From a message by Doug Bennett, November 26, 2017

Here is something surprising about the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke, the only Gospels with Christmas stories: there is never any mention of the Jesus’s birth in the Gospels or in the rest of the New Testament for that matter. It’s as if everyone forgot about that miracle birth. No one ever says to Jesus, “Aren’t you that guy that was born under a gigantic star?” Or “aren’t you the one the Magi came and showered gifts on? Whatever became of all that gold? Do you have a trust fund?” Or even, “wow, you must be the real deal! I remember what a fuss the angels made about your birth. That was amazing!”

Not a word. If no one in the Bible remembers, why do we make such a deal out of it? The collective amnesia is all the more surprising when we remember that the Gospels are full of hints and suggestions and confusions about whether Jesus really is the Son of God. Wouldn’t this have clinched it, if someone had just said: “Remember the amazing birth, the Magi and the angels and all that?” So what’s the point of these two Christmas stories that are part of these Gospels and yet not part of them?

There were plenty of other born-of-a-God stories in the world into which Jesus was born: Achilles (in the Iliad), Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar: all claimed to have gods as parents. This Jesus that is born in glory turns out to be completely different from anyone else who has a “born-of-a-God” beginning. Those others were garden-variety heroes, strong warriors, born to rule and to dominate others. Those others become powerful. They dominated others. They had the ‘right stuff’. Now in Jesus we have something completely different. Strength is turning the other cheek. Love, not power is the major chord. Peace seeking, humility and simplicity are the order of the day.

For me, it’s not possible to understand the Christmas story without thinking about the other stories about Jesus that the Gospels tell, the stories after the Christmas story. These are stories that challenge us to live a different life.

Every so often you read a story about a guy who seemed to have everything: smarts and charm and wealth, and then it all goes bad. Everything sours. He ends up without friends, in prison, and finally he’s executed. Maybe he was guilty of something, maybe he wasn’t. But he’s forgotten soon after the news story. So sad, we say.

Jesus’s story is like that. It starts in glory and ends in execution. Only we’re not supposed to think ‘so sad’. When Jesus dies, he is ushering in something completely different; he triumphs. But he triumphs only if we follow the new way: the way of love and forgiveness. We certainly won’t see that surprising triumph if we only remember the first part of the story, the part in which he is born having it all, a good family, wealth and adoration. It’s what happens next that really matters. So stay tuned. Can we make the new way triumph?

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The entire message can be found at the blog River View Friend.

From a message in November by Edwin Hinshaw

A beatitude is prophetic pronouncement of joy, hope and promise used most effectively by Jesus in his teaching. Beatitudes are not peculiar to the New Testament. They are found throughout the Bible. They are pronouncements upon the person who is righteous, who keeps his/her hand (life) from doing evil, looking forward with confidence and trust in God. Beatitudes are not eschatological in nature (such as rewards after death or the end), but promises realizable during one’s life time upon earth.

The joy and happiness expressed in the Beatitudes comes not from good fortune or reward but from the fact that action being considered reflects the nearness of God. While the Beatitudes cited by Jesus follow the general pattern of all Beatitudes, he adds a special dimension or paradox. Persons who in no way appear fortunate are those declared blessed. The special dimension comes from taking a risk in faith with justice, peace, simple living and witness to God’s love.

In addition, Beatitudes are so stated as to release us from the tension of the present into the joy of the moment. In planning for tomorrow, the next day after that, or the next year, may our goals be joyful, hopeful, risky, moral and affirmations of the nearness of God: Beatitudes for the future.

A message by Craig Freshley on November 19, 2017.  You can listen to a recording of it here. Here is a partial text:

I’m going to retell a story that I heard from my friend Gary, I’ve colored in some of the details but basically it goes like this…

Gary was on a business trip for a month, in Bangkok. He was tired, ready to go home. He had been dealing with translators, restaurants, hotels, and difficult relations with business partners. He was headed home to New York, but he had to stop half way there. The flight from Bangkok to Abu Dhabi went well but when he walked into the airport, his heart sank. There were people everywhere: sleeping, talking on cell phones, babies being fed, crying. He made his way to the flight information board and saw his flight… cancelled. He was trying to get home for Thanksgiving. He was tired, hungry, and he kinda snapped. He was angry. He had been doing pretty well with the customers and the changes, but he didn’t need this.

