Convention - Day 6

Today's biggest news is that the Children's Program made the front cover of today's issue of The Daily and had a feature story on page three. The Province IX curriculum is featured on page 11 in the "Perspectivas Latinas" section. Be sure to check out the photo credit on the cover picture!

I skipped the United Thank Offering (UTO) Ingathering Eucharist this morning. The women (primarily) involved in the UTO do wonderful work, and the money they raise goes to all sorts of projects throughout the church. However, I did not need to sit through 110 women being called to the stage by their dioceses' names and being applauded. Sleeping in made much more sense.

My first stop of the morning was the Discovery Center, which had a familiar visitor:


Ruth-Ann asked me to take a picture of her and one of the chaplains who helped with Praying Across project for military personnel and their families.


Here are today's buttons:


After lunch at Tiffy's with Ruth-Ann and Kathy Monson Lutes, I went to the staff office to print out some paperwork. As I finished, the House of Deputies session began. We have monitors in the office, so we can watch the live feed from both houses. We watched debate on C025, which is the resolution the committee that received all B033 related resolutions chose to be the resolution to put forward. They spent a lot of time rewriting it before sending it on to the House of Deputies. Procedural matters and working through C025 took most of this afternoon's session. The entire process took even longer, because a vote by orders was called for. That mean the lay deputies voted separately from the clerical deputies, and even though they voted electronically, the votes had to be verified against paper tally sheets from each deputation. In the end, the House passed the resolution as submitted by the committee.

I left the Convention Center before we learned what the final vote was. We took shuttles to St. Michael's for the New Communities Gathering sponsored by the Ethnic offices of the Episcopal Church Center. We had a variety of participants, food, and entertainment.

Sarah Eagle Heart, Program Officer for Native Ministries, introduced a troupe of Native American dancers:


Some of the dancers:

And a picture of me with Robyn Szoke, who hired me as the Program Assistant for Children's Ministries and Christian Education at the Episcopal Church Center seven years ago.


Tomorrow morning at 7:30 the Education Committee holds a hearing on D085: Ministry of the Child. There are also many resolutions that have yet to make it to the floor of either house. This has serious implications for any resolution with funding requests included, because they should all be to Program, Budget, and Finance by tomorrow so that the proposed budget can be presented to a joint meeting of the Houses on Wednesday.


Peace,
Jeff