Working in New York

It has been an exciting two months! I got to work for the Mission Personnel Office of the Episcopal Church, helping them prepare for and put on the two-week orientation course for new missionaries.

It was exciting to commute into Grand Central Station every morning, navigating the teeming crowds. I loved noticing the way the Chrysler Building makes a shadow on the mirrored surface of the UN building in the early mornings of spring, as I walked to 815 Second Ave, the Episcopal Church Center. I got to walk in Central Park, explore Time Square, and visit the Metropolitan Museum. But most enjoyable of all, was staying with my friends the Copley’s, being welcomed into their home and family, learning how to rock climb and kayak, going to church, discussing mission work, and on one occasion, attempting to help with math homework.

Working at the Church Center was challenging and interesting. I loved the team spirit of the Mission Personnel Office, and the chance to get to know David, Douglas, Yanick, Michelle, and Rebecca a little better. Getting to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes made me even more appreciative of all that they do for the missionaries in the field! We are in good hands.

The Mission Orientation I attended in 2006 was a life-changing event for me. Everything was covered, from the theology of mission in the Episcopal Church, to what medical supplies to bring with you. But most important was the community of support that developed amongst the missionaries. So I was very excited to be involved in another Mission Orientation. Getting to watch and participate in that community building was wonderful. It is an exhausting, action packed two weeks, with lectures, skits, games, enactments, worship, bible study, celebration, and pilgrimage. Each one of the new missionaries brings their own passion, skills, and desire to serve. I can’t wait to get their updates, and hear about all of their transforming experiences. You can learn more about them, and see their blogs by going to: www.episcopalchurch.org/missionworks

As part of the Mission Orientation, we took the group to the “Everyone Everywhere” mission conference in Baltimore (which will be held every three years). There were more than 400 people there, involved in mission work all over the world. It was great to get new perspectives, and make connections. I got to present a workshop on tropical agriculture, and handed out nearly 100 copies of the handbook on tropical agriculture, which I wrote for missionaries (if you’d like an electronic copy of this handbook, just email me, I will try to also post it on this blog).

I returned to California just in time for my mom’s ordination, and my god daughter’s baptism. It has been an eventful two months!

Hope

Hope is such an illusive thing. When I think of the terrible weight of suffering in the world, when I think of the world wide shortage of food, when I think of all the obstacles that Liberia has to overcome just to maintain it’s fragile peace, when I think of the horror that is war anywhere and it’s aftermath… hope seems so feeble and far away. And yet the presence of hope is our only hope!

Since returning from Liberia I have felt the weight of these things pressing down on my very soul. It is only in recognizing and feeling this profound sadness for the world, that I am able to also experience the profound joy of finding hope alive in the midst of all this.

This summer hope has come to me in many forms, and I want to share some of that hope with you. I have been on two different short-term mission projects with youth and young adults through the Sierra Service Project. One trip was our diocesan youth mission trip to Nevada for a week, where we worked and lived on the Walker River Piute Reservation, repairing houses, and learning something about community, service, and spiritual journeying. As the week progressed, I worried that the youth were somehow missing the experience by being caught up in their caffeine cravings and boredom and heat exhaustion. Finally on the last day I realized that the experience had happened without me doing anything to push it. That community and spiritual growth and commitment to service happened in the midst of caffeine cravings and boredom and heat exhaustion. So many times I feel like I have to move the Spirit, I forget that all I have to do is show up and look. The Spirit was there, in all of it, and that gave me hope!

I just got back from my second mission trip this summer. I went to Honduras for two weeks with a group of young adults. We built (most of) two brick houses for impoverished families in Danli. The days were long, and the work felt back breaking. It is difficult to see hope when you have sore muscles and are surrounded by insatiable need. But I saw hope in the young people in our group. They are very much members of their popular culture and times, and yet they also were willing to sacrifice, to sleep on the floor, to go without running water, to work harder than they had ever worked, and to commit their remaining energy to building relationships with local people and learning about the struggle that is life in Honduras today.

I have found hope in other places this summer too. In Tegucigalpa our group visited an organization that takes in street children. We spent a couple hours there, and it seemed to me that hope was singing out of every wall, every bouncing ball, every footstep, every laugh. The door of this facility struck me as a sacred gate: its very existence gives me hope for the world. There is a door in Tegucigalpa, and any young person who approaches it day or night, will find it open, and behind it is a world of hope, sanctuary, and love. They will find there the Love of God, incarnate, and if they choose they will be transformed by it.

