Hello All:

I'll keep this short and sweet, although I'm seldom at a loss for words.

The last - almost six months -- of working with Joining Hands has been a huge learning curve. Learning about each U.S. church-network. Learning about the issues each network is addressing. Learning about the folks who compose each network. And learning about our friends in the networks abroad.

It has been stimulating and fun and promises only to be more so.

You should have Lenten bulletin inserts in your hands now. One is under development for each country network through Lent. As a follow up to the Advent candlelighting liturgies, this material is designed to help deepen congregational commitment to each network and to the scope of the Joining Hands program in general. These inserts may be used in worship, in Sunday School classes, on bulletin boards, in targeted fund-raising appeals and in recruitment efforts.

Drafted by partners abroad, the prayers will help us to pray together throughout Lent and raise our voices in unison on Easter morning.

In Jerusalem, Michelle and Terry Finseth are already working to organize a 2007 Advent worship resource temporarily entitled, Waiting Behind the Wall: Advent in Bethlehem. They will be drawing upon the Christian community now living behind a 30-foot concrete wall, waiting their way through Advent.

Some of you are already reading books that have been donated to us by Fortress and Pilgrim Presses in hopes of finding authors who can help us find a common vocabulary for organizing and theological language to name the larger social problems we're confronting, many tied to the sin of corporate greed. When the recommendations arrive from readers, we'll be able to propose titles network-wide and set up consultations with authors whose perspectives may help us.

We've been able to turn over a number of letters. Most recently this was in solidarity with our Cameroonian Joining Hands partners for the release of a human rights worker in Angola working on transparency issues in the extraction industries. There is still more to be done here. There is no good reason why any single U.S. network cannot produce 100 letters on a given issue. If each member of a coordinating team got 10 people to write (just ask the people who like you in your home church for starters!), that's that 110 right there. Now imagine how many more letters could be generated if there were a point-person in each congregation! This is not rocket-science, just basic organization.

On a personal note, I'm very grateful for the cards that you sent and the calls that you made when my father and my aunt died so suddenly and unexpectedly. My extended family includes 75 people; some of the kids took an actual head count during our long hours in the funeral home in early January. But there is a huge hole.Your affection is helping to fill the void.

So as we together await resurrection as a body this Easter, know that you may call at any time, 502-569-5027, or email, aasmith@ctr.pcusa.org

Associate for Presbytery support