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Building a new pulpit

ANNAPOLIS – A team of seven volunteers from Calvary UMC spent a week in Upala, in northern Costa Rica in January.

The most exciting – and rewarding – part of the trip was fulfilling the pastor’s request for a pulpit.

Three volunteers started from scratch, picking out “the widest planks with the least wormholes and fewest knots,” planing them smooth and cutting to length. They needed dowels to fasten the planks together.

Finding none in the town, they stopped at a furniture construction mill behind the owner’s home. And there they found Alex, who not only made the dowels but fastened the boards together, and for pay wanted only two liters of coke – which he promptly shared with his fellow workers.

“It was like every mission trip,” said Rodger Findiesen. “We go to help. Then we find them helping us. Then we help each other and build a church. Not one board at a time, but rather one person at a time, because that is what a church is, a community built by God.”

For more on this mission trip, visit www.calumc.org.

Walking Stations of the Cross

KNOXVILLE – Last year on Holy Saturday, between sunrise and sunset about 50 people took the outdoor prayer walk at Camp Manidokan, known as the “Stations of the Cross” that depicts Jesus’ last week of life. This year when the event is held April 23, “we’re hoping even more will come,” said camp director Chris Schleikert.

He and his wife, the Rev. Sarah Schleikert, created the 14 stations that wind through the woods and along the paths of the campground. Each participant receives a handout with appropriate Scriptures to read at each stop, but otherwise the walk is self-guided, and each person can take as little time or as long as they wish.

“There are a lot of different activities and services that people do throughout Holy Week,” Schleikert told Interpreter magazine. “This is a meaningful wrap-up, because it is a meditative, reflective time.”

Clergywomen meet for support

FULTON – About 140 female clergy from the Baltimore-Washington Conference attended the Northeast Jurisdictional Clergywomen’s Consultation in Lancaster, Pa., March 6-9. About 400 clergywomen from Maine to the District of Columbia met to encourage each other to be “Bodacious and Bold.”

Among the speakers and workshop leaders was Bishop Peggy Johnson of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, formerly a BWC clergy member.

Although female clergy are finally pushing against the stained glass ceiling, resistance still lingers, Bishop Johnson told the Philadelphia Inquirer. The number of female clergy in the denomination has increased from 8,892 in 2006 to 9,135 in 2011.

Clergywomen still get lower pay, about 13 percent less, than their male counterparts, according to the Rev. HiRho Park, a member of the Baltimore-Washington Conference who is the denomination’s director of continuing formation for ministry in Nashville.

VIM teams builds community

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A VIM team of 10 people from Foundry UMC travelled to Mellier, Haiti, Feb. 18-24, to help re-construct a church and school destroyed by the January 2010 earthquake.

“What we experienced was unexpected and life changing,” said team members Ace Parsi and Laurie Watkins. “Through singing and dancing together, we were able to build a strong sense of community with our Haitian brothers and sisters.”

The Foundry trip was the 13th VIM team to go to Mellier, of 20 teams, which are in the three-year plan developed by UMVIM, the Methodist Church of Haiti and UMCOR.

“We saw unimaginable destruction, breath-taking beauty, great despair and unwaivering optimism,” said Parsi and Watkins. “We saw God’s ever present hand and grace.”

In response to the earthquake last year, the United Methodist Committee on Relief received $43.9 million through The Advance, a designated mission-giving channel in The United Methodist Church.