| Churches urged to bring special offerings By Melissa LauberUMConnection Staff  Area United Methodist congregations are being asked to bring an offering from their churches to the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference session in June. Three offerings will be taken to support historic cemeteries, the creation of a national monument to Martin Luther King Jr., and the Bishops Initiative on Children and Poverty.
At the opening worship service June 5, a collection will be taken for the care and upkeep of Mount Auburn and Mount Olivet cemeteries in Baltimore. Mt. Auburn, owned by Sharp Street Memorial UMC and located next to Mount Winans UMC in Baltimore, is the oldest owned and operated black cemetery in the city. Founded in 1872, it was originally named The City of the Dead for Colored People. In 2001 it was designated a historic site by the National Register of Historic Places. The cemetery is the final resting place of two United Methodist bishops, Edgar A. Love and William A.C. Hughes; several pastors and notable people from throughout the areas black community including sports heroes, civil rights activists, prominent businessmen and politicians, and freed slaves. Mount Olivet cemetery, owned by Lovely Lane UMC, was originally known as Gods Acre. The cemetery is home to the Bishops Lot, dedicated in 1854. The cemetery holds the graves of Bishop Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop in the United States, and bishops Enoch George, John Emory, and Beverly Waugh. The 50-acre cemetery is also the resting place of Methodist pioneers Robert and Elizabeth Strawbridge, historian Jesse Lee, missionary E. Stanley Jones, and more than 200 preachers. The cemeteries are in desperate need of funding, said Associate Council Director Sandra Ferguson. On June 14, during the worship service of Repentance and Reconciliation a collection will be held for the creation of a memorial to the civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on the National Mall near the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. The $100 million memorial will be the first site on the mall to commemorate an African American. It will feature the use of water, stone and trees, with Kings image appearing in a stone of hope. During the Service of Light and Life June 15, a collection will be taken to support The Bishops Initiative on Children and Poverty. The bishops of The United Methodist Church recently renewed the denominations missional priority of putting children first, and called upon churches to reshape their lives in response to the crisis among the worldss children and the impoverished. In a report that accompanies the initiative, the bishops pointed out that more than 600 million children in the world live on less than $1 dollar a day; more than 130 million children do not have access to primary education; and AIDS is ravaging children and families, leaving hundreds of thousands of children in Africa and around the globe orphans. United Methodists are called to be and build up the body of Christ to effectively minister to children. Checks given in any of these offerings can give be made to the Conference Treasurer, with the name of the ministry noted on the check. | 
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