Old Business

We discussed the minutes and Joan Law explained the India Education fund and the relationship between Anandon who is a teacher and mentor for Pradhu. Anandon administers the funds for the student(s) in India that the church supports. We then amended the minutes to clarify that point and they were approved.

Jackie and the Mission Board graciously welcomed our new members Nancy Jo Lopp, Harold Hoyt and T’shala Olivieri. We are so grateful that they have agreed to serve on the Mission Board.

Jackie then described the work and the calendar of the Mission Board for the new members. We meet and the bulk of our work takes place from September through June. We also support the Skyland 10K Race which provides the monies that we distribute to various organizations and charities. We spend some time in the fall evaluating these organizations and then deciding how much money goes to each organization. At this time we may add new groups to contribute to. This past fall we added three new organizations to contribute to; the high school students in Fiji, the school in Kenya and Hope Walks. Jackie then continued to go over our calendar. Last year in March was One Great Hour of Sharing on Easter. The Heifer Project we do twice a year. April is the Crop Walk. We began a discussion about having a speaker like the Global Strategies speaker, Bridget that we had last year. Joan also explained Hope Walks where children who are orphans due to HIV/Aids are adopted by families in Western Africa. Jackie organized this explanation of our purpose and schedule so well that we all were quite amazed at the amount of work that the mission board does in a year as well as the number and breadth of the organizations that the church supports. Mary Ellen suggested that perhaps it is time to survey the church members again as to the percentages that they want to contribute to in the various categories, i.e. homelessness, education, social justice.

We then discussed the description of the mission committee for the new bylaws document. Joan Law felt that it did not stress our Bread for the World letter writing project. So it was decided to add a separate bullet that one purpose was “ to promote advocacy for social and environmental justice”.

Jackie said that she sent the request to the Trustees for the UCC share to be 5% of the total budget as we agreed upon in the last meeting. Stephen clarified for all of us what the UCC share was and how it had evolved form the United Church of Christ’s wider mission.

Jackie also said that she sent the annual report to Terry Clark for the Mission Board. She said that it was invaluable to have the previous annual reports from Joan Law. However she felt that it would be really nice to have a template for all the committees to follow in writing these reports. Stephen said that would be a great idea to give to the council. Jackie than paid tribute to Joan’s immaculate record keeping and invaluable help in guiding her through her first year as chair.

For the March Newsletter Mary Ellen will write an update on the school in Kenya that Jin Easterday originally told us about. Jackie will write about Hope Walks for the February newsletter.

We then discussed the Giving Booklet and how often it should be published. Jackie felt it should be rewritten to reflect the new information every year. Nancy Jo suggested that we simply update the contents and reuse the covers.

We discussed the distribution of the Giving Booklet and decided it should continue to be included in the welcome packet to new church members. Stephen suggested that it might be good to have copies available in the pews. We all agreed.

New Business

We then had an exciting discussion about our plans to show the video, "An Inconvenient Truth" on March 25th between 5-8PM. We would provide finger food and show the movie from 5:15-7:15PM and then have a short discussion. T’Shala will write an article about the film for the March newsletter.

The sping always has a full agenda for the Mission Board. The Mission Board is responsible for coffee hour for March and April. Also Easter is on April 8th when we will plan to have the One Great Hour of Sharing offering. We decided to put more energy into advertising the Crop Walk which is on April 29th between 1-5PM in San Jose. We will coordinate with the youth group so that they could report on the money donated and the participants. Jackie will write an article for the April newsletter and Nancy Jo will make a poster. We then discussed Bread for the World and the difficulty of setting a date for the letter writing campaign until the riders on the legislation are clear but it will happen sometime in May.

Another exciting possibility is having a speaker on the environment. We decided on Earth Day or Sunday April 22nd.Stephen suggested a number of people building on our discussion for "An Inconvenient Truth". Nancy Jo suggested having an action plan for recycling or making paper., Mary Ellen and Joan remembered when the church used to go along Summit Road picking up litter. We discussed the possibilities of involving some of the other churches. Stephen will see if there is interest in having an eucumenical Earth Day activity. Mary Ellen thought it would be great to take photos and write an article for the Mountain Network News. Lots of creative ideas!

Mary Ellen graciously invited us to her house for our next meeting at 7:30PM on Tuesday, February 27.

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