Church & Society

For More Information:

Doreen Grayless
Team Leader
PO Box 126
Leiters Ford, IN 46945-0121
574.542.4338
dgrayles@iusb.edu

NIC Church & Society Member Visits the Middle East

The General Board of Global Ministry sponsored a Peace and Justice Mission trip to Israel and Palestine. In February four from the North Indiana Conference, Rev. Nancy Richmond, Rev. Byron Kaiser, Barney Stahl, and Conrad Damian went on this trip. Rev. Nancy Richmond, a member of the P&JA team, received a grant from P&JA for this.

When there has been war, there are winners and losers. The winners get to write the history books. This team learned the other side to the story. There are 72,000 Christian Palestinians there. The team saw a lot, learned a lot, and is willing to share the stories with any church, district meeting, and Annual Conference.

The team saw people who want peace and justice. Peace for Palestinians is living in their land without roadblocks, barriers, and soldiers with machine guns pointed at them. Peace is knowing that your home won’t be bulldozed with a Caterpillar. It is raising children in a safe environment where the children can go to schools and the parents will know that they will come home again at the end of the day. They want to live without segregation and discrimination and restriction of movement.

The team was never in danger there. But it was an American group. The people of that land need hope. They want peace. A pastor told us, “Let us pray that the place (this land) where the church was born, may not be the place where the church dies.”