Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Pilgrim Association Mission and Community Concerns Committee, News, June, 2009
Delegation Tours Equal Exchange
On April 24, twenty members of nine United Church of Christ 
congregations toured the Equal Exchange facilities in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts to gain a deeper understanding of the coffee process from small farmer in a coop to gourmet coffee in a cup. The tour was planned by the Pilgrim Association Missions Committee as a way helping people move from an intellectual commitment to a heart-felt partnership. "We can sell coffee every Sunday after church," said a member of the Missions Committee, "but when we see the roasting, taste the coffee, and meet the people who work there, and see their passion to help people, it takes on a whole different layer of meaning."In addition to getting a tour of the roasting process, the group was also led through a "Cupping" (tasting) exercise, paring various
coffees with some of the many chocolates that Equal Exchange also markets. A special treat was the opportunity to visit with Athanasio Massenha, from the Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union in Tanzania, who was at the facility studying the tasting process. He made a deep impression on the participants with his passionate and poetic commitment to small farmer cooperatives in his country as a way of lifting people out of poverty. Equal Exchange Volunteers And Speaking of Equal Exchange, the Interfaith Program is looking for a few volunteers from our churches who would be willing to staff a booth at occasional UCC gatherings to help promote fair trade coffee and our partnership.It's an easy, short term (once or twice a year) task and you'll be doing good work for the world. EE will be hosting a training session in August at their new coffee shop up in Boston (which, by the way, is seriously cool), so if you are interested, or know someone who you think is, get in touch with us by clicking here. |
Pilgrim Ark Challenge a "Huge Success" One year ago, Rev. Joe Wadsworth, pastor of the Halifax Congregational Church, hit upon an idea to help celebrate his church's 275th Anniversary. First invite the Pilgrim Association to come to his church for their Annual Meeting and make it a great anniversary celebration. And second, challenge the churches of the Association to work together to fill up an entire Ark for Heifer International. Heifer, as you may know, sends animals to poor and developing countries to help them farm or grow for food. Most churches have raised money for a pair of goats or pigs (or even Heifers) over the years, but an entire Ark?  Joe Wadsworth, Stan Duncan and Jean Lenk holding Heifer award at Annual Meeting at Halifax That was quite a challenge, and not one that seemed automatically doable. After all, the churches and region had been hit by the same economic downturn as the rest of the country, and funding an entire Ark meant raising $5,000! An incredible sum by any measure. However, at the end of the year, after an opening worship the lovely sanctuary at Halifax, after singing hymns and sharing prayers, Rev. Joe got up and announced that, not only had our churches raised enough money to fill one ark, or two arks, but actually we had come just a few dollars short of filling Five Arks. That means hundreds and hundreds of animals will be given to poor people around the world to lift their lives and their livelihoods, and churches did it, working together. It was a remarkable achievement and a surprise to everyone. For the next year, the Heifer plaque (shown above) will float around to all of the churches that participated in the fund raising event. If your church was one of those, click here and put your name on the list to host the plaque for a few weeks and show it off to your church members. You deserve it. |
South Shore Habitat for Humanity Fall El Salvador Delegation Are you looking for an International Hands-On Mission Adventure? Would you like to learn about the People and Culture of El Salvador? Join us on a South Shore Habitat Trip to Santa Ana El Salvador this fall. Work side by side with the El Salvador people building simple and affordable cement block homes.  Learn how to build without the conveniences of modern technology. The cement work is pretty heavy but the finish work and painting is a much easier on the muscles. The work is very satisfying as you can see great progress in the homes and community you work on. Details are not finalized but we typically stay in a Hotel in Santa Ana and all ground transportation and most meals are included. We basically arrive on a Saturday morning. Tour on Sunday, work Monday through Friday, and tour again on Saturday, and arrive home on Sunday. If you are interested in exploring this opportunity contact John Galvin at JWGalvin@verizon.net" |
We Need Your Mission Committees' Email Addresses This newsletter goes out to a lot of people, but not everybody. Those who we think would most like to read it are often not on our list. That would be the people in your church who are on your Mission Committee, or Justice Task Force, or are people just interested and involved in mission and justice activities. So, we need your help. Send us their names and emails (you might ask them first, of course, but how could they say no?) At our recent Mission Fair, we asked for a show of hands and found that fewer than ten percent of these dedicated mission people from around the association actually knew that we even had a newsletter. They can only find out by word of mouth. So send us their names and emails. If for some reason in the future they would like to be removed from the list, there is a button they can click on at the bottom of this page that says, "go away and never talk to me again" (or something like that). That should do it. |
CROP Walk October 4, 2009 MARK YOUR CALENDARS NOW. The date for our next Pilgrim  Association CROP walk has been set and we need your help. Please send the name of someone in your church who will be your church's contact and recruiter.Send the name to Cathy Turrentine (CTURRENTINE@bridgew.edu), Pastor of the Scotland Congregational Church. Cathy will be our new Walk organizer and she is putting together the planning committee right now to make this the biggest and most important walk ever. |
Contest To Find a Better Newsletter Name
And finally, we need your help on one more thing.
Those of you who have been faithfully reading this newsletter for the next few months know that the title is the most boring thing about it (well, sometimes the writing is pretty boring too, but that's another story). So, with this issue we are launching a "Rename the 'Pilgrim Association Mission and Community Concerns Newsletter' Contest."
Help us out. Give us a new title. Send in a name and let us know what would be a sharper, more pointed, more spiffy title for this struggling new newsletter. In the next few months we'll post the winner and the runners up and you'll be famous. The person who offers the best new name wins the prize of getting to take Stan Duncan to lunch. Second prize only has to buy him coffee. (We didn't say it was a serious contest, just that it was a contest.)
So, try your re-naming skills come up with your best title and send it to us and help us finally get beyond a title that nobody but a CPA would like (well, maybe not even them).
Those of you who have been faithfully reading this newsletter for the next few months know that the title is the most boring thing about it (well, sometimes the writing is pretty boring too, but that's another story). So, with this issue we are launching a "Rename the 'Pilgrim Association Mission and Community Concerns Newsletter' Contest."
Help us out. Give us a new title. Send in a name and let us know what would be a sharper, more pointed, more spiffy title for this struggling new newsletter. In the next few months we'll post the winner and the runners up and you'll be famous. The person who offers the best new name wins the prize of getting to take Stan Duncan to lunch. Second prize only has to buy him coffee. (We didn't say it was a serious contest, just that it was a contest.)
So, try your re-naming skills come up with your best title and send it to us and help us finally get beyond a title that nobody but a CPA would like (well, maybe not even them).
Send your suggestions to pilgrimmissions@aol.com
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