He made his way to the customer service line, and figured he was about 40^th. One ticket agent. Tempers flared, tears cried. As he waited, he planned his speech. He figured he was going to get about 3 minutes with this representative, a face-to-face conversation with the faceless corporation that had done him wrong.

After about 1 1/2 hours, he found himself maybe 4^th or 5^th in line, close enough to overhear what other people were saying, and he refined his speech. He heard the customer service representative. After each person walked away, she gathered herself, looked in the eyes of the next person, and she said, “How can I help you?” He watched her do this repeatedly.

Gary closed his eyes and meditated. He prayed for help, his prayer began with something like “Please help this woman get me to New York”. But then his mind wandered a little bit and he started thinking about her, wondering: Did she have kids? She was about his age. How does she get to the airport? Drive like everyone else and park in the same garage? Maybe she takes the bus – it must be a long bus ride; this airport is kinda far outside the city. Does she wear her uniform on the bus? Do they have to check in through TSA? Maybe… she was called in. Maybe she was called away from her family on short notice, to deal with all these cancellations… I wonder if this is a holiday in Abu Dhabi…

Suddenly he had a new way of looking at the situation and he decided – when I get up to the counter – I’m going to have an attitude of “How can I help you?” He threw out the old speech. He didn’t make a new speech, but he just cultivated a new attitude of ‘how can I help you?’

He decided that he was going to try to see the problem as “their” problem. Not her problem to solve for him. They were both just trying to do their jobs, both in a difficult situation that neither one of them asked for. He decided he was going to be polite, to be patient. He was going to offer her compassion and respect, he was going to provide a respite for her in between dozens of angry customers. And when he got to the counter, he did those things. He acted out the attitude and when they were done, and he was about to walk away, he thanked her for being so helpful.

Gary walked away from that customer service counter feeling better than when he had arrived at that customer service line, not because of what he got from the transaction, but because of what he gave. I never heard if Gary made it back for Thanksgiving. But I’m thinking that maybe it doesn’t matter so much. I suspect that Gary walked away from that counter proud of himself for flipping his attitude and brightening that gal’s day, and he was probably okay with the outcome, whatever it was. I’m guessing.

You know what else? The material outcome probably wouldn’t have changed one bit if he had used speech number one. To me, the story illustrates the power of prayer. To me, I haven’t really seen direct evidence that prayer changes outcomes. Not in a way that is scientifically, or evidence based defensible. I have seen that prayer changes attitudes. That’s what happened in this case. What matters is not the accounting ledger of how people have done me wrong versus how people have done me right. Stuff happens. Bad things happen to good people. I can get myself in such a knot, such a bad mood trying to keep track of that ledger and trying to manage that ledger. What matters is a feeling of peace and happiness. We are seduced into thinking that by managing the ledger, by trying to get more than I paid for, that’s going to bring me peace and happiness. But, there is a short cut. The short cut is a change in attitude. In Gary’s case, his attitude changed through prayer and meditation. Attitudes are contagious. I like to think that while Gary was at the customer service counter, having his conversation, a person 3 places back overheard a snippet of that conversation and a way opened for that person to see things in a new light.

From a message by Nancy Marstaller in October, 2017

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to discern what God’s will is—God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

Transformation was the themeof yearly meeting this year. I was blessed to be able to attend and want to share a story from that meeting that has stuck with me.

Friend Xinef Afriam retold us the familiar story about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but added new information that I didn’t know and that gave us a whole new view of transformation- both for caterpillars and for humans. I was so intrigued, I looked up more about this when I got home.

As we know, after a time of eating and eating, a caterpillar finds a place to make a cocoon or chrysalis. Imagine the monarch butterfly caterpillar, which makes the wonderful J shape and spins its gold-decorated chrysalis around itself. But it’s not as simple as we think. There are cells, which are dormant in the caterpillar and called “imaginal cells.” It turns out that before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing from an egg, it grows an imaginal disc for every adult body part it will need- such as eyes, wings, and so on. In some species, these imaginal discs remain dormant throughout the caterpillar’s life. In other species, the discs begin to take the shape of adult body parts even before the caterpillar forms a chrysalis or cocoon.

