Saturday Morning

Our first "business" this morning was the Rural Life Celebration. A procession featured 250,000 paper butterflies on streamers and banners, representing the 250,000 small town and rural ministries the United Methodist Church has. Stories were told, and we got to sing "Hymn of Promise." I love that song. Their presentation also included PETs (Personal Energy Transportation). PETs are hand-cranked wheelchairs. Check out www.giftofmobility.org for more information. It's a really great project.
After a brief break, we had a report from the Central Conference Pension Initiative (CCPI). Many retired clergy in other parts of the world do not have retirement funds. The churches simply don't have enough money to fund them. We take pensions and Social Security for granted here in the United States; overseas, adults who dedicated their life to the church sometimes starve because they cannot afford food after retirement. The CCPI is working to raise money to help those clergy and their families.
We then moved to a report about our Autonomous Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean. These Churches are administrated separately from the United Methodist Church but have a strong Wesleyan tradition and partnership with us. We heard about the ministry in their area of the world and how we can better work together.
And now we're on lunch break. I am updating the blog as I type (duh), and then will move into legislative work. Need to get some work printed so that our full committee plenary goes a little more smoothly than it did yesterday.