I have found that the reflections Bishop Mary has written to our diocese about her time at Lambeth Conference are full of hope, hope for our diocese, hope for the Anglican Communion, and hope for humanity as we struggle to live in a global community, a global communion, bringing our different truths to the same table.

There is a door in Tegucigalpa, there is a table in Canterbury Cathedral, there are young people stepping out in service, and there is you and me. Flawed as we are, we show up, we come to the door, we come to the table, we step out of our comfort zones, and the Spirit will do the rest.

Peace and Hope,
Robin
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Bishop Mary’s Reflections: http://www.stlukesatascadero.org/bishop.htm

Casa Alianza (A home for street children in Tegucigalpa, New York, LA, Canada, and Guatamala): http://www.casa-alianza.org/en/news.php

Sierra Service Project (youth mission trips to Native American Reservations, urban LA, and Honduras): http://www.sierraserviceproject.org/

Update and Reflection from El Salvador

Dear Friends,
It has been 9 months now since I returned from Liberia, how the time flies! I want to thank you all again for your support. I have compiled a 30 page report of my work in Liberia which I have delivered to each of my 9 sponsoring parishes. If you would like a copy, I can email you one.

I have been keeping busy, helping coordinate a new mission network for our diocese, finding paying work here and there, and getting ready for some short-term mission work this summer. Right now I'm working at the Episcopal Church Center in New York for six weeks, helping out with the mission orientation course for new missionaries, and staying with my good friends the Copleys. In June, I'll be presenting a workshop on Tropical Agriculture at the mission conference of the Episcopal Church, called "Everyone Everywhere 2008".

I am in the process of discerning a new mission placement, which will most likely be somewhere in Africa, beginning January of 2009. I will let you know as soon as I know where I will be going! I have begun fundraising for my mission fund again (details below), to support the two short term mission trips I will be going on this summer, leading youth to fix up houses on a Native American Reservation in Nevada and to build houses in Honduras (see blog entry below). The work that I do is not my work. It is made possible every step of the way by the financial support, emotional support, and spiritual support of those who choose to journey with me. It is our work.

I got back a few weeks ago from a trip to El Salvador. I was there visiting my sisters, who are both missionaries in El Salvador now. Amy is a priest with a church and a school, Audrey does youth leadership development through agriculture, and Amy's husband Vince has a music ministry with the diocese, and coordinates mission groups who are visiting. I was there for only 10 days, but had a wonderful time. I got to see a lot of the country that I had never seen before. And I got to do a little agriculture work of my own. I talked with an agricultural engineer about the importance of the Moringa tree, and advised him on the Moringa project he has started. I also gave a workshop with a group of women who make up an agricultural work group, on the use of Moringa. (Moringa is a tree that can be used to treat malnutrition. The leaves have protein, vitamins, minerals, and kill parasites).

I also got the chance to go to some of the pilgrimage sites in El Salvador I had not been to before. The most difficult and moving experience by far was our visit to El Mozote, the site of what is considered the worst massacre in modern Latin America. More than 1,000 unarmed men women and children were rounded up on December 11, 1981, they were separated, and all the girls age 12 and older and all the women were raped, the men were tortured, and then all of them were murdered. The youngest victim was only 3 days old. Only one woman in the whole town survived. The government soldiers who planned and implemented the massacre were armed with ammunitions provided by the U.S. and trained at the U.S. Government sponsored school "The School of the Americas" in Georgia (which is still in operation under the name "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"). The U.S. Government claimed that reports of this massacre were propaganda, and refused to send personnel to investigate. It wasn't until 1990, when human rights groups began a project to exhume the mass graves, that the truth of this massacre was finally recognized.