When the imaginal cells are awoken from dormancy, at first they operate independently as singlecelled organisms inside the caterpillar. They resonate at a different frequency so are regarded as threats and attacked by the caterpillar’s immune system, which digests some of them. But they persist, gradually multiply and grow stronger. The caterpillar’s immune system can’t keep up and the caterpillar digests itself. The imaginal cells survive, forming clusters and clumps. Because they resonate at the same frequency, they can communicate. They connect and become a multi-celled organism – a butterfly is formed!

What really struck me was that the caterpillar at first resisted this transformation, which got me pondering about how humans change.

There is a hymn we don’t sing often but did recently. The first verse is, “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. Some great cause, some great decision, off’ring each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.” It terrified me as a young child. I worried that I had missed the moment, that somehow, I had chosen for evil, that I was doomed. As an older child, I felt our country had chosen for evil, that we had been slaveholders, didn’t give equal rights to all, were killing innocent civilians in Vietnam. But I also believed that there is that of God in everyone, meaning we could change, be better.

Now I realize that for most of us there is no one dramatic moment, but constant moments of choice throughout life in which we can choose right or wrong, better rather than worse. One of the ongoing discussions at yearly meeting and among many of us in our country is white supremacy. I feel like I am called to do something about overcoming it, and currently that is mostly reading. When talking with people of color at yearly meeting and hearing their stories, I was saddened and angered by the ongoing overt and structural racism that pervades our society. How one mother feared for her dark-skinned middle-schooler to go downtown in Castleton, Vermont, worrying what could happen just because of the color of his skin. Something I never even thought of as a mother of a fair-skinned boy. I am learning how privileged my life is in ways I have taken for granted – I don’t worry I will be discriminated against in any aspect of life because of my whiteness and that is SO different from the experience of many others.

So, I am praying, hoping, and visualizing that the “imaginal cells” that seek racial justice, that seek to do what is right, that seek to do God’s will, are growing within myself and within society. May we resonate at the same frequency, communicate and grow stronger, so that together we can bring more peace and justice into the world.

I’ll close with a passage from Psalm 19, to which I’ve added a line: O let the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart, and the transformations of my life be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord.

An excerpt from a recent message by Sukie Rice in October, 2017

“Humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling… As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together.” (Frederick Buechner, 1926 – )

I have pondered this quotation many times; it makes me very aware how we “tremble each other’s webs” all the time. Sometimes in large ways, sometimes small, although we rarely know when it happens. An example: I’m a total grouch early in the morning. I would drive to school each morning, grumbling about all those children I was going to have to be nice to, wishing I could just be left alone. But then, in the parking lot, a child would run up to me exclaiming, “We have music today, Ms. Rice. I can’t wait!” “That’s great, Maryann, I’ll see you soon,” I’d say, and my grumbly web would be shaken. Then two boys would come up with, “Can we help you carry the autoharps, Ms. Rice? At home I’ve been singing that song you taught about Charlie on the MTA. And my mom knows it.” By the time I’d reach the school door, I’d be feeling chipper and looking forward to being with the children. They trembled my web. They never knew it.

Now here is a story of something major that happened this summer. Friends of Kakamega decided to provide a SunKing Solar Light for every child/youth in our program. For this we needed to raise over $8,000, a hefty amount. But because clean, renewable light in a home is so important, we made this commitment. It happened!

But it wouldn’t have happened without one of the people going on our summer trip to Kakamega, a college student named Liz, researching solar lights. She discovered this unique light, specifically designed for Kenyan homes and convinced Friends of Kakamega to make the big commitment. She trembled our imagination.

Backing up the web: Liz wouldn’t have gone on the trip except she had gone to school with Mitch Newlin, who has been to the Care Centre seven times and is now a valuable member of the Friends of Kakamega board. He trembled her web with stories of the Care Centre. But Mitch never would have gone to Kenya except he attended a benefit dinner at Durham Meetinghouse when he was 12 and exclaimed to his parents he wanted to go to Kakamega Care Centre when he was old enough. When he turned 16 in 2011, he went with his dad, John, and the rest is history for Mitch. The Care Centre has trembled his web in a huge way and his whole life will be different because of it.

