Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)

The daily ritual begins again. I pick up my stack of mail and begin to sort it into two piles: a stuff-to-read pile and a larger junk pile. I’m always amazed by the promises offered in the stuff I label junk: “Important,” Timely,” and even “Life Changing.” Somewhere in my training I learned to ignore such promises. The senders of junk mail don’t know me apart from my name on some demographic list. They might pretend to show interest in me specifically, but they really only want me to join their program or buy their product. Of course I will ignore these promises, despite the senders’ claims to want to help me.

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Download or read the May 2007 GO! newsletter here (in PDF format)

Articles in this issue are:

• Missionary Kids Come to My Community – Bernabe Yujra
• Life at Amacari, Bolivia

Our new boards have each developed detailed ministry plans for 2008. Their plans include goals, action steps, staff needs, and budget. To give NWYM an idea of where we’re headed, we’ve condensed these down to simple lists of immediate goals. This summary, along with a budget summary and the staff implications have been sent to the Representatives at each church so churches and Areas can discuss them prior to Yearly Meeting sessions.

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I’d like to be the first to welcome you to the updated NWFriends.org!

I’ve put together a page that will help familiarize you with some of the functionality of the new website. You will find that page in the Resources section, or by clicking on this link.

Enjoy!

Jason Schwanz
Board of Communications

Current cultural conventions of “political correctness” make us cautious about singling out gender characteristics. An acrostic poem found in Proverbs 31 (verses 10-31) used to be read every Mothers’ Day, to the dismay of some women present who considered it too gushy–like flowers for the one with the most children– and, well, paternalistic. Of course, self-effacing persons of both genders find praise a bit hard to swallow, although the rest of us seem to sop it up rather smoothly!

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