On the agenda was Delores Nice from California

DOLORES:  I have a loud teacher’s voice.  It says “ministry” on there (on the bulletin board is says “Delores Nice; Prison Ministry”), and I just wanted to touch a little bit on two aspects of my new ministry that I really have developed a passion.  I told you a little bit last night that I was trained as a teacher and I was an elementary school principal for 14 years before I took early retirement, and a year after retirement, I got very, very bored and I decided, “You know, I’m 56 years old.  What am I going to do with my life.  I’m not the type to sit home and watch TV all day.  So I went back to school.  I went to Berkeley at the graduate theological union and I got a Masters’ Degree in Theology.

So then, in order to finish your Masters, they say, “Well you have to do an internship,” and so they gave me these choices, because I was a Chaplain.  So you could be a hospital chaplain, do parish work, do university work, and then jail and prison was the other one.  Well, I was not interested in – did not want anything to do with education.  I do not like parish work and hospitals  - I can’t stay awake at night. So I thought, well, that leaves prisons!  So, I prayed about it, and it was just an amazing experience.  I served a year as an intern, a chaplain intern at the federal prison for women outside of San Francisco.  East of San Francisco.  It was pretty famous because Patty Hurst was there in the 70’s, you may remember that, but it was just really an incredible, incredible experience and I just fell in love with the women.  You really do fall in love with them.

So, we had to devise our own program, so I asked if I could do retreats.  I did one retreat a month for the inmates and then I also did pastoral counseling and they would come up and make appointments.  But that’s about 85 miles round trip for me, so now I’m working at the San Mateo County Jail, which is made famous now by Scott Peterson. 

Linda:  How does a woman in prison go to a retreat?  Do they just get to go to a separate part?

Dolores:  We have a chapel.  There’s a chapel on the premises.  The women sign up and, you know, they get permission and they come.  They have to submit a little slip.  I think it’s called a ‘call-out’ slip.

Linda:  They have to go back to their cell at night?

Dolores:  Oh, yeah.  In the federal prison, they all have jobs.  They all work. And I had to work around the schedule.  I did it on Saturday so that they wouldn’t be at their jobs, because they’d get the weekends off, and I had to do it between 1 and 4 because 4:00 is cell count and they had to be back in their cell.  But I’m telling you this because I’m really encouraging you to think about the prison population – the most forgotten population, full of young people.  80% of the people in prisons now are there because of drugs. (drug) Related.  At the federal prison it was transporting, manufacturing, going across state lines. The county is everything.  You know?  I did not find one rich person in prison because they can afford the attorneys and they can pay the bail.  It’s a very unfair system.  If there is one question that I have for the teachers it is: what can we do about it?   People are literally just wasted, wasted lives. 

At the federal level, it’s very severe penalty.  If a woman — let’s see…one of the women I counseled, they get into the drug selling and transporting because they’re mostly low-income, uneducated, and they’re not making it.  So it’s easy money.  And they know it’s wrong but they have to support their families -- 20-25 years.  No parole in the federal penitentiary.  Horrible!  So what about their kids?  Their families?  If they have family members, the grandparents are doing it or they are farmed out into the foster care, but what are we doing?  We’re creating another generation.  It’s a terrible, terrible system.  Very unfair.

And the mentality of the United States is “get tough on crime” but what about these big corporate people? How come they don’t go?  I mean, Martha Steward would not be in jail if they didn’t want to make an example of her.  But it really is terribly, terribly unfair.  I get so angry.  So angry.  When I was there.  When I was doing pastoral counseling, I was there from about 9 in the morning 'til about a quarter to three and the women would sign up so I would see one in every hour for 15 minute and take ten minutes between?  I’d leave there.  I’d go to my car and I was so physically and emotionally….spiritually drained, that I couldn’t drive home.  I’d sit there and I’d cry for 15-20 minutes then I’d ask God for help. For strength, then I’d drive the 45 miles home, but …

Pray for these women.  They’re good women.  You know?  There but for the grace of God go I.  Keep them in your mind.  Keep alert to anything in your community-- In California, we have those stupid “three strikes you’re out” laws, so if you made a mistake when you were a young kid, so you did something, then your third strike is you steal a can of beer.  Twenty, thirty years in San Quentin!  Not only is it stupid, it’s costing us money and it’s a misinterpretation.  I plead with you.  Educate yourself and be a voice for people that have no voice.  They are so hungry for truth and for God.  I can’t tell you. 

