The Church in Hiaw

athalandN

orthern Michigan edition of Episcopal Journal

Vol. 3 No. 12 D

ecember 2013

New

s for and about the Episcopal Diocese of N

orthern Michigan

Inside this issue...Page 2B Diocesan Cycle of Prayer, Haitian scholarships

Page 3C Calendar, UTO, Advent

Page 4D Around the diocese, Youth News, Spong event, Women’s retreat

Bright red billbards proclaiming the good news of God’s love for all will be arriv-ing in 5 locations in December. Boards will be located in Sault Ste Marie near I-75, north of Houghton/Hancock on the way to Calumet, between Marquette and Negaunee, between Gladstone and Escanaba, and in Menominee. This is the first time for the boards in Houghton/Han-cock and Menominee.

In the past the billboards have been mostly blue, matching the blue of the

Episcopal shield, but for the holidays a bright red was chosen.

Our communications committee will also be exploring online advertising through Google and Facebook, since more and more people searching for a church look online for location and service informa-tion.Make sure your church is ready for holiday visitors! Is the church website up-to-date? Do you have a Facebook page for your church, and does someone keep it active?

The diocese has signed on to become a partner organization with Michigan Inter-faith Power and Light, a group supporting Michigan faith communities in becoming stewards of the earth, helping them to promote and implement energy efficiency, renewable energy, and related sustainable practices.The group says, “Historically, grassroots efforts originating in churches helped abolish slavery, win women’s suffrage, and lead the Civil Rights movement. Today, Michigan IPL works statewide to gather and focus the immense grassroots power within Michigan’s faith communities to help them become leaders in the effort to minimize humankind’s negative impact on the environment.”

The Justice and Peace committee of this diocese has set their priority in the coming year on environmental concerns, and are planning an advocacy and the environment conference in autumn 2014. This diocese was one of the founding members of the EarthKeepers coalition, and our commit-ment has been reaffirmed with the renewed organization of EarthKeepers II.

Melissa Robinson If I were to sum up my experi-ence as a Ministry Developer intern with the Diocese of Northern Michigan I would have to use the word adventure. From the moment my wife Danni and I left the Oregon coast headed for the third coast of Lake Superior the entire experience has been a wonderful and wonder-filled jour-ney. I knew that I was meant to conduct my Field Education experience here and after almost three months in the UP I’m affirmed in that feeling. Danni and I arrived to the UP in early September, pulling into Pat and Hillary Galey’s house in The Soo during a torrential downpour. The Galey’s met us in the garage with a hug and a plate of food, a form of hospitality that continued during our month long stay there. While in the eastern part of the UP I was able to visit and participate in worship services on Mackinac Island, the community of Pickford, Newberry, Drummond Island, and preached for the first time in Sault Ste. Marie (a fantastic experience). Working with Cathy Clark I was also able to work with MST teams in Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island as well as the EMST

team which meets in Marquette.Prior to moving to Marquette I was at

Justice and Peace sets environment focus for 2014

Tales from our internAn adventure in mutual ministry

Diocesan Convention, where I was lucky enough to meet more people throughout the diocese and participate in envisioning what church can be. While in Marquette I spent a weekend in Menominee for their affirmation weekend, preached in Glad-stone, joined in MST and covenant groups in Marquette, Ishpiming and Crystal Falls, and met with the Diocesan Council. In ad-dition, Danni and I represented the diocese at the Earth Keepers II retreat on Mackinac Island. That was a wonderful experience and touched on my own interest in environ-mental justice. Needless to say, I’ve been around most of the UP to see and experience Mutual Continued on page 3C...

Page 2B Church In Hiawathaland December 2013

Diocesan Cycle of Prayer

December 1 St. Stephen’s Church, Escanaba [Bethany, Christ the King & Immanuel] 8 St. John’s Church, Iron River [First & Trinity] 15 St. Stephen’s Church, DeTour 22 St. John’s Church, Negaunee [Bethany & Immanuel] 29 Holy Innocents, Little Lake [Grace, Gwinn]

ELCA Lutheran congregations are listed in brackets. For a full 2013 Cycle of Prayer, go to www.upepiscopal.org under Resources along the top.

Burt Purrington

Crochu (pronounced “KWO-shee” in Haitian Creole) was one of the first com-munities I visited when I began working on the main island of Haiti in 2002. Before that, Sandy and I had been working since 1997 with an Episcopal priest and his wife on Haiti’s Island of La Gonâve. One of our flagship projects there was a program for severely malnourished children that had been a longtime dream of the priest’s wife, Carmel Valdema, a community health nurse. With the funding from our church, Christ Episcopal in Springfield, MO, Carmel established monthly clinics in 22 communi-ties where children with 2nd or 3rd degree malnutrition (less than 73% of normal body weight for their age) received a monthly food supplement, and their parents were taught about nutrition, basic sanitation, birth control and what to do about childhood diseases (e.g., how to make a simple oral rehydration solution to treat infant diarrhea – which proved a Godsend when the cholera epidemic broke out in Haiti in 2010 because parents who had been through the program were much quicker to treat the severe diar-rhea and dehydration that strike cholera patients and can kill in a few hours.)

