© 2008 Paula Thompson, Gerry Pando, Michelle Klimesh
© 2008 The Urantia Book Fellowship
¶ IC ’08 Is Almost Here!
Join us in sunny Los Angeles for the Fellowship International Conference 2008, July 2-6, on the UCLA campus. Registration begins on Tuesday, July 1 and attendees will be welcomed with a reception that evening. The opening plenary on Wednesday, July 2, will begin an exciting week of worship, truth, friendship, and spirit, representing the theme, “The Thrill of Loving Service.”
The beautiful UCLA campus is a relatively short drive from the LAX airport, and activities will be concentrated in a small area. All workshops and plenaries will be held in the same building and will be located on the same floor as The Expo, bookstore, art gallery, and the information/registration center. Dormitories are only a few minutes walk from the main building and common areas. The campus has handicapped accessibility and is super easy to navigate.
In the evenings, Urantia musicians including Pato Banton, Common Ground, and others will provide music in the plenary room, which has a terrace for both indoor and outdoor listening. On Saturday, July 5, we will celebrate a gala dinner with delicious food and wonderful music.
Friday, July 4, will be a “light” day. You can be on your own in LA, or stay on campus and enjoy in-depth study groups and workshops.
¶ IC ’08 Activities
A Pre-Conference Spiritual Retreat will be held at St. Joseph’s Retreat House in Pacific Palisades from Sunday, June 29 to Tuesday, July 1. Francyl Gawryn, Gard Jameson and Bobbie Dreier will lead this retreat for those who wish to dive a little deeper into the interior castle of their souls. Space is limited to 30 participants, and the facility is close to LAX and the UCLA campus. The retreat cost is $150 (all-inclusive). Please contact Gard Jameson at gardj@attglobal.net for further information.
A Welcome Thought Adjuster Ceremony for children ages 5-7 will be held in the Jerusalem Marketplace Thursday evening, July 3, following dinner. This is a beautiful time of a child’s life and we want to honor it with a memorable event. If you would like your child to participate, please e-mail planners@ic08.org.
IC ’08 Expo will consist of several tables or “booths” where our grass roots friends as well as our Committee Chairs can create a space to display their service related projects. The Fellowship Executive Committee and the Foundation Trustees will also have a table to answer your questions. These booths will be occupied for various periods of time every day during the entire conference. If you are interested in having a booth, please contact us at planners@ic08.org. Space is limited.
The Tweens Program will be structured and geared towards service during the conference. The Tweens will help the conference planners and presenters, working with the stage crews, filming talks, working with computers, and helping workshop leaders set up AV equipment. Adult leaders will oversee their assignments and parents will check them in and out. All Tweens that sign up will receive two white T-shirts with the Fellowship logo that will identify them as helpers.
Truthseekers on Catalina - You can read about this trip at www.ic08.org. Please click on the Youth page. Tom Choquette and Fred Harris are leading this incredible trip. For detailed information, please contact planners@ic08.org.
A Celebration of Loving Service will be held on Friday evening, July 4, and will be a participatory event based on a revolutionary form of interfaith, multi-cultural, and intergenerational worship. We will need artists, musicians, singers, dancers or movement leaders, poets, storytellers, and computer/electronics technicians. If you feel called to collaborate in this celebration, please contact Steve Rohrbach at (303) 579-7646 or steverohrbach@earthlink.net or Edina Preucel at (303) 666-9415.
¶ Contributions/Donations are needed in several areas:
- The Scholarship Fund will help individuals and families who need a little help attending the conference. Please donate to help get young families to IC ’08. Contact us at planners@IC08.org if you need a little extra help to get to the conference.
- The Children’s and Youth Program Fund will help defray costs of special programs for the young.
- The Musicians Fund will assist our musicians who travel to the conference at their own expense and miss virtually all of the programs because they practice for the music. Many of our musicians need help in defraying the cost of this conference.
