International Welcome Dinner, January 5, 2018

By Peace and Social Concerns Committee (Linda Muller, Cindy Wood, soon to include Ingrid Chalufour and Brown Lethem)

As we all enter this upcoming new year, 2018, we want to engage all the Meeting in an International Welcome Dinner. The date is set for Friday, January 5. People are welcome to arrive between 5 and 6 pm.

We are seeing many in Durham Friends Meeting, in the wider Quaker community, and the community here in our region of Maine, connecting with folks from other cultures, other nations. For many, this is a great enriching experience and we want to build on that. We encourage all connected with Durham Meeting, hosts and exchange students to attend. Be sure to invite recent immigrants you have come to know as friends to join us.

The goal of the dinner is to relax, begin to develop some familiarity, and enjoy food from many cultures together. We are putting together a brief program to accompany this.

It will be a potluck; we ask each individual and/or group attending to bring a dish from their culture… even longtime Mainers have roots from other places. Linda’s family harkens mostly from Switzerland, as an example. Having dishes from each of our heritages will really make the evening fun.

We’ll have sign-up sheets for help with set up and clean up when time gets closer. This announcement is to help us all plan ahead for attending. Snow/blizzard date will be the same time, the next day, Saturday, January 6.