When Carmel’s husband was transferred to St. Simeon Parish in Croix-des-Bouquets, outside of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, I joined her to help establish a Children’s Nu-trition Program there. Carmel named this program Lespwa Timoun (Hope for Chil-dren). In November, 2002, we visited six communities in St. Simeon parish to assess

the severity of children’s malnutrition. The last one we visited, in the mountains north of Port-au-Prince, was the poorest and most remote – Crochu.

Our day at Crochu was one of the rich-est and most moving experiences of my life – and at the same time one of the most heart wrenching. Over a hundred mothers (and a few fathers) with their children had gathered under the corrugated sheet metal roof of the 60 year-old, clay-walled St Albans Episcopal Church. (The church was destroyed by the hurricanes of 2008 and re-built in 2012.) All of the women and girls, including infants, wore brightly colored head scarves and they chatted gaily with each other. Occasionally, however, one or another would look with concern or even distress at a spindly child beside them or in their arms with the telltale brittle, reddish hair of malnutrition.

We weighed over 100 children that day; two-thirds were malnourished. Late that afternoon I realized that on this very day Americans were celebrating Thanksgiv-ing and that most of them had more food than they knew what to do with, but would happily have shared it with the children of Crochu and their families—if only they had a way to do so. A few weeks later, Carmel used the data we’d gathered in our needs assessment to get a grant from the regional Department of Community Health to start Lespwa Timoun in Crochu and the other five communities.

Foremost among my many vivid memories of that first visit to Crochu are the people I met – in particular two. One was a soft-spoken man in his 60’s with a warm handshake and an even warmer smile named Vètinèl who was clearly a community leader and, I later learned, the lay leader and principal at St. Albans. He became one of my two dearest friends in Haiti, and his death from a stroke two years ago, was not only a great loss to the com-munity and church but a deep personal loss as well.

The second most memorable person I met there was a young woman, who had lost an eye sometime in her life, with a little girl on her hip. She introduced herself as Magalie (pronounced “MAH-

guh-lee”) and said she was a member of the church and that was why she was helping weigh the children. Later when Carmel began her monthly nutrition clinics at Cro-chu, Magalie became her most dependable community volunteer. She is also one of the most active and loyal parishioners at St. Albans and the most vocal of the women at congregational meetings.

Today, Magalie is in her late 30’s and lives with her husband Almanes and their six children in a simple, two-room home smaller than most American living rooms with clay walls, a dirt floor and one bed in Grand Ravine, a village in Crochu about an hour’s hike over rugged terrain from St. Albans. They are farmers and, like many

people in Crochu, Almanes cuts saplings on the hillsides to make charcoal to sell locally and at markets near Port-au-Prince. Magalie also earns some money cooking for the twice-weekly school lunch program at St. Albans, a project of the Diocese of Alabama that our diocese has helped sup-port from its onset.

For the past three years, Magalie has worked as my field assistant for the house-hold survey and community needs assess-ment I’ve been conducting in Crochu since 2008. Like most Haitians who are able to go to school, her education stopped at the sixth grade, but she is very intelligent and reads and writes well. Surveys are an alien

Haiti ScholarshipsA Family for Gladstone

Left: Magalie with her son Mondrejan, in his kindergarten uniform, inside their home.

Above: Magalie with her daughters (L-R) Franceline, Julmème and Marie Clemène. Franceline and Marie Clemène are in their school uniforms.

Continued on page 3C

DECEMBER1 First Sunday in Advent7 Episcopal Min Supp Team 10:00 am Diocesan Office, Marquette14 Diocesan Council 10:00 am Diocesan Office, Marquette15 MST Commissioning 10:30am St. Paul’s, Marquette25-27 Christmas holiday - Diocesan office closed

To have meetings included, call 1-800-236-0087 or email jane@upepiscopal.org

December 2013 Church In Hiawathaland Page 3C

Meetings and EventsAll times Eastern

The Church in Hiawathaland will notpublish a January issue

If you have events to publicize for early 2014, please send them to Rise to

put on the website or UPChatFebruary issue deadline is January 8, 2014.

To submit news or subscription changes, contact Rise Thew Forrester, editor

risetf@gmail.com

Advent I is December 1 this year., and as they say, timing is everything. In this holy time and space preceding the birth of Jesus, we wait… and we prepare, ready-ing ourselves for Christ’s coming with our daily spiritual practice. We offered some Advent resources in the November issue, and include more here.