And if there is anyway you can get involved in such prison ministry … Bruce Porter and a couple of other people that do the Urantia Book in the jail.  I don’t do the Urantia Book by name, but I certainly bring it over.  So that is just one of my passions right now. 

My other passion is retreat work.  About 15 years ago, in my local Urantia Society called Golden Gate Circle, up in the Bay area, I was very disturbed by what was going on in the Urantia Movement.  You know, the big divorce?  Fellowship and the Foundation.  You know?  It was so ugly and everything.  And then it’s also disturbing what was going on in our study group, in our movement.  It was all up head tripping. We were all studying, reading – I mean, how many times do you have to read the book before you apply it to your life? Really.  That was my question.  It isn’t just about reading.  We have to integrate it.  That’s our responsibility.  I don’t think we were given this Book for nothing. It is not the luxury that we have to sit and read it.  So anyhow, because of my background as a Catholic, growing up – I went to Catholic schools for 16 years.  Every year when I was in high school and college, we made a retreat and it was wonderful!  They took us out of the academic world and we went away for a weekend to a place like this, and we spent time together praying, sitting, talking about God, and I thought “Boy!  The Urantia movement could use something like this.” 

So 15 years ago, I happened to be the Program Chair for our Society so I could do anything I want, so I said, “Guess what?  God is scheduling a retreat for us.”  A lot of people didn’t know what a retreat was, so… it has developed now that our society has two a year: one in the spring; one in the fall.  In the fall we go up to the redwood country in Sonoma County to a beautiful little place that the Episcopal Church has; it’s called St. Dorothy’s Rest, and it’s in the redwood trees.  It’s just lovely.  Were you there, JoAnn? Oh, you missed it?  Okay.  And then in the Spring, we’d go to Santa Cruz County.  Some friends just bought a big house and we brought our sleeping bags and it’s really a lot of fun and this has brought us so close together.  Our whole – we’ve a very active group in California.  We’re very close.  It’s a real community.  But I really attribute it to this coming together twice a year.

Well, about – when was the IC in Vancouver? ’99?  Wasn’t that where you got married (referring to Gerdean)?  Yeah.  You didn’t know me, I didn’t know you but I was there.  A group of us got together at dinner one night and we were talking one night. You know how the angels work when they bring you together?  And we were all very upset with what’s going on in the movement, and I said, “I didn’t become part of this movement to get in a war.”  You know.  “We must do something.” And other people had the same idea and we all happened to have dinner together that night and so there were about 5 or 6 of us, and we said, “Let’s do something!”  Let’s not just talk, let’s do something!  So I said, well let’s do retreats!  So we started a group and it’s called The Retreat Network.  The original name that we wanted was The Retreat Network of Students of the Urantia Book.  The Foundation said, “No, you can’t use that name.”  So …

But we have a logo.  We have flyers.  I’m sorry but we left them home.  But we have the planet in the middle and three concentric circles going around it and it’s called the Retreat Network, so we have a retreat every year.  We’ve had it – and we travel around the country.  We had it in Washington, at SeaTac WMCA.  We had about 40 people up there.  We’ve had it in Portland, Oregon.  We had it in Southern California.  The … I forget the name of it.  We’ve had it in Silver Springs up in Toronto.  Did we have it in Monterey?  I don’t think so.  I don’t remember.  And this year we’re having it in Santa Barbara, California.  And the stupid Xerox machine wouldn’t cooperate with me, and I only have one flyer but let me leave it up here and you can look at it and take down the information. 

It says “the retreat network announces ‘the life to which you have been called’ – that’s the theme.  And it’s taken from a post of Jesus from Urantia Book which said, “And now have I brought you apart with me, and by yourselves for a little while, that you may comprehend the glory and grasp the grandeur to which I have called you.” So all the presentations of the retreat are around this theme.  The people who are going to be doing this retreat – we don’t have one person do it.  We have Gard Jamison from Las Vegas who is going to be on the team. Sue Tennant from Toronto.  She has Silver Springs and if you haven’t been to Silver Springs, it’s a lovely place.  Bruce Porter from Portland, Oregon is the other person and the musicians are David Doolittle and his wife from Palm Desert, California.  He’s a classical Spanish guitar player. Just delightful.  The dates are April 1 to 3.  We’re having it at Casa Maria Retreat House in Santa Barbara California.  It’s really in the little town of Montecito, which is really an exclusive, gorgeous, expensive area, and this place is gorgeous.