The trembling doesn’t stop there. Durham Meeting wouldn’t have held that benefit dinner (and all the subsequent ones) except that Dorothy Selebwa, founder of the Kakamega Orphans Care Centre came to Durham Meeting one Sunday at the end of April 2002. She trembled my web and turned my life upside down, as this project has done for so many people: children and families in Kenya, and for Americans who have visited and experienced themselves the hope and miracle of the Care Centre.

There is more. I wouldn’t have been there to meet Dorothy, but I began to visit Durham Friends Meeting in 1980 and, although it was very different from my Quaker experience before, I wanted to return again and again. I was an odd duck for Durham, but the women welcomed me. Betty White, Charlotte White, Mary Curtis,

Lydia Rollins, Margaret, Clarabel. They made me feel so welcome and I wanted to make it my home.

So, because the women of Durham meeting trembled my spirit, I was there so Dorothy could tremble my web – and that of Durham Friends. Mitch’s web was trembled. His telling Liz about the project trembled her web. She decided to go, and did research on solar lights. Her research influenced Friends of Kakamega’s determination to provide solar lights for 260 homes, which has had a terrific impact on the lives (and webs) of so many people.

“Who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt.” May we all keep trembling each other’s webs and let the trembling live on!

AUGUST 7: DOUG BENNETT: “I’m with Stupid”:  I try to remember that Jesus’s Disciples regularly had difficulty learning what Jesus taught.  I take comfort and guidance in their showing that spiritual learning is hard, and not well or easily captured in any Creed.

AUGUST 14: DOUG GWYN: George Fox’s last words: “All is well.  The Seed reigns over all.” And “I’m glad I was here.”  The Seed is the eternal dimension hidden within each of us, hidden within time and place.  While we live, we exist in particular places and times.  When we die, we no longer exist, we’re in the eternal.  The point is to start living eternity now, which is the kingdom of heaven on earth.

AUGUST 21: NANCY MARSTALLER: To stay open to the Holy Spirit, it’s important to have an open heart, to keep listening to others’ stories, for the messages they bring in various ways, even if the language is not our usual or not to our liking. We need to stay open to Spirit’s promptings to share our own stories and act as Spirit moves.  As Stephen Grellet said: I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

AUGUST 28: DOUG GWYN: We exclude others through either/or thinking, like racism or sexism.  To build a civil society, we must work toward both/and, across our various identities and differences.  Life in community, especially religious community, goes still further, to neither/nor.  In community, we become real persons to one another, no longer this or that identity or difference.  And such communities are leavening agents, helping the wider society grow beyond either/or, at least to both/and.

current unit focuses on mass media, and how language is used to reach a certain audience and achieve a certain purpose. I figured that the lessons would be easier to plan and assignments simpler to grade if I helped the class narrow down the possible topics to three or four, and everyone could write on one of those; we could get some basic subject knowledge in each area, and they could supplement their own standpoint with individual research. In one of the first class sessions, a Dana pointed out that bloggers often don’t take full advantage of the freedom that blogging theoretically provides, since they are afraid of being labelled as biased, or of being attacked for their opinions. I thought quite a bit
about her point, which, although not new to me, struck me as more significant for Palestinian bloggers than for American ones, and it influenced the way I wanted to teach the unit. We began focusing on tactics to gain and maintain an audience, with a critical eye to how commonly used tactics to win “views” on the internet can alter a message. Provocative, exaggerated or gossipy headlines, polemical language, humor and metaphor are some of the popular devices employed as “click-bait,” a phrase the students taught me. But does the use of these tactics impact the message? “I’m writing about feminism,” said Nour. “I can’t use a gossipy tone.” Her classmates retorted that she could; “OK, but I wouldn’t” she clarified. Why not? I asked. “It would be unethical,” “It makes the topic seem unimportant,” “People wouldn’t take the topic seriously.” We discussed the dance that bloggers must do, in attracting an audience, while maintaining the integrity of their message. I’ve been impressed with how thoughtfully they have considered what degree of “self-selling” is appropriate to their topic, since many have chosen weighty issues such as stereotypes of Arabs, young girls sold into marriage in Syria, and the dangers Palestinian children face when travelling across occupied territory to get to school. I imagine Early Friends having contemplated a similar challenge: the truth they wanted to convey was too vital to be diluted for the sake of mass appeal. And yet they had to make their new message feel compelling and alive. In one sense, Friends then and now have it easier than bloggers. The blogger’s message is evident only through his written language. Friends can count on their lived example to attract others to their truth, a “click-bait” strategy which seems to speak louder than words. Mimi Marstaller, Volunteer Teacher at Ramallah Friends School

Created by Leslie Manning and presented at the Christmas Program, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013
T’was First Day before Christmas and all through the Meetinghouse

Not a creature was stirring, not even the Meeting mouse.