Celebrate the joy of the Twelve Days of Christmas with mini meditation cards, created by the Brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, available from Forward Movement. Each of the twelve business-sized cards includes a photo of an iconic image on one side, and a brief medi-tation on Faith, Peace, Gratitude, and nine more seasonal themes on the other. Each set includes a small envelope so you can keep it in your pocket, purse or wallet.To order, visit the SSJE Store at www.forwardmove-ment.org/ssje. For the second year that the Episcopal Of-fice of Communication and the Society of Saint John the Evangelist have partnered to

make a Digital Advent Calendar available on Pinterest (and we hope to also include it at www.upepiscopal.org. The Calendar begins December 1 and each day during Advent a pin will reveal a special Advent word, meditation and beautiful image. You can find it at www.ssje.org/advent At that same address, on December 17th SSJE will release 7 days of mini-videos on the “O Antiphons” for the Christmas season.

Resources for Advent

concept to most Haitians, but Magalie has an excellent understanding of both the goals and mechanics of the survey and she has been invaluable in guiding me to the vari-ous communities in Crochu, introducing me to people and explaining why we are doing the survey and how it can benefit them and their community.

Living in an area with very high rates of infant and childhood mortality, Magalie thanks God that she has lost only one child. She lost her eye at the age of nine when she accidentally walked into a sharp stick. The wound became infected and her eye had to be removed. (Just one of many examples in Haiti of medical problems that often are preventable.) She’s an attractive woman, but she considers herself “led” (ugly) because of the loss of her eye. Needless to say, a prosthesis would be a luxury her fam-ily could not afford. She’s very philosophi-cal and says having only one eye doesn’t cause her any problems. Like the majority of Haitians, her much greater concerns, are ensuring that her family is relatively well fed and that her children get a good educa-tion so they can find good work.

I’ve been blessed to meet all of the chil-dren: the boys Jeanriclair (15) and Mondr-ezan (6) and the girls Franceline (12), Ma-rie Clemène (10), Julmène (8) and Simonea (4). They are sweet, gentle children -- very polite, respectful of their parents and,

Ministry in all the different contexts that exist within the diocese. It’s a rare gift to visit so many congregations and learn from each of them. Lastly, Danni and I have also explored this amazing area via hiking, camping, surfing, and driving some beauti-

like most Haitian children, have plenty of household tasks and go about them without dawdling or complaining.

Over the years Trinity, Gladstone, has been very generous with the Haiti Mission. On my most recent visit to Haiti, earlier this year, I took about three dozen beanie babies donated by a Trinity family that brought great joy to a lot of children (greater than the number of toys because Haitian kids share). This spring a Gladstone parishioner invested in a $250 scholarship that Magalie used to help pay tuition as well as loans she’d taken out to buy school uniforms and books. She thought she’d have a little bit left over to use for this year’s school supplies (so she wouldn’t have to take out loans), but she admitted she might use a bit of their spare change to buy seed grain for their gardens to replace what they lost last October to Hurricane Sandy. Tough finan-cial choices are not new to Haitians.

It’s often been noted that one of the most endearing traits of Haitians is that they smile with their whole bodies. They say thank you the same way when they’re truly and deeply grateful and that’s the kind of thank you Magalie, Almanes and their chil-dren send to their family in Gladstone.

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh in a series of profiles of our Haiti scholarship students.

ful back roads. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to be here and look forward to hearing more about what innovative and new things this diocese will continue to accomplish.

Hope in Haiti, continued...

Internship, continued... Teena Maki O God of Grace and Glory, in the midst of the complexities of life, help us to find space for small acts of thanksgiving, quiet words of encouragement and simple prayers, for in them we are even in our weakness, witnesses to the fullness of your Word, Mercy and Justice known in Jesus our Lord. Amen. (The Rev. Canon Mark Harris) Our Ingathering month of Novem-ber has given us many blessings for which I pray you use your Blue Box adding a coin for each blessing. In Northern Michigan, we are thankful for the blessings given us in the form of grants for elevators, for the begin-ning of a family daycare, for our communi-cation system which allows us connection from the east to the west & north to south. I pray you all have had your Ingatherings, or at least have scheduled them and the money has been sent. United Thank Offering is function-ing well! We must remember that all money received is not ours, but the faithful gift of the gratitude of each Episcopalian who puts

coins into the blue box or blue envelope, or donates online. It is used for grants that will go to Episcopalians, Anglicans and affiliates who are doing innovative and important ministry in the world. Remember your daily Blessings and help the Circle of Thankfulness increase. Now is the time to begin to think of the need for submitting a grant appli-cation. Guidelines this year, remember-ing our Five Marks of Mission and the United Thank Offering motto--Our Change Changes Lives will need to include: JOY Expressing Love and Peace through the Arts: Creativity, Imagination, Innovation; HOPE Bringing Love and Peace through Education: Interaction, Collaboration, Part-nership; and GRACE Offering Love and Peace Through Social Justice: Restoration, Truth, Forgiveness. Northern Michigan will be allowed one grant. The grant application will be available January 3, 2014. The grant must be submitted electronically by Febru-ary 28, 2014. If you need assist in writing a grant, please contact Bishop Ray or Teena Maki.