I already told you the theme:  “The life to which we have been called.”  We’re going to have workshops, readings, centering prayer (or stillness) music, quiet reflection time in nature because the grounds are so gorgeous.  We’re going to visit the mission of Santa Barbara and we’re going to spend some time out on the beach on the coast, and then we’re going to end with a group worship.  The retreat cost is $250 for two nights lodging and six meals and we do have $50 scholarships available.  I’m certainly hoping that people from the LA area can come.

Then, we have started having a pre-conference retreat – about the third year now, so at Villanova University this summer, for IC-05, the day before we’re going to have a short retreat and it’s called “experiencing spirit in everyday life” and the quote from the Urantia Book is “spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists” and don’t we know that.  I think we’re experiencing that.  It’s going to be …

Norm:  That’ll be the 29^th?

Dolores:  It’s going to be -- it begins on Friday, July 30^th at 5 PM ends on Saturday at 4 PM. 

Linda:           In Pennsylvania.

Dolores:        It’s just before the conference, and it’s $25 and whatever they charge you for a room.  It’s a mini-retreat.  I think in our Urantia movement, and I’m not sure about the Teaching Mission because I’m pretty new to the Teaching Mission, but I think what’s been lacking in this community is spirituality.  You know, people don’t talk about spirituality.  They’re kind of hung up on praying.  We’ll have a moment of silence, but God forbid that we pray together.  It’s slowing coming over.  I remember there was a conference, I think it was in Flagstaff where the guy played the piano and he had us rocking with all that music – it was wonderful!  We had really good music.  All of a sudden people complained that it was too Christian.  So what I try to do – I’m very conscious of that – whenever we have retreats, I try to inject prayers and ritual from other traditions, just so we have a little bit of exposure, because I think we have to educate ourselves to what our brothers and sisters in the Muslim world and the Buddhists, etc., are doing and we’re very enriched by it.  So I would encourage you to, if you can attend, either the one in Santa Barbara or the one in Villanova… I don’t know what the City is.

Group:         Philadelphia.

Dolores:        Not quite Philadelphia.

Group:         Villanova is really a lovely place.

Dolores:        And you know how college dorms are usually awful?  I was on the committee so I want on the site visit and we got the brand new building.  Lovely!  Very nice.  The train stops right there.  What I’m going to do is leave a blank piece of paper and if you’re interested in either one, I will mail it to you.  We don’t have any tape, huh?  Or I could tape that.  Okay, thank you very much.

A brief announcement by JoAnn Wiedman

JoAnn:         I just wanted to make a very short announcement.  Thursday night, back at my place, we had a small T/R session at my place in Pueblo, and we had my niece show up who is 25 and had never been to one before and she wanted some healing work, and so we just set up the merkaba and set the Reiki table in the middle of it and did the healing work and listened to the teachers, and when we were finished, they asked if I would do that here, so we’re starting with Dolores. 

As soon as we’ve finished in here, we set it up for three but we can just move along with the schedule, so when we’re complete in here, we’re going to go to the Map Room and set up a circle and anyone who wants to come is invited and they can take turns.

Introducing Norman Ingram  -- or not.

Angus (MC):  And now, someone who needs no introduction. [Angus leaves podium]  (Laughter)  [Angus returns to podium] I’m serious!  [leaves again]

Norman Ingram: Wugwump.

Group: Wugwump.

