In April, Friends United Meeting organized a pastoral care trip to Friends in Palestine and Lebanon. We carried multiple stories in the enews. We reprint here the initial prayer request for guidance and protection, an account of the trip, and FUM General Secretary Kelly Kellum's prayer upon leaving.
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In these partisan and divided times, when many Americans are arguing not only about how to respond to the truth, but what truth (or Truth) even is, Friends United Meeting has been asking what it means for us to be publishers of truth in this time. The FUM staff has agreed to the following guidelines for our news stories, social media posts, and our own personal communications, whether on social media or in person.
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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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We have an improbable seven chickens in our household. They’re fascinating to watch, all the time, but I found them particularly interesting in the first few months after we let them out of the brooder and into the wild expanse of the backyard. Fluffy butts bobbed in the air as they searched for treats in the dirt, pecked at my garden, and stopped to smell the dandelions.
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I recently accepted a new Chaplain’s position at a different prison facility in the Indiana Department of Corrections from the one I currently work. The offenders at the prison where I work now were very expressive, telling me that they would miss me, but wished me well, all the same.
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“The real difficulty is that our generation has been conceiving of prayer on too low a plane. Faith is not endangered by the advance of science. It is endangered by the stagnation of religious conceptions. If religion halts at some primitive level and science marches on to new conquests of course there will be difficulty. But let us not fetter science, let us rather promote religion. We need to rise to a truer view of God and to a loftier idea of prayer.” — Rufus M. Jones, (1863-1948)
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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.
