For years, FUM has collaborated with USAID staff to oversee grants through the ASHA (American Schools and Hospitals Abroad) Program. Both the Lugulu Friends Mission Hospital and Ramallah Friends School have benefited from this program. Currently, FUM has received a $1.4 million grant to construct an assembly hall on the lower campus of Ramallah Friends School. Construction was underway when, on 28 January 2025, we were notified that our grant is suspended for 90 days pending review. We have been working to comply with the terms of the suspension. . . Friends Lugulu Mission Hospital is another program deeply impacted by this suspension of American foreign aid...Our Comprehensive Care Clinic (CCC), supported by Catholic Charities through U.S. foreign aid, employs twenty-three dedicated staff members who provide life-saving medical services and counseling to patients diagnosed with HIV and tuberculosis. The clinic also runs essential programs to mitigate malaria in the region. The enforcement of the executive order required us to cease all clinic activities and dismiss our clinic staff.
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FUM’s Friends Church Peace Team held an Alternatives to Violence Project workshop on Mt. Elgon on December 20–21, 2024. FCPT has been using AVP in Kenya for nearly fifteen years. An AVP basic workshop takes two to three full days, and explores the five pillars of AVP: affirmation, communication, co-operation, community building, and transforming power. AVP workshops build on everyday experiences and try to help us move away from violent or abusive behavior by developing other ways of dealing with conflicts.
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From January 7–15, seventeen “Living Letters”—Friends from Wilmington, New England, Baltimore, and Indiana Yearly Meetings, as well as Friends Church of North Carolina and North Valley Friends Church—visited Friends in Cuba Yearly Meeting, staying at the Wilmington Centre of Puerto Padre Friends and making day trips to other Monthly Meetings. ... In May, the batteries meant to be carried to Cuba by the January Living Letters trip finally arrived.
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A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, “Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains,’Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!'”
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When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. – John 13:12-17
Read MoreLeonita Mugofwa will be presenting the evening service, entitled “Joyfully Believing,” at the USFWI/QMI 45th Triennial Conference this July. In anticipation, Minga Claggett-Borne sent us this story about Leonita’s work that she wrote several years ago. She interviewed Leonita in 2012.—ed.
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Throughout our history, the people known as Friends (or Quakers) keep rediscovering an essential and enduring truth: There is one who speaks to our most basic needs and most significant hopes—Christ Jesus the Lord. Both individually and communally, we are learning to know and follow the Voice that guides us in the way we should go. Together, we seek to understand and obey that truth which sets us free. As a people, we share in the experience of that powerful life which makes all things new. Maybe you are searching for an authentic and transforming faith and community to call home—if so, come in and join us as we seek to know and follow Christ.
Friends United Meeting commits itself to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved, and obeyed as Teacher and Lord.