We arrived in El Mozote, expecting to find a ghost town, but El Mozote is alive again. The family members of the dead, who had fled to Honduras before the massacre, had returned to rebuild. Bomb craters still litter the fields, and there are still houses that are in ruins, but there are also new houses and fresh coats of paint. There is a monument to the dead, which has the names of those whose bodies were positively identified. We were given a personal tour by a local resident. She spent a couple hours with us, showing us the places where these things took place, and telling us the story. The church, where the children had been locked up and murdered, had been burned down afterward. But the people of El Mozote built a new church. I have never seen such a church. Covering its walls are vibrant, dancing, joyful colors: colors of triumph. On one side there is a mural of the history and culture of the town. The other side of the church is dedicated to the children. It has an incredible mosaic, with children dancing and playing with suns and balloons and flowers and stars. Along the bottom of the church are the names and ages of all the children. And all around there was a garden. In the moment I saw it, it was the most beautiful garden in all the world: flowers of all different colors, roses, and benches and paths, all beautifully, lovingly tended. I wanted to sit in that garden forever. It was not joy that I felt there, for how can you feel joy when our world contains such evil. The beauty of El Mozote is in those who live, and what they have chosen to do with their grief. They have poured love over these gaping wounds. Wounds where loved ones were violently ripped away from them. They have poured love over broken, burned, and bloodstained ruins. And over mass graves they have planted gardens of love. The violence, the pain, the loss, the evil of it all cannot be washed away. But Love somehow has conquered it.

We live in a world that seems to be teetering on the edge of destruction. We are daily bombarded with the reality of increased food and fuel prices around the world, with news of conflicts, riots, disasters, and wars. And it seems that everywhere we look in the world there is injustice, oppression, hunger, and fear. Who will deliver us?

Love. It all comes down to Love. Love doesn't wash away the pain and evil of it all, but somehow Love can conquer even this.

Upcoming Mission Trips

This summer I am going on two short term mission trips with youth. The first trip is to Nevada for our Diocesan youth mission trip of the summer. We will be joining other groups of youth and chaperones from the western US at Walker River Reservation near Fallon, Nevada. The program is run by a group called the Sierra Service Project. My first mission experience ever was as a chaperone on an SSP mission trip to Nevada in 2005! (Photo above) I had such a wonderful time, working with the youth, meeting the local people, and learning a little something about their heritage. And I got totally hooked on mission! So I am excited to go back, this time with a large group from around the Diocese, and with our Bishop, to help people fix up their houses, to learn about their lives, and to help youth with processing their first experience of mission. Our trip begins June 29, and ends July 5.

The second trip is a two week trip to Honduras, and is also run by the Sierra Service Project. I will be the only chaperone for this trip, but will be meeting up with two project coordinators once we get to Honduras. I am excited about this trip because the schedule includes more than just building houses. We will be working with local people, and meeting with local youth. We will also be visiting cultural centers and museums to learn about the history and people of Honduras. The youth and young adults on this trip all have some prior mission experience, but I look forward to accompanying them through what may be their first international experience. For more information you can go to the SSP Honduras project webpage: http://sierraserviceproject.org/honduras_info.htm The dates are July 14-28.

I need to raise a total of $2,440 to cover the cost of both of these trips. The cost of the program includes travel and building materials on site. If you are interested in contributing to my mission fund, which will be used to fund these projects as well as my future long term mission assignment, please see the "Financial Support" in the side bar for donation information.

Thank you for your prayers and support!

U2charist Sermon

I had the great pleasure of preaching at two U2charists in the last two weeks, one in Darien Connecticut, and one in Arroyo Grande, California. A U2charist is a service to bennefit the Millennium Development Goals, and it uses U2 music throughout the service. Both services were amazing. The energy and enthusiasm was unparalleled in my church experience!

Below is my sermon from Darien, using these readings: Isaiah 58:6-9a, 1John 3:16-18, Matthew 25:31, 34-40

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My name is Robin Denney, I am from California, and I was a member of the Episcopal Young Adult Service Corps last year. I served as an agriculture instructor at a rural college in Liberia, West Africa, for one year. I very happy to have the opportunity to be here with you today.

We are gathered here today to join in the struggle against extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is something that we see in commercials on TV: dirty children with flies in their eyes. On the news we see people with their faces contorted with suffering. Sometimes our hearts are moved, but the commercial changes, and we move on with our lives.

I want to take you on a journey with me right now. I want to take you to Liberia for a few minutes. Liberia is a difficult place. Their civil war ended in 2003, and claimed the lives of 10% of the population. Poverty in Liberia is widespread, with more than 80% unemployment. The war destroyed so much, everything.

