends, we're in the best position to keep all this information up-to-date.  Imagine what we could create with your support: an online, searchable directory that includes Latin America and the Caribbean? A redesigned website with an updated map interface?  Please make a donation today towards connecting Friends and putting the unknown world within reach.

                                 
Evan_sig
Evan F. Draper
Administrative Assistant

 

 

Quaker youth pilgrimage: creating decades-long impact

For more than 50 years young Friends, fresh from the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage experience, have returned home to their yearly meetings enthusiastic about continuing to deepen and strengthen their Quaker faith.

 

Terron Dodd, the year of the first QYP 

Canadian YM's Terron K. Dodd was a youth when the call went out for applicants for the first pilgrimage that would be held in 1959. He was selected:"We made 100 gallons or more of apple juice to be sold to raise money," he told us recently. 

 

"One thing that made an impression on me," he continued, "was the continuity in England. To go to a town where I had read of George Fox speaking to a crowd from atop a gravestone in a churchyard, and not only see that very churchyard, but also the farmers selling produce from their pickup trucks on the same day of the week they sold it from their wagons in George Fox's time.  Or to have the window of the room in Lancaster Castle pointed out where early Friends were imprisoned, but not be allowed to visit it, because it was still a prison."

    

Terron Dodd today 

The lasting impact? "I returned from this trip with a knowledge that the things I had read in George Fox's Journal were true, that a person really can get guidance from God.  Thus the experience has affected my whole life, and my approach to many problems and decisions."  Read more of Terron's reflection here.  

 

We can only imagine what next year's participants will reflect on in the years to come. What will they learn from their pilgrimage experience in Bolivia and Peru?  

 

A gift to the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage fund will help make it possible for a diverse collection of young Friends from the Americas to be part of next year's program, and for impact for decades to come.  

Governing board meets to evaluate FWCC's work 
The Executive Committee of the Section of the Americas met in Portland, Oregon to review and evaluate progress on our work plan, as well as governance and financial management issues. They received the official request for affiliation from the New Association of Friends, recently separated from Indiana YM. They began a process of long range planning for the Section of the Americas in preparation for the next Section Meeting, to be held in 2015.

 

The presiding clerk of the Section and of the Executive Committee is Jane Snyder from North Pacific Yearly Meeting. Other members are Jim Anderson, Pacific; Noah Baker-Merrill, New England; Kenya Casanova Sales, Cuba; Eduardo Diaz, Southeastern; Mike Hinshaw, Lake Erie; Kelly Kellum, North Carolina (FUM); Jehu Lopez, Honduras; Gayle Matson, North Pacific; Ann Stever, North Pacific; Margaret Stoltzfus, Iowa (FUM). Sheila Bach, Baltimore YM, recently resigned from the EC but continues to serve on our personnel resource group. 

Which consultation will you go to next year?

You have a choice: Sacramento, California; High Point, North Carolina; San Ignacio, El Salvador; or La Paz, Bolivia. All four conferences will focus on similar themes and topics, under the overarching theme "Let the Living Water Flow!" They will all begin on a Friday evening and end on Sunday after worship.    


Here is a little more logistical information for you to begin to plan.  We encourage you to register early, as places are limited. Registration is planned to begin by the end of this month.  Check our website often.

February 21-23, 2014 at the Quintas de Compostela, San Ignacio, Chalatenango, El Salvador.  Two speakers have been confirmed to date. Esteban Ajnota from the National Evangelical Friends Church of Bolivia will speak to the topics of Friends leadership in the 21st century and bi-vocational ministry.  Robin Mohr, Executive Secretary, will lead a workshop on intercultural communication skills.  It is anticipated that most of the participants will be from Central America, but additional spaces have been reserved for Friends coming from outside the region.  Sessions will be conducted in Spanish. 

March 14-16, 2014 hosted by Friends Community Church Sacramento, California. The planning committee is comprised of members from three yearly meetings who meet regularly to address logistics, hospitality and childcare.  Workshops will include:
  • conflict transformation, led by a team of Friends from New York Yearly Meeting
  • intercultural communication skills 
  • Quaker leadership in the 21st century 
  • a service project will be offered as one of the workshop options   
 A local hotel and a hostel have been reserved for overnight hospitality.

March 28-30, 2014 in La Paz, Bolivia, at the Aranjuez Nazarene camp
. Esteban Ajnota from Santa Cruz, Bolivia will lead some of the workshops along with speakers from outside the country.  Workshops will be similar to those in El Salvador, with a special focus on the past, present and future of Quakerism.

April 11-13, 2014 at High Point Friends Meeting in High Point, North Carolina.  With workshops and speakers similar to the Sacramento consultation, the High Point event will be the final of the four consultations. Local arrangements are currently under way and we will share many more details as they become known.

Keep checking our website for new information on speakers, logistics and registration.
Do you have IRA income and want to make a tax-free gift?
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 extended the IRA charitable rollover through 2013, allowing persons over the age of 70 1/2 to use these assets to make a charitable contribution to 501 (c)3 organizations. FWCC has welcomed similar gifts from Friends in past years, and invites you to consider making a gift to Friends World Committee this year. To do so, simply:
  1. Consult with your IRA plan administrator for instructions on how to make a charitable rollover gift
  2. Decide how much you would like to give.  IRS regulations allow gifts of up to $100,000 to be made, tax-free
  3. Let us know.  

For questions, contact us.