UTO Ingathering and Grants

Page 4D Church In Hiawathaland December 2013

Youth News!Episcopal Youth Event

July 9-16 Villanova University, Philadelphia

A national youth eventRegistration opens early

JanuaryMore info at

www.upepiscopal.org

WiNTer Camp (date change!)

February 14-16, 2014

Small groups around the UP have been reading and studying the books of John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark. Ministry Support Teams, Cov-enant Groups and others have been inspired and challenged by the work of this engag-ing writer. A partnership of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s, the Diocese, and Northern Michigan University are now planning to bring John Spong to speak in Marquette on September 12-14. He will speak on his books, “Re-Claiming the Bible in a Non-Religious World,” and “Why Christianity must change or Die.” Over the past four decades, he has become one of the defining voices for progressive Christianity, and UP readers have found that engaging conversa-tions tend to flow from reading his work.

More information will be here in Hiawath-aland and online as the event draws nearer.

Spong to speak in UP September 2014

Coralie Hambleton The Women’s Ministries Coun-cil invites all women to the fourth annual Women’s Winter Respite Retreat, January 24-26, 2013 at Marygrove Retreat center in Garden, Michigan. This is a weekend to refresh your body, your mind and your spirit. A time to pull away from the busyness of our lives, of being the caretakers of our families and communities with so many responsibilities we forget to allow ourselves time to rejuve-nate, and restore our energies. Jesus went to a quiet place to pray, and withdrew where the crowds couldn’t find him. He knew the importance of soli-tude with God, to restore himself. He told us to love one another as yourself. Sisters, we get the ‘love one another’ very well; but the taking ‘loving ourselves’ part not so well. The Women’s Winter Respite is designed to allow you to withdraw for a short 42 hours, to love yourself, do the quiet things you haven’t had time to do, to worship and enjoy fellowship with other women. You are encouraged to bring to the retreat items which you’ve been meaning to get to, something which allows you to relax: reading material, knitting, beading, quilting or whatever restores you. For some this will be walking in the woods, or cross country skiing, sitting in the chapel and meditating, or just watching movies together. If you’ve been meaning to start a project but aren’t sure what to do with it, bring it along, chances are someone else

has a bit of experience and can help. If you’d like to teach or share something, bring that too. Time will be built in for worship, including Taize music. We have shared opportunities to try handwork such as bead-ing, quilting, coloring mandalas, and knit-ting prayer shawls. There are no require-ment. The retreat is yours to design to meet your own needs. Sleep, eat, nap, eat, walk, eat, laugh, play, worship: comfort and self care—we hope to have massages available again this year. The staff at Marygrove feeds us well, too! The Marygrove retreat center is located in the village of Gardenb, on M-183, 9 miles south of the US-2 intersec-tion, 17 miles west of Manistique. Saturday and Sunday meals are included. The retreat begins Friday evening with gathering at 7:00pm (eastern). You may arrive any time after 4:30pm. Bring a friend! For more information, contact Judy Anderson at 906-474-9801 or Coralie Hambleton at 906-869-2046.

Cost is $115. Mail $20 by January 17, 2013 to Judy Andersen, 8605 Schaawe Lane, Rapid River, MUI 49879. Please make your check out to Marygrove Center.Name__________________________________________________________Address_______________________________________Phone__________________________ email______________________________Special needs, including dietary _______________________________________

Annual women’s retreat planned

Christ Church, Calumet hosted witches, ghosts and goblins at their Halloween party. Their Sunday school is going strong, with plans for a Christmas play underway.

The Canterbury House ministry at Michi-gan Technological University in Houghton was recently awared a $5,000 program grant from the Campus ministry and Young Adult program of the Episcopal Church. They plan to use it to hire a student Hos-pitality Assistant. This person will assist Rick Buis in the day to day operations of continuing hospitality at Canterbury House, .St. Alban’s, Manistique is undergoing some extensive work on their building, renovat-ing the bathroom to make it accessible, re-finishing the front door and installing energy-efficient windows. They discovered one of the windows to be replaced was so in-efficient that grass was growing in between the paines of glass.

Around the diocese...

Thank you! Thank all of you who participated in and donated to the bake sale at diocesan con-vention in Escanaba. Your generosity was overwhelming. Donations exceeded $300! This will enable us to provide scholarships for our annual retreats. Please contact Judy Anderse, Coralie Hambleton or Teena Maki if you would like to attend the Marygrove retreat, but cost is a barrier. We wish to share the joy of this retreat with you.