 Norman:     I’ll make this short since we are all running behind time.  Basically what I wanted to say and invite you to participate in is an outreach that we have coming up.  We call ourselves “UNO” Urantia Nations Outreach.  We changed it from WOUN, but now it’s UNO, and my health and physical condition has not been conducive to do much recently, as far as internationally is concerned, but protégé Pradhana Fuchs – I don’t know if you know Pradhana, if you have ever met him at any of the – Okay, a little bit about Pradhana         

Duane Faw, Stella Religa, Richard Omura, John Mahaffee, Sandy, all went to Peru with me in 1995 to do some outreach through Peru.  We heard of a study group there, quite large.  They had one book and so we took some books down.  Our last few nights in town we had gone to Keysack, a little town that had a hotel room and we were going to Machupichu the next day and then back to California the next day.  Duane and I were on a bench in the courtyard and we were talking and we felt this energy go by and I saw the back of these two people walking by and I thought, “Gee, that was strange,” but we went back to talking and pretty soon this energy came back and stopped and I looked up and there was bright-eyed bushy-tailed Jewish boy from Chile with a big smile on his face standing there looking at me so I stood up and after we introduced ourselves around, he looked me straight in the eye and he says, “What are you doing here?” and I had almost forgot.  That caught me off guard.  I said, “Well, I’m talking to my friend here and, oh yeah!  We brought these El Libra de Urantia Books to Peru.”  Well his eyes even got bigger and he said, “Urantia!  I’ve been looking for this book for my spiritual progress!  Goose bumps all over. 

And so he explains the story that he had read a book by a famous Spanish author.  J.J. Benitas wrote this book called “The Trojan Horse” and as he returned this book to the library, his library friend told him that J.J. got this information from this book called Urantia, and it is very expensive and very hard to get, so I said, “Oh!  One momento!” and I went upstairs and I brought him one down and his knees practically buckled.  Well, the rest of the afternoon and evening we became great friends and the next morning we were leaving for the Machupichu and then back to Los Angeles, so he was up and met the rest of our Urantia group and had breakfast with us and as the bus rolled out of sight to catch the train for Machupichu, I could see the rear view mirror, Machupichu watching the bus go out of sight.

Well, we had exchanged addresses so I knew our paths were going to pass again because it was very serendipity in the first place not to go further than that, and so I come home from Machupichu that day and the garden boy at the hotel comes running up with this “Chile Boy!” and hands me this note.  I opened it up and it said, “My dear friend. Once I met a wise man from Mexico.  He told me to watch my possessions because it was a sign of my ego.  I don’t know how closely you are associated with the friends you are traveling with or what budget you are traveling on, but you indicated to me you also wanted to go to Brazil.”  He said, “I also speak Portuguese.”  He says, “If you want – and I have been given a signal to go to Ecuador, so if you help me get to Ecuador, I will help you and interpret with you for going through Portuguese throughout the Latin countries.”  So he said, “If you want, let’s travel the Urantia South America trail together.”

Oh, well, what a note!  So I took it to Duane.  I took it to Stella first and says, “read this and pray about it and tell me what you think, what you come up with,” and she said, okay, she would, and I showed it to Duane and Duane read about it and he said, “Hell, I don’t have to pray about it.  If I was younger, I’d go with you.”  Most of you know Duane.  In fact, he said, “I’m going to be in Los Angeles tomorrow.  I have an extra $100 bill, maybe that’ll help you guys get along your way, so in the note it said that he would go down, check out the hotel, be in the Valley of the Sacred Court, down the Rio Bamba, and that he knew the girl at the phone mart.  Being a handsome young fellow, he knew all the girls, of course. So I called the girl, of course she got through to him and he got back to me and we decided, “Yes, well, we’ll give it a try, but Stella and I are stopping off in Lima tomorrow.  We’re leaving, and we had a couple things we didn’t get to do there while we were there with the group because they wanted to do some sight seeing and things other than outreach, but I said, “We’re going to hit a few prisons and an orphanage or two along the way, on the way back.”  So I said, “So meet us there.  We’ll be there 4 days, so if you get to the hotel before we leave, we’ll put Stella on the plane and we’ll try a couple months of this outreach missionary work that you want to do.

And so Stella and I get to Lima the next day… Oh! So he said, the problem of it was he couldn’t get to Lima in time by bus, because it’s quite a ways.  He’d be a day or two getting there, and so I says, “I’m going to put your plane fare in an envelope at the front desk.  You come by and pick it up -- (that was the $100) and you can meet us there, we’ll do something.  If you don’t meet us there, we’ll meet up and do something some other time. A couple days later at the hotel somebody taps me on the back of the shoulder as I come down the stairs.  I was talking to a couple from Canada about … guess what?  The Urantia Book.  So I turn around and sure enough here’s Pradhana. So that was very interesting.