My students at the university were studying agriculture. They saw improving agriculture as the way forward for their country, and their passion and dedication inspired me. They wore western clothes, and the ones who could afford it drank beer in the evenings, sometimes to excess. Some of them cheated on their homework. They would sit around and argue with their friends about student politics and current events. In many ways they are like college students anywhere. But every single one of them, at some point in the last 15 years had a gun pointed at their head. Every one of them saw someone they cared about, murdered, and everyone one of them was forced to laugh as they watched atrocities.

My students wanted to get out into the communities and practice the development work they were learning about. So we started a community tree-planting project. We established 10 different orchards of Moringa trees, a tree that can be used to treat mal-nutrition, and my students did all of the promotion, and education with the communities. It was wonderful to get the chance to be out in the communities. The villages in Liberia are comprised of mud buildings with thatched roofs, with the occasional corrugated metal roof. The background is the tropical forests of Liberia. The women in the village spend much of their time cooking for the family. They also do a good portion of the farm work. The men work in agriculture unless they can find some other work. The children do chores like carrying the water, and helping with the cooking, but when they are not working, they are running around together. They build things, instead of using Leggos, they use garbage, and make cars that actually roll. They laugh and scream and chase each other. And if they can find a ball, they will play soccer until they fall down with exhaustion.

My students and I planted one of our Moringa orchards at a local orphanage. When we arrived with the trees, the children saw us a quarter of a mile away, and they ran down the hill, and across the rice patties to help us carry the trees. The girls were cradling the trees in their arms, and some of the boys were balancing them on their heads. I heard one girl say, “this is my tree, I’m going to water it every day.” And one of the boys said, “We’ll be eating it, and climbing it!” We showed the kids how to dig the holes and plant the trees, and pretty soon there was dirt flying everywhere, and kids running around laughing and squealing. These are real children.

One in five of these real children will die before reaching the age of five. And of the girls who survive, one in six of them will die in childbirth.

Suffering and death are things that, in our culture, we don’t expect to happen, and we are consumed by the fear that these things will happen to us. But in places like Liberia, they understand that everyone suffers and everyone dies. But they live their lives anyway, and focus on the things that matter most: relationships, caring for people, laughter, singing, dancing, and praising God.

We have so much to learn from the people of Liberia. We have so much to gain from entering into relationship with people who see life differently then we do. It’s not about feeling guilty, it’s not about having pity, it’s about opening ourselves to the experience, offering ourselves up in action. And it’s not about the outcome of our actions. The outcome of life is death. But everyone knows that it’s not your death that’s the most important thing, it’s how you live you life in between.

God’s call to us is clear in the readings we heard today:
“To loose the bonds of injustice… to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house.” [Isaiah 58:6-7]
From the Gospel—to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick and in prison. And the reading from 1stJohn “Let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” [1John 3:18]

Why is God calling us to do all of these things? Is it because God messed up, and we’re supposed to fix it? Let’s look back at the reading from 1stJohn. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” We do these things, because it is in the doing, and the trying, that the love of God abides within us. and that we become part of God’s redeeming love in the world. This is an epic journey that God is calling you to: a journey of extreme action. And God is calling you just as you are, right here, right now. This is dangerous work. It will open your eyes to the suffering of the world, and once the eyes of your heart are opened, they will never be closed again. The enormity of the despair of the world is so great, it feels as though we will drown in it. But it is only in being with that despair, that we can come to understand true joy: the joy that God’s love can redeem even this!

I invite you to take your service bulletin home with you tonight, and spend some time with these readings. Listen to where God is calling you in your life.

We are gathered here tonight to celebrate the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals are about action. In 2000, at the largest gathering of world leaders in history, they unanimously approved the Millennium Development Goals. 189 countries said, we are humanity, and we stand united. We believe that every human being deserves a life free from poverty, injustice, and oppression. We are the world, and we have the power to change the world, through partnership and action. These goals that they agreed on are for us, the modern translation of Jesus’ call to action. And they are this: To eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development.

