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The Joint Triennial of Friends United Meeting, Quaker Men International, and the United Society of Friends Women International is an important time of fellowship, worship, and discernment across our global family of Friends. The Triennial Planning Executive Committee met on August 26, 2025, to consider several important developments regarding the planning of the 2026 Triennial. It is with heavy hearts that we share the decision to suspend plans for the in-person Joint Triennial gathering originally scheduled for July 6–11, 2026. This difficult decision was reached after much prayerful discernment. Several factors contributed to the decision, the most significant being that U.S. immigration officials have denied visas to the majority of our international members who had applied to attend. Without the full participation of Friends from across our global fellowship, the essence of our Triennial—an event grounded in fellowship, worship, and discernment across cultures—would be diminished.
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Meet Esther Makokha, a resilient 55-year-old mother of five and grandmother of four from Kivikiyi village in Webuye Sub-County, Bungoma County, Kenya. A widow, an orphan, and the fifth born in a family of ten children, Esther’s life is a moving testimony of endurance, faith, and grace. Esther lost her husband, the late Jonah Masinde Walucho, in 2002, when she was only thirty-two years old. Jonah’s sudden death changed her life significantly. She was left to raise their five children alone after being abandoned by her in-laws, who came and took away everything she and her husband worked for and owned. The journey was far from easy, but Esther pressed on, driven by love for her children and her unwavering trust in God.
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The Mt. Elgon region of Kenya, situated at the Kenya-Uganda border, has faced decades of hardship from tribal clashes and militia violence between 2006–2008 that left many families displaced, traumatized, widowed, and economically devastated. Many of these affected households rely on low-income activities to make ends meet, so that even affording basic things like sanitary pads for menstruation is considered a luxury. Girls in Mt. Elgon miss up to five days of school each month due to the lack of sanitary pads. This has led many girls to drop out of school, and enter early marriages, which shifts the financial responsibility of providing for them from their mother to their spouse. Other girls who cannot support themselves are exposed to sexual exploitation.
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John 15:1-4 (NIV)15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. When I read about pruning it reminds me of a time when my grandfather would send us to his coffee farm to help him prune the coffee bushes. In preparation, would sharpen the pruning saw and the pruning shears and head to the farm...
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“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15: 7 ESV) My father depended on a small-scale farm he owned to provide for his family. As a child, I saw how he struggled to plough, plant, tend and harvest his maize crop amidst constantly changing weather patterns. Each year, he trusted in God to get just the right kind of harvest to feed and clothe his family, keep his five children in school and sustain his calling as a Quaker pastor. Every evening before we read scriptures and prayed, Dad impressed on us to trust in God and focus on our education in order to change our family’s fortune...
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1 John 2:6 (NASB) “6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” Abiding in something is often translated as ‘remaining’. But in order to remain we must first have a beginning. This verse says that if we say we are remaining in Him (Christ) then we must continue after our awakening. I believe it was John Punshon who taught our spirit must be quickened by the Holy Spirit in order to become a believer and follower of Christ.
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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.