Dolores being interested in prisons, Stella had her first, I think experience with a prison at that time. Pradhana and I went to the men’s prison, which was one of the places we wanted to go and we often do when we travel, and the taxi driver was a young lady – a young girl with a baby, and she owned her own Volkswagen.  She owned her own taxi, so anytime we went anywhere in Lima we called her and we became great friends and she dropped us around to the library and things … knew what we were about, so we introduced her to Stella and she and Stella go to a women’s prison.  And the experience that was there for Stella was that they loved what she had to say.  One even wanted to give her a post card that was a homemade Christmas card or something like that, later on. 

But in our travels we do a lot of orphanages and prisons and – I had an experience before that, with prisons, being that I was born and raised, practically, a Methodist – been looking for God since I was 5 years old, that I could remember, and having the many experiences you were talking about.  I went to John Brown University in Silent Springs, Arkansas, which was a Christian University, supposedly interdenominational but was basically Southern Baptist.  And so we would go on the weekends – we’d go out to stroll small country churches that didn’t have a pastor, we’d pastor the church and then we’d go to prisons.  There’s always a special reward when you go to prison and work with those people. 

So, anyhow, the crux of the matter.  Recently I heard from Pradhana and he has, of course, since 1995, had a study group in Santiago and he also has started a commune of young people that gets up to 25 at times and they get down to 6 or 7 at times and it varies, but it’s all about the Urantia Book and working and living together, and that he took a job out of this travel for a while.  His parents wanted him to settle down after he got back from one of our excursions so he went to work for Land Chile, the airline there, for a couple of years to make enough money to buy some land.  That’s what he wanted to do and his folks matched the money so as soon as he got the land he quit his job and they make bread twice a week to support themselves, so …

A young fellow in his study group that I met the first time when I was there, by the name of Cholera, he had an urge to come to them and a “calling” to go to Cuba.  Now, Pradhana did, at the time that we were there. We went from Peru to Ecuador and then to Columbia and up the Amazon two nights on a boat and back to Peru and to Chili.  In ’96 he came out to Arizona to the International, which was the first time he had been to an international meeting, in Arizona in ’96, and so we were going to go back to South America to complete what we had started, but since we were already in Arizona and we had about two cases of books given to us at that time, that would get us down the road a little ways. 

We were going clear to Chile, that is to the tip of South America, but we started out with the two cases of books we had, and Fred Harris picked up on that and put it out on the Internet and started to say, “Let’s send these guys some more books,” and here the fellowship people, the foundation people were sending the foundation money for books to go to South America.

So we’re going along the way there, we get to Costa Rica and we’re supposed to have a shipment of books waiting there for us.  We heard that there were 70 more paid for that was coming, and they weren’t there, so I called Bob Sloan at the Foundation, I said, “Gee, where’s the books?”  He said, “Well, we have a little problem.”  He said, “They’re paid for.  People are sending money,” and it was kind of uniting the fellowship and the foundations activities there a little bit because they were working towards the same ends, but he said, “We have a little problem.  We have TWO problems with you.”  I said, “Oh, what’s that?”  He said, “Well, the first problem is we hear that you’ve been selling the books that we’ve been sending down there free for you to give away.”  I said “Well, okay, that’s number one; what’s number two?”  And he said, “We understand that you are part of the Teaching Mission.”  I said, “Okay, well number one, as far as books are concerned, and as far as meeting people as we go along the way, our first basic priority is the National Library.  We do that.  We get off the plane and before we check into a hotel at night, we go to the National Library; we place a book there so that anywhere in that nation the word Urantia is mentioned, you can say ‘It’s as close as your National Library.’  Then we do a University, a prison and the orphanages.  So I said, what we do is, as we pass by, if someone is attracted to what we are doing and what we are having to say, and they show an indication to us that they would at least read the book, I will decide in my mind and with my Oscar (my Thought Adjuster; I’ve nicknamed it Oscar at one point) and Oscar gives me a nudge to give them a book then I don’t just go off and give them a book.  People think, “What do we do, just air drop these books to get rid of them or what do we do with these books? How do you know who gets a book and who doesn’t?  Then my partner, we always go two by two – there’s definitely a reason why Jesus sent them out two-by-two – first of all to watch each other’s back when you’re in a foreign country, plus you can collaborate on the spirituality of this individual or how you feel they might take to it. So then I turn the person over to Pradhana and he’ll turn someone over to me, and we’ll decide if we’ll give them a book or not.  So it’s collective thought on that process. 