¶ Payment for IC08 Made Easier.
We are now using a registration service that allows you to register on-line and make payments at a convenient time for you. After the initial deposit of $125, you may pay monthly or at any time by logging into the link sent after you have registered. Register early and receive a beautiful conference tote bag and save money as well! Register on-line now or send in the registration form on pages 9-10.
¶ Duane Faw Graduates
Duane Faw, Born July 7, 1920, graduated life on our planet Urantia on March 26, 2008. Duane had an active military career, retiring in 1971 as Brigadier General from the Marine Corps, where he served as a military pilot and in three wars, World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam. Later in his career, Duane, a practicing attorney, became a Law Professor and Professor Emeritus at Pepperdine University School of Law.
Duane became the 101st member of The First Urantia Society of Los Angeles on January 18, 1975, along with his wife Lucile. He later served The Urantia Book Fellowship as Chair of the Judicial Committee, serving on the Executive Committee from 1979 until 1988. He then served the Fellowship for an additional term on the General Council from 1991 until 1994—a total of twelve years of active service to the Fellowship.
He is also known for his compiled work, the Paramony, a 588- page book which contains nearly 60,000 references paralleling and harmonizing the Bible and The Urantia Book. In addition, it contains over 10,000 cross-references internal to the Bible and several thousand internal to The Urantia Book. Duane’s grandfather and father were Presbyterian clergymen and he was an amazing scholar of both books. Duane’s Paramony is an invaluable aid for people who study both the Bible and The Urantia Book. Whether you are a student, a truth seeker, a Bible or Urantia Book teacher, a Christian minister, a Jewish rabbi, a theologian, a philosopher or a God-seeker, the Paramony is a gem.
Duane spent many hours publicly exhibiting The Urantia Book at book fairs and expos and invariably some interested person would ask him how the book compares to the Bible, to which he would exuberantly exclaim “The Urantia Book makes my Bible come alive!”
Duane also wrote another splendid book based on the teachings of The Urantia Book entitled, Religion Ought to Make Sense. He had a remarkable sense of humor and always had a funny joke to tell, the best part of which was the sparkle he go in his eye when he told it.
The Fellowship officially honored Duane and Lucile Faw along with Meredith and Irene Sprunger at our International Conference in 2002 at Estes Park. We wanted to thank them all for a lifetime of service to God and man and certainly to the brotherhood of believers. Duane was distinguished in every sense of the word, truly an officer and a gentleman. The world and our Urantia movement have lost a great treasure.
“Those who are born of the spirit will immediately begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow creatures.” [UB 193:2.2]
¶ The Urantia Book In India
A Report On The World Book Fair
By Paula Thompson
After months of planning, a team of experienced and dedicated Urantia Book evangelists exhibited The Urantia Book at the World Book Fair in Delhi, India. I was a part of that team led by Buck Weimer and including Arlene Weimer, Charlene Morrow, Agustin Arellano, and Mario Trevino. When I left to come home, an Indian reader, Mr. Garfield Jansen, arrived several hundred miles by train to fill my place at the fair. It was a fantastic team; and the joy, camaraderie, and love at our booth attracted other exhibitors and attendees to us. Many came back and visited with us daily for the ten days we were there. We made many friends among the Muslims, Hindus, and Christians who were there.
After a long journey, we were exhausted but grateful to be in India in one piece with all of our various pieces intact. Arlene negotiated for a guide for us which proved to be invaluable. It took the better part of a day to set up the booth, but we got it done and were ready to roll the next morning. Buck was our fearless leader, and we soon became Buck and the Buckaroos. Well, Arlene actually took on the affectionate Indian designation of “Mrs. Buck.” Saturday, February 2, was the first full day of the fair. Charlene and I decided it took us less than a day to fall totally in love with the Indian people. In a word, they melted our hearts.