The Mitten Tree was hung by the doorway with care,

In hopes that each knitter would donate a pair.

Worshipers were nestled all snug on their benches,

Musing on Quakers from Foxes to Denches.

Nancy and Clarabel were planning to groove,

While Sukie and Choir would get us to move.

When out in the parking lot there arose such a clatter,

Some sprang from their seats to see what was the matter.

And there, on a blanket of new fallen snow,

Two weighty Friends were going at it, toe to toe.

Oh, No! “We ought not have a program,

A tree in the Meeting Room! We don’t have a liturgy,

that’s gone – Just like Naylor’s groom.”

“But, Friend, can’t you see we are all kinds of Quakers!

If we don’t adapt, we’ll be gone – like the Shakers!”

Right into that fray jumped a jolly old elf,

Our own fount of wisdom, Margaret Wentworth, herself.

“Christmas”, she said, “is more than the day.

Christ’s birth is lived as a path, as a Way

For all homeless parents to find room in our hearts,

Whether out at a manger Or working at WalMarts.

We are called to feed all of God’s children,

Bellies and souls, so shall we fill them;

To treat each other with love and respect,

To offer to ease the weight of neglect.

We don’t need a star to show us the Light,

We know in our hearts to do what is right.

So, friends, let us gather, As we do every week,

And honor the meaning of

“Let your life speak.”

From our Pastor’s message of Sunday, April 15, 2012
Rufus Jones grew up near here in South China, Maine. In his book “Trail of Life through the Early Years,” he wrote about what it was like to grow up as a Friend, to grow up “Quaker.” In the following quote, he is talking about what going to Meeting was like when he was just about 10 years old. He says: “Very often in these meetings for Worship, there were long periods of silence … I do not think that anyone ever told me what the silence was for. It does not seem necessary to explain Quaker silence to children. They feel what it means …”
Then on the next page he says: “Sometimes a real spiritual wave would sweep over the Meeting in these silent hushes, which made me feel very solemn and which carried me – careless boy that I was – down into something deeper than my own thoughts, gave me a momentary sense of that Spirit who has been the life and light of people in all ages and in all lands.”
It is that same “something deeper” that we are gathered this Easter in family Worship to recognize and to celebrate. What we are actually doing is FEELING … in the same way that Rufus Jones says Quaker children feel and just know why they’re sitting here together even without explanation. We are feeling our way down to the place where we get it that God is with us. Since that first Easter morning when Mary sees that the stone has been rolled away, when she meets and recognizes Jesus there in the garden; since that very morning we have all had direct access to the Light of the risen Christ. And Friends have always seemed to know that we find it in our own hearts. From the oldest of us to the youngest it is this that we come to know in Meeting for Worship.
But, until George Fox made his great discovery on Pendle Hill in England, until he had his direct experience of God — of the inward teacher — the risen Christ; until then, for nearly 1,500 years (and sometimes even today) this kind of knowing was almost forgotten. It got hidden, locked away really, in church ritual. And for most people hope got postponed, put off to the distant future … till the end of time.
Hope postponed reminds me of our human tendency of putting off until tomorrow what might be better done today. Why? Because moving the very present reality of God close at hand, into the future, into another time … a second coming … could be a way of saving the actual practice of Christianity for later. If we say “Christ is risen” but continue to see this spiritual reality only as a metaphor, something that is not real and certainly not very practical, we may be able to convince ourselves that it’s OK to cut some corners where justice is concerned. We may be able to rationalize slashing budgets for social programs, but continue to spend countless billions on armaments. These are the sort of corners that we might not cut so easily, if we knew, really deeply knew, felt from our own experience, that Christ is risen, eternally present among us. Would knowing this deepen our integrity and compassion?
At Easter we do this every year — we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection — but what, I wonder, does this inner resurrection actually look like? I know myself that I have been slow to understand and receive the guidance
of this Light. I think this is largely because the inner experience can be quite subtle, and because the Light of the inner resurrection shows up in the most ordinary places and times. It shows up in the everyday events of our lives.
Remember how from time to time you’ll have a flash of insight or a wise moment when you perceive some deeper truth, perhaps a truth that once you see it you just know and have always known it to be true?
Or perhaps you are working on a problem and suddenly you see your way forward, you just know how to proceed? These are, I think, gifts … gifts of the spirit to our better selves. But, for so much of my life I misunderstood them to be the product of my own mind. I did not understand the source of that still small voice within — I did not understand just how intimate God is, or what part Spirit plays in our daily lives. I do not think that I often realized just how much help we really receive. This is how it is: the inner resurrection helps us trace the footsteps of God as they wind their way through the ordinary moments of our lives.
The resurrection lets the Truth of God’s Presence shine.
So, it’s Easter and we celebrate the beauty of God’s world. We celebrate the shining Truth of the Resurrection, and we give thanks … for all the help we do receive.
For, He is, indeed, Risen this day.