And so I got this note recently from Pradhana recently saying that Cholera and he would like to come to 05 in Philadelphia, but via Cuba.  Cuba was laid on their hearts and they felt a calling to go.  Well, this is great because we’ve already done IC96.  From ’96 we did Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.  (Applause)  So that was the second trip to South America.  And then, of course, toward the end of the South American outreach, Africa began to come up in my mind and I began to argue with Oscar – I’m not interested in Africa.  I haven’t lost anything there; I don’t want to lose anything there.  And I have no interest in Africa at all!  But as I began to finish the South American outreach, it became more of a burden and so I thought, I’ll at least do a plan.  And I met a fellow in Costa Rica, Roger Dolphley, who was a Unity minister in San Jose church there in Costa Rica who, when I told him about my possible plan of going to Africa, he says, “Oh, I’ve been to Africa before!  I’ve driven this, I’ve done that.” And so it comes in the plan that he was going to be my partner for that trip.  And in the meantime, Don Roark (I don’t know how many of you know Don Roark in the past, he graduated – when we were in Africa the second trip – but he went with me to Asia.  I had a $999 round trip air ticket to 18 countries of Asia in 30 days, so we were working in the meantime at book fairs and outreach.  We have a booth at Venice Beach sort of kind of keep sharp on our toes, and keep our spirits sharp, and so Don was working the booth with me so I was scouting the Internet one night and there was this offer on the Internet saying you could do 18 countries in 30 days on CapA Pacific for $999, so we put it to prayer and pretty soon you know we’re rolling down another runway, and we do a 14 country outreach in 28 days.  I was quite tired after that.  I didn’t know there was so much running, and always the library director or whatever is on the third floor and there’s never any elevators so its always lugging books down.

Stella knows that from covering 16 countries in Europe with me on my way to Africa, but anyhow, so Don and I get back from that and I feel Don is here with us at these Teaching Missions.  He’s the one that took me first to the Teaching Mission and that’s when I met Stella.  I thank God for that.  We have an anniversary coming up in July. Ten years that we’ve been together, so we hear from Pradhana and Oh!  Susan Kimsey contributed a lot to the Teaching Mission and my acceptance of the Teaching Mission, so how I answered it with the fellow at the foundation, that I wasn’t an advocate of the Teaching Mission.  I don’t receive and I don’t transmit, but I have so many dear friends that do, and just because I don’t is no sign that they are not, so I said, “I go where the love is.” And I said I love the Foundation and the people there; I love the Fellowship and the people there; but if you really want to be over loved, it’s getting around the Teaching Mission.  That’s where the love is and that’s where I go.

So Pradhana wrote us this letter and Dolores is going to be my glasses on this, and then comment to sending out this plea for financing for his trip for about 2/3 there of having the money for the thing which is $5,200 for what we have planned, and get ready to do this.  We had two cases of books.  We thought we could maybe get into Cuba with, but there’s going to be a – there’s been a long process of … Rosie Luske, I don’t know how many of you know Rosie, in Phoenix.  She has been getting books into Cuba through Augustine.  They send down five books, maybe two books will make it, so it’s been a long, long process.  The young fellow that’s been getting the books has five books there.  Pradhana had been in touch with them, wants to give them a shot in the arm, get their study group started.  He went to Barcelona this year and two weeks afterward to help two study groups get started from the Barcelona outreach in Barcelona.  And so this is the plea that he has made and so Pauly Friedman wrote his comments and Sue Tennant writes a comment to his plea and Rosie Luske.