We each are called, as surely as Mother Teresa was called into the gutters of Calcutta, to pick up the dying and care for them. God is calling us to offer up our broken selves, just as we are. Not some day when we have our lives together, and we are prepared. Right now, just as we are tonight. Sometimes we feel like God couldn’t possibly be calling us, God only calls people who have it together, and aren’t afraid. Let me tell you, I have never been as afraid as I was on that plane to Liberia. I was sure that I had made a terrible mistake, that God couldn’t possibly be calling me after all. Throughout my year in Liberia, I was messing up, doubting God, depressed, loosing my faith, and failing at every turn. But now I see that it was through moving beyond fear that my life, my heart, my self was transformed.

God is calling you beyond your fears to be transformed by Love…and action.

What's up Next!

This year I am preparing for several exciting short-term mission trips including: Honduras to lead a youth group building houses, El Salvador to visit my sisters, brother-in-law and nephew who are missionaries there and to work on a tree project, and Nevada to lead a youth group repairing houses.

I am also preparing for another year long mission trip, which I hope to leave on late this year. I do not yet have an assignment finalized, but I will be going as a member of the Young Adult Service Corps of the Episcopal Church.

My assignment will be in agriculture. I am passionate about how improving subsistance agriculture and making it more locally sustainable has a huge impact on communities. Improved production leads to better nutrition, money for education and health care, and perhaps most importantly: hope. I want to work with community members, children, and orphans, and plant demonstration gardens.

If you are interested in joining with me on this journey as a pray sponsor, or donor, please send me an email! ( redenney99 at yahoo.com) I need to raise a total of $12,000 to fund all of these projects.

If you are interested in supporting me financially, please send a check to:
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Memo: "Missionary Fund"
PO Box 1168
Atascadero, CA 93423
(in order for the donation to be tax deductible, the check must be filled out in this way)

I will be preaching at a U2charist in Arroyo Grande, CA at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on Sunday April 6 at 5pm. U2charist is a church service with U2 music, used to educate people about the Millennium Development Goals, and to raise money to support these goals.

Convention Address

The suffering in Liberia is not unlike suffering in other places of the world. Jesus calls us out into the world, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison. We are called to be a people of action, people who go out and meet the needs of the suffering.

But it’s not just about what we get done or the outcome, it’s about relationship. It’s about allowing the people we call the “least of these” into our hearts, and being willing to be let into their hearts. And then we realize that we aren’t different after all. We are the same beloved children of a loving God.

I wasn’t sure what stories to share with you from a year’s worth of experiences. But after the Bishop Elect’s sermon yesterday, I want to talk to you about my own faith crisis. I signed up to be an Episcopal missionary because I was feeling unfulfilled in the work I was doing. I thought that somehow in becoming a missionary I would be zapped with extra special faith. That I would feel the presence of God with me all the time, and all I had to do was show up.

It didn’t take me long to realize that that wasn’t how it was going to work. And in the face of the corruption, hopelessness, and the evil that had come from the Civil War, my picture of God just wasn’t big enough to hold it all. I stopped going to church… I was a missionary who didn’t go to church. And I stopped praying. I would lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, defiantly daring God to show up. And all I felt was emptiness. I became depressed. I felt as though I had mistaken my calling. I felt unfulfilled just as I had felt in my jobs in the states. And I would have given up, if it wasn’t for all of you. You supported me financially and with prayer, and read my emails. I couldn’t bear to let you down, and I wanted to be the person you believed me to be.

A friend of mine emailed me some advice at that point. It was, “I know all you feel like is lying around, but that just makes it worse, you’ve got to get out and see where it is things are going right, where your passions are.” I didn’t want to listen to her, but the other way wasn’t working. I thought about it for some time, and realized that there were a lot of things that I loved about my life in Liberia.

I was an instructor teaching agriculture at a college, and I loved my students. I so valued the relationships and the respect that had grown between us. Their enthusiasm for learning was exciting to me. And I realized that even though I was completely unprepared to be a college lecturer (I hadn’t even known that that would be what I was doing), somehow the resources always showed up. Whether it was a book or a website or a good idea, it was always enough. And I finally saw that God was there.

I also loved the time I spent with my friends. We would visit each other’s houses in the evening or go to the local bar and watch the sunset under the palm trees, and we would talk for hours at a time, because that was all there was to do. And as we talked about it, the frustrating things of the day became funny. And God was there too.

I was able to go visit some villages near the university, and I so enjoyed talking to the women, and hearing their struggles, and what their lives were really like. And I could see God in them too.