Peace Corps Volunteer, Cameroon

Asinge, Friends!

At a few degrees above the equator, my Cameroonian village in West Africa can at least depend on one thing arriving with consistency – nightfall at 6:30.  Water in the public taps, phone network, electricity, the long promised road repairs, teachers for the new school year, cross your fingers but don’t hold your breath.  Electricity has been out for almost a week now.

Today I traveled to charge my computer, only to find that riding over broken roads on motorcycles, or jungle humidity, or maybe lizard droppings, have gotten the best of my keyboard.  So many letters don’t work, what I’ve typed looks like code!  I’m typing by candlelight and have put out buckets to collect rain for my bath and dishes.

My alarm clock will be the bustle of early morning village life: chickens, babies, wood-chopping, open-fire cooking, neighbors yelling greetings to those trekking to their cocoa farms or hauling water.

It’s all part of my roller coaster ride as I try to integrate into my community as a Peace Corps health volunteer, the first foreigner to have a presence here in 20 years.  The learning curve has been more like free fall as I get used to hearing “WHITEMAN” yelled as I pass by villagers still taken aback by my presence, and keep my front door open despite my desire for privacy to respect the culture of openness.

My job, helping this community identify and address their health development needs, has been the most rewarding, exasperating, and eye-opening experience I’ve ever been thrown head first into.

Perhaps most moving has been teaching reproductive health to young women who are going through adolescence and womanhood without even basic information.  The school curriculum includes no sexual education, though premature pregnancy and STD’s are major problems among youth.  The first time I held a seminar for 7^th – 9^th grade aged girls I put out a “Question Box” for their confidential matters and could not hand out slips of paper fast enough for their outpouring of uncertainties.  I cried reading them later, realizing I’d hit a nerve of serious need that I could actually respond to.

Helping them navigate pregnancy, child-rearing concerns, introducing the benefits of family planning, and sending the message that they can positively influence their own lives is a role I love.  Doing so in the context of rampant need and the social and cultural complications I’ve been learning about for years is a dream come true.

Still, the going is slow.  The heat, harassment and endless house malfunctions can make crawling out of bed utterly overwhelming.  Yet, the headaches of trying to function where basic functioning often seems out of reach are made immediately worth it by the thrilling moments.  Yesterday a nurse and I hosted the first session of a support group we are trying to launch for HIV+ women.  It has taken months to find even a few women willing to share their status with others.  Talking about the free treatment available to these women, who have never had autonomy over so much as a dollar, let alone their own health, was powerful.

Kids have been the golden ticket to feeling at home here.  Their adoring greetings (“Auntie Tasse, Auntie TASSE!”) and laughter as we draw and play cards on my porch always brighten my day.  I can’t wait until they return from their relatives’ holiday care so I can distribute the equipment and supplies you sent through the Women’s Society.  What an amazing outpouring of childhood goodies that these kids have never known.  My heartfelt thanks to you all.  For pictures of my recent summer camp, check out my blog at tessincameroon.blogspot.com.  For questions or more dialogue, email me at tmarstaller@gmail.com Thanks for your prayers of support!