Dolores:  These are all email messages, so this first one is from Pradhana.  It says,

“Brothers and sisters of our Urantia community.  Warm greetings from Chile.  My name is Pradhana and my friend Cholera and I are writing to you because our souls are hungry to establish an effective Urantia Book outreach in Cuba.  We are willing to give our lives for this mission but we need help with the cost of the Spanish book, travel and the minimal of living expenses.  For some time we have been in touch with a reader group in Havana that probably has the only five books in all of Cuba.  Most of you know the history of this special island country and the plight of the Cuban people.  Our work is not political so we won’t give opinions but we are very concerned that Cuba does not have same possibilities to receive new spiritual meaning as many other countries have.  We want to bring books to Cuba and spread our new revelation in this amazing country.  We know that the people in Cuba are waiting for this.  As lovers of the Urantia Book, we know that the time of seeds are in our little blue treasure. We want these seeds to sprout and we feel called to be the sowers.  Our plan is to place books in each of the 14 districts that comprise Cuba and three other locations in the Caribbean – Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.  We intend to share with the people, on person at a time, our love of the teachings and to complete the mission by July so we can share our experiences with you at IC05 in Philadelphia.  Your financial contributions will help spark our plan into action and move it ahead into this direction.  We thank all of the ones that have helped us throughout the years, plus UNO, Urantia Nations Outreach.   Thank you and thanks to God.  Pradhana.”

And then Polly Freeman writes … “The news about Cuba is indeed uplifting and I wish all the best for your efforts.  I am impressed with the genuine and sincerity of this letter and hope in the future I can help with the project.” And Sue Tennant, from Toronto, Canada, wrote:  “But now Pradhana is willing to go to Cuba! On Norman’s recommendation, Derrick and I sponsored him at the Parliament of World’s Religions in Barcelona last July.  The Parliament in Chicago in 1993 motivated me to serve in a whole new interfaith paradigm.  I want to pass on that experience to someone else, and Pradhana was the right choice.  He is very special.  He has a wonderful way with people.  He's’ sweet but strong, compassionate, intelligent, joyful, multi-skilled and very alert to people’s needs.  He worked the booth long hours and stayed an extra two weeks in Barcelona to help start two new study groups.  Mark Bloomfield (a Urantia Book reader from England) is British and his goal is to place as many books as possible and he is very good at it.  Parade’s goal is to introduce this book and its teaching in a personal way.  Like Mark, he seems to live on nothing and is completely devoted to this revelation, and since Spanish is his native language, I believe that he can genuinely expand the opportunity to see Cuba through personal relationships.  The extreme poverty and isolation of Cuba does make strong appeal.  The Cuban people deserve to meet a living teacher, to see Jesus living again in a spirit-born servant which, in effect, will reveal the Master to them.”  And then Rosie writes, “This is so exciting.  I have heard about Pradhana a few days ago and it’s hard to think of a worthier mission or someone better qualified to enter.” 

He is an outstanding young man.  

Norman:  So there are these flyers.  These are up here, if any of you would like to take them back to your study groups and discuss it, there is an address there if you want to pack donations yourself, you can send it to UBLA, the Urantia Society of Los Angeles has taken it up with their board and it has decided that they will take the tax-deductible funds for this trip for the Fellowship.  John and Jane Plotsky of the IUA are beating the drums for the same project with the IUA and the Foundation, and ALL has been accepting funds for the Teaching Mission group. So here we have all three groups, four groups, working together for one common cause.  That’ll bring us closer together than anything, and I thank you and God bless you all. 

Gerdean:  I just wanted to say, speaking of such services, that out on the table there is a gold box, there is an envelope.  If any of you have any –what is it called?  The Charitable Nature” --  any of those causes: the Canossian Sisters, the Association for Light and Life, the Sewing Machine Project for Africa, …

Norman:     For Kenya.

Gerdean:     Right.  And this project to get the UB into Cuba, there’s a bunch of things going on because all of us want to do something, and they all cost money, so if anybody is feeling particularly generous, put it in the box out there.  There’s envelopes and a pen and we’ll get it to the people where you want it to go, if it makes it any easier, just put it in the gold box, along with the tapes of the sessions that we’re doing and we’ll take care of that after the programs.

Angus:  That’s it for now!  We’ll all gather here together after supper.

[At this point, the Conference Center enclave broke up.  The healing group gathered in the Map Room and Rayson met with Second Revelatory Commission proponents in the Library.]

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