Morning Plenary

This morning: Good sermon about "fresh bread" from the story of God's giving the Israelites food for the day. We are encouraged to wake up and get up. I was in worship only for the second half but heard almost all of the serrmon. Topic for the day is "Building Hope." DeLyn (one of the musicians) sang a gorgeous song about building things together. Thanks were given by folks in the regions affected by Hurricane Katrina and the information that help was still needed (money and work teams). The business of the morning focused mostly on elections for Judicial Council and University Senate. The majority of the time was getting the keypads working with two-digit voting and assuring people as to how they worked. We adopted the consent calendars for the day without issue and spent time on the petition to grant more funding to Africa University and an additional $2 million on theological teaching (aka training pastors) at other schools in Africa. One professor from Africa shared that each year they receive hundreds of applicants to the school for degrees in theology and they can accept only 10-20. If only we had that problem in the United States! We did finally manage to put our money where our mouth is and approve it. People were worried about the budget, but it finally passed.
Just before lunch was the celebration of "The Advance." "The Advance" is a way for United Methodists to give money to specific programs in developing countries (women's sewing groups that generate income, hospitals, farming projects, etc.) without any overhead. We had two ladies there, one from Bolivia and one from Sierra Leone who spoke to us about their projects. It was extremely moving. All in all, I started crying like ten times this morning...part of it is that the reports truly were moving and wonderful. Part of it is that I need to sleep...but tonight, it really will happen. I'm on lunch break now and am about to head to the Young People's Choir Performance...we'll be performing Wednesday morning. Looking forward to that.