Thank you Susan Ferguson, United Church overseas personnel

We were pleased on Oct. 9 to welcome Susan Ferguson as our guest speaker with a focus on the Mission and Service Fund.  Susan  and her husband Chris were appointed in 2004 as overseas personnel to serve with the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Jerusalem.  Susan was assigned primarily to the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a WCC initiative to support efforts to end the occupation of the Palestinian Territories and support a just peace in the Middle East. She functioned as the EAPPI team support person to teams of human rights monitors in Jerusalem and the occuped Palestinian Territories. Susan also worked with the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of Churches.

When Chris was re-assigned in 2006 to the WCC's United Nations Liason Office in New York City, Susan was re-assigned to work with the General Council's Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit in the areas of education and advocacy and advising on refugee and immigration and sponsorship matters.

Susan spoke to us about the olive harvest currently happening and how central the olive economy is to the people in the occupied territories. The deliberate destruction of olive trees by Israel's army is one of the tragedies of the occupation. The United Church of Canada participates in the WCC ecumenical program and has sent over 13 accompaniers to live in the occupied territories as a witness to what is happening.  Our Mission and Service Fund supports some of this work.

Susan and Chris  have now been assigned to Colombia, which for Chris is an ecumenical appointment jointly to the Methodist Church of Columbia and the Latin American Council of Churches, to function as the International Coordinator for the new Ecumenical Accompaniment Program of the Colombian churches. Susan will be an assistant to the Methodist bishop. The Methodist churches are localed primarily in areas where the massive populations of "internally displaced persons are, and in the Afro Caribbean and indigenous populations. 

We wish Chris and Susan fruitful and fulfilling ministries in Colombia and look forward to their news.

Blessings and Shalom,  Vicki Obedkoff