Over the course of the next ten days in Delhi we made life-long friends. There are so many, but a few stand out for me. Yuyutsu Sharma, a poet and book seller from Nepal, had a booth right across from us. He came over on the first day and greeted us with warmth and friendship. In the course of a week we got to know him well. We learned of his family at home in Nepal and that his 12-year-old daughter is strongly drawn to Jesus. Yuyutsu encourages her to follow her heart and learn all she can about Jesus, but he explained with a gleam in his eye that his wife thinks he’s crazy to tell her that. Of course, we traded our magnificent story of Jesus for one of his books of poems and he sent it to his child the next day, via express mail. Imagine being twelve years old, inexplicably drawn to Jesus, and being able to read Part IV of The Urantia Book! Yuyutsu is a very successful poet, and he’s coming to Boulder soon to read his poetry and promote his book.
I had an encounter with two young Muslim brothers, Fraz and Kashif Hasan Khan. Though they were fundamentalists and took issue with us, they were much more polite than some other fundamentalists I’ve encountered. We had a wonderful and lively exchange; and after at least an hour of intense conversation on subjects like hell (which they did believe in) and Jesus being born of a virgin (which they do not believe in) we came to a place of mutual respect. Fraz is majoring in comparative religions at the university there and he very much wanted a copy of The Urantia Book. I promised him that if he would read the entire book, I would read the entire Koran. He assured me that both he and his brother will read it, and we exchanged e-mail addresses. Such encounters are like the pinnacle of outreach for me.
Incidentally, the Muslims we talked to all reiterated that they accept and recognize Jesus as a true prophet and believe that he is the one prophet that is coming back. As I spoke to them I would often preface my words with, “Well, as I said, Jesus is my prophet and he teaches that…” I found it to be an effective way to engage them, but it is important to note that, just as with Christians, the New Testament is their only source for his teachings.
I had an encounter with a pharmacist, Noor Ul Hussain, from Kashmir. Noor (which Agustin says means “river”) was drawn to our booth and was very much interested in Jesus, although raised a Muslim. He felt he was led to us there and that God was guiding him and answering his prayers. He took off of work to come back to our booth every day; and after a few days, he was working with us. It was great to have him there to explain things to people who speak mainly Hindi. Noor spoke very good English, and said many times in his wonderful Indian accent, “Yes, def-in-nately, it is a revelation, I am conveenced.”
Following the fair, Buck, Arlene, and Charlene headed to Jabulpur to visit with Dr. Chauhan, who has read the book in India for more than twenty-five years. He translated 2,000 quotes into Hindi (the Hindi Sampler) and we got it just in time to take there with us. We had just one printed copy which Buck bound in a notebook as a booth copy. This was picked up and read so many times we couldn’t begin to count. One fellow exhibitor came back every day to read a little more, and each time his eyes would tear up. Agustin quickly started keeping a list of people who want a copy with a promise to each that one will be sent as soon as it’s available.
We conducted splendid and effective outreach there. This is our work, the work of the revelation and the work of the Fellowship. I give my personal heartfelt thanks to Buck Weimer who worked tirelessly to arrange this trip.
¶ Ten Days Mission In Colombia
By Gerry Pando
I would especially like to thank the Oklahoma Society and George Thornbury in Kentucky for the El Libros de Urantia they donated to this mission. They arrived safely and were given to Patricia Rozo, founder of Exito Verde, a foundation dedicated to improving the material and spiritual conditions by emphasizing environmental and social relationships with the planet of all who live here.
My primary mission in coming here is to repair the Teusaquillo house occupied by Exito Verde and used as a center for community outreach. Also, my trip is to emphasize relationships with all Urantia Book readers in Colombia. To this end my wife Bibi and I renewed friendships with Carlos Zapata (first reader in Colombia to be my friend) and Juan B. and Marta Garcia, readers who visited us last summer in Oklahoma. Juan has graciously volunteered his civil engineering experience to the help with the repairs at the Teusaquillo house. These two were listed in the International Urantia Book Study Group Directory (that I still carry,) and have been essential to achievements realized.
