Synod Day 4 Monday

Monday was Service Day for visitors and work day for delegates. Some people went to Habitat for Humanity to help build a house and some went to a nursing home to talk to the old people. Since I am one I did not want to do that! So I chose to go to the United Church Outreach Ministry Center. It is a food bank, tutoring center for kids and and education center for adults. Food banks in Grand Rapids are all linked so that the people must register to receive food and wait while they are checked to see that they are not abusing the service. Then they can come once or twice a month to receive food. Plus Fema supplies milk so once a week they can come and receive an amount of milk depending on the number of children in the family. They also have a used clothing and furniture center. The center is located in an old funeral home but they have space for the food and several trucks stocked with excess food and furniture.
We were greeted by the director of the center who assigned jobs to us. Some people cleaned out the freezer so it could be moved some people stocked the shelves with food, some people repacked flour and other food that was supplied in bulk. Some painted the walls and offices and I chose to help get the notebooks used in tutoring to be ready for next fall. They reuse notebooks so I had to make them look like they were new and put new labels on them so that the kids could put their name on them. I found out about the tutoring program and plan to send them some science activities from the American Chemical Society that they can distribute. I will also see if some of the college student who tutor can help with the science activities.
Another group of students arrived after we came and they were also put to work, mostly painting. The youth groups at Synod had been working all week doing service projects so this was not new to them. I will write more about the youth and young adults at Synod later. About 11:30 AM lunch arrived! We had pulled pork sandwiches which was good. The bus to take us back to the convention center was to arrive at 12:30 but the director kept people working even after lunch until we got on the bus. I finished my job and went out into the parking lot to practice my Speak Out.
We got back into the convention center about 1:30 which was well in time for the the afternoon session.
The first thing that happens during any Synod business session is "Speak Out". This is a session where anyone can "Speak Out" for one minute about any subject not on the agenda of Synod. I chose to speak about blood cancers of course and funding for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society via the "Light the Night" walk. I managed to do it in one minute. After my performance I went to sit in the audience and observe the delegates debate the resolutions. I will talk about the resolutions in a later blog, I just want to give an overview of my day here. I wound up sitting next to another visitor from the state of New York. His wife was a delegate. He had printed out all the resolutions and was following the voting etc. It was nice to sit next to him as we had a running conversation going about the event. We wound up sitting next to each other by choice during all the plenary sessions.
That evening Geoffrey Black was elected the new General Minister replacing John Thoma. He was the New York Conference Minister and he is the second African American to head the United Church of Christ. We also elected The Rev Linda Jaramillo Executive Minister of Justice and Witness Ministries and The Rev. Stephen Sterner Executive Minister of Local Church Ministries and members of the board of directors.
The evening ended with a short worships service which is different because it was liturgical dancers interpreting Scripture as it was read.
I will write about Tuesday tomorrow. I am a day behind because I got tired Monday night and went to bed instead of blogging. Tomorrow Wednesday, I leave for home, I will have time to do some blogging tomorrow since I have a long layover between trains in Chicago.
Jeannette