I was surprised to realize how much of my life I was passionate about, but I didn’t know how to change things so that I could focus on the things I loved best. And then something happened to shake everything up. Some of the students staged a violent protest, and school was shut down for a month. Fellow teachers and I fled from our houses and from campus, on foot, a few miles away where we sought refuge with a friend for a couple nights. The violence only lasted a couple days, and the president of the country herself came to reconcile the two sides to each other. But what I realized was that while I was afraid, what I was most afraid of was being sent home. So with the month that we were out of school, I started to focus more of the things I loved best.

I ended up spending more time in a village called Melekie. I got to know the women’s group there, and they were remarkable. Melekie is a village of about 2,000 people which had no access to safe drinking water. One of the curses of poverty is that it can rob people of the belief that they can do anything to help themselves, but these women were different. With no resources, they had built a school building out of mud and sticks to serve as the facility for a skills training institute, because they believed that through skills the women would be able to lift themselves out of poverty and feed their children. But they had no money to buy the beginning supplies. We worked together on grant proposals, and they figured out how to make their program sustainable and prepared budgets. We were able to build the first latrine in Melekie, we got two wells drilled, and two more repaired, and we got the money they needed to start skills training in four areas. We accomplished a lot. But what was most important to me was the relationships. The women knew that this money wasn’t coming from some faceless benevolent source in the sky. It was coming from people who had heard their story, and were touched by it. People who cared about them, and wanted to help. And I was there on your behalf. And they were so excited, and they send their greatest thanks.

Another project I started working on was with my students. I had taught them about a tree whose leaves are essentially like a multi-vitamin, and it can be used to treat malnutrition and many diseases. The students were very excited about this tree, and they were passionate about development, but hadn’t gotten a chance to work on it. So we started a simple project, where the only cost was the seed. The students designed it. They chose ten communities near the school to plant pilot orchards, and then did 15 satellite orchards. They did all the work to engage and excite the communities, educate them on the uses and care of the trees, and assist with the actual labor. I got to go along and mostly stand aside and watch them shine. I was blown away. The same students I could barely get to do their homework the semester before, now they were dedicating their time and resources to volunteer. I was so inspired by them.

The last thing I did differently is I got more involved in the class I was teaching. I only had four students that semester, and I wasn’t taking it as seriously as I could. We were working on designing a cattle project, which is something I was supposed to have been working on all along. We would go out to the site, which was thick with jungle brush, and we cleared a path around the outside wielding machetes side by side, so that we could make a map and design the facilities. They taught me how to swing a machete, and I taught them how to use a protractor. And besides talking about business plans and improving livestock production, we talked about their dreams, their frustrations, the terror that they had experienced during the war. And we didn’t solve anything. But I for one felt completely different. I called them my boys, even though they were older than me. And they called me their fearless leader, even though I fainted the first time I used the machete. And we formed relationships that made it all worthwhile.

Not much had changed in terms of the circumstances between the first semester and the second semester, the same frustrations still existed, and yet everything had changed for me, because my attitude had changed. Finally I had opened myself. My expectations were not met, but the Spirit was there all the same, waiting for me to say yes.

Mission work will change your life. We are all called to mission work, out of our comfort zones, into the dark and scary places of our lives and of the world. Because it is in the dark and scary places that we finally are able to see that candle that Jesus lit in our hearts. It is in only in the very valley of the shadow of death, where everything else that distracts us falls away, and we realize that small flickering weak flame is the most important thing of all.

We are broken people living in a broken world. But how could there be miracles if we weren’t. God uses us, flawed as we are. Missionaries don’t have some extra special faith, we are just as broken as everybody else, but we said yes anyway.
What will you say “Yes” to? What will our Diocese say “Yes” to? The Bishop Elect said yesterday that we are working on building foundations, by listening and by acting. I hope that our Millennium Development Task Force will be part of that process, and that it will serve as a catalyst for each congregation to begin the process of discerning where they are called in mission, and where we are called as a Diocese. Because we are called to love and to go. To love God and each other, and to go out into the world and be the face and hands and heart of Christ in the world.

And to quote the Bishop Elect again, “Don’t call me Lord, and then not do what I say.” We are called out of fear into great joy.

I leave you with a quote from a song we sang yesterday, “Be not afraid, I go before you always, come, follow me.”