Carlos told us of a Urantia presentation Saturday, March 14, by Juan Fernando Petro, an 18-year reader, entitled “La Ciencia al Encuentro de Dios.” The topic, translated “A Scientific Encounter with God,” was a powerful presentation on the scientific proof of God’s existence, especially supporting the coexistence of evolution and creation. Mr. Petro heads a group called “Grupo Estudio Avanzado de Urantia–GEA” (Advanced Study Group of Urantia–GEA.) More than seventy-five persons attended this presentation. Bibi and I were fortunate to meet many of these readers, and invited them to an open house at the Teusaquillo house the following day. Mr. Petro has donated two DVDs, one on his group and the other on his presentation. These may be used at IC ’08 in Los Angeles and placed on websites in the United States and Spanishspeaking countries.
On Sunday, March 15, we expected twenty attendees at the open house in Teusaquillo. We had called and invited everyone we knew along with the new acquaintances from Saturday. To our surprise, we had forty-four people attend, and everyone enjoyed lunch and an afternoon of socializing. In attendance were Juan Fernando Petro and Alvaro Gomez, who opened the presentation and leads the Urantia groups in Bogota. I told them of my dream of advertising in El Tiempo, Bogota’s largest newspaper, suggesting that Urantia readers get together regularly (maybe Saturday at 10 A.M.?) in a location where all readers and new readers could meet. I would like the Foundation, Fellowship, and other interested readers to jointly sponsor this monthly ad. My idea was positively received, and I offered the use of the meeting facilities at the Teusaquillo house for their meetings.
I cannot list all attendees but want to especially mention Carlos Zapata, Myrian Montanez (who I first met at IC ’96 in Arizona,) and of course Patricia Rozo, who has managed the Teusaquillo property for over two years and who coordinated the programs at Exito Verde. Overall, this meeting totally exceeded our expectations, not only in attendance but also in promoting relationships to work individually but jointly to spread the Urantia message to the community.
We have also printed one hundred invitations to an open house on April 20. Surprisingly that date coincided with the seven-year anniversary of Exito Verde, so we announced an Exito Verde birthday party and invited all to attend. Hopefully the repairs to the house will be completed by then.
I want to thank Bibi, my Colombian wife of three years, for her gracious support in coordinating all our activities in Bogota, and for her ability to organize a sit-down lunch for forty-four people at a minimal cost by soliciting the service of her cousin, a professional chef. She also has coordinated repairs and managed funds (in pesos) at the Teusaquillo house with Juan B. and his contractor Bladimir Jorge, and the purchase/delivery of several thousand dollars of materials from Home Center (Home Depot.)
I am attaching some photos that represent our activities, family, friends, and those who are supporting the Urantia revelation here in Bogota. As things develop I may post a subsequent report from Bogota or may wait until my return to the United States in May.
¶ Pipeline Of Light Report
By Michelle Klimesh, Pipeline Coordinator
During the first quarter of 2008, Pipeline of Light volunteers placed 94 copies of The Urantia Book into eleven countries. Your donations to the Pipeline helped us deliver books to readers and study groups in Costa Rica, Peru, India, Arizona, Chile, Egypt, Thailand, Colombia, Argentina, the Maldive Islands, and Venezuela.
Eighty-five percent of this quarter’s placements were copies of El Libro de Urantia sent to Latin America. But an interesting development this year has been requests where the translation requested is not the primary tongue of the country to which we’ve sent the book. We sent one French book to India, and Italian and German books to Costa Rica. We were also happy to have sent the Pipeline’s first Russian CD version of The Urantia Book to India. Is this a new trend?
This quarter’s placements bring our Pipeline all-time totals to fifteen hundred and fifteen books placed into sixty countries around the world.
We deeply appreciate your continuing financial help. If you would like to contribute to this work, donations can be made online at www.urantiabook.org/support or by mail to: The Urantia Book Fellowship, 9190 West 90th Place, Westminster, CO 80021.
Thank you so much for your support!
¶ New Councilors
Nancy Johnson was elected to serve on the General Council at the January 2008 GC meeting after serving the Urantia community for over 30 years. She typed the text of The Urantia Book in electronic format, collaborated with Dan Massey to create the UB Reference Aid, created an electronic text retrieval system, served on the Publications Committee for twenty years, typeset both Uversa Press editions of The Urantia Book, and has done extensive electronic research. She currently serves on the Standardized Text Committee and the recently established Get Organized Committee.
Nancy raised five children who presented her with thirteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren so she won’t run out of things to do. They love to eat and play cards, but none of them share her passion for organic gardening.
Emilio Coppola —A resident of Mamaroneck, NY, Emilio Coppola started reading The Urantia Book in April, 1996, and has attended study groups in Atlanta, New York City, Darien, CT, and retreats at Angel House in Assonet, MA. He has been a member of The Urantia Book society of Greater New York since March 2005, and has served as the society’s Program Coordinator, Website Developer/Administrator, and an Outreach Committee member. Emilio has also been a member of the New England Urantia Book Group since December, 2007. He is strongly motivated to disseminate the teachings of The Urantia Book, and to serve all of his brothers and sisters in any way that he is able.
A Heartfelt Thanks
to all of you who made the crossing to India possible.
Our good ship “Urantia” has steamed from the harbor! The next World Book Fair will be held in Argentina in early Spring. It will be a cooperative effort between The Fellowship, The Foundation and UAI
¶ Would You Be Willing To Work One (1) Hour A Month For The Revelation?
Though not everyone is able to contribute actual time to the Revelation effort, by enrolling in the Auto–Debit Program and pledging the equivalent of 1 hour’s pay a month we are in truth
Working 1 hour a month for the Revelation!
At this time there are 160 readers participating. Our short term goal is to enroll another 360 bringing the total to 500 Our online contributions page is simple, fast and secure https://urantiabook.sitespace.com/support
As a Thank You
A beautiful special edition leather Urantia Book will be sent to anyone who signs-up for $20 or more a month
I look forward to updating you regularly on our progress.
Maria Downing - Administrative Assistant
¶ GC Visits LA
Members of the General Council enjoyed the social arranged by the Los Angeles Society (UBLA) following the January meeting of the Council.
¶ Society News
¶ Urantia Society of North Texas
In looking for a new and deeper way to celebrate the Christmas season, the Urantia Society of North Texas decided to celebrate all seven of Michael’s bestowals, one per day over the period of a week. Individual members were encouraged to take a serious look at each bestowal to get a deeper understanding of what it meant to the universe. It was suggested that they develop a practice for each of the seven days during which they could use a chosen symbol to represent their thoughts and feelings. At the end of this period, the entire society got together and shared their experiences and symbolic practices.
Several chose the rainbow and its seven colors; another used water, as it has sacred associations in every world religion. They also discussed appropriate songs, poetry, art projects (especially ones that might work for families with children,) and ways to develop a site on the internet so that people around the world could take notice.
See the articles in the upcoming Fellowship Herald for more information on this celebration.
¶ Heart of America Society in Kansas City
Sixteen members, including two new members, participated at the annual meeting of the Heart of America Society in Kansas City on March 1, 2008.
¶ This ‘N That
- IC ’08, July 2-6, 2008, “The Thrill of Loving Service” - See registration form this issue.
- July 25-27, 2008, Belton Spiritual Living Conference, Belton, TX. For further information contact Bill Cooper at cooper3630@sbcglobal.net.
- July 25-27, 2008, UAUS Conference, “History, Origin, and Destiny”, to be held at the University of St. Mary’s, Leavenworth, KS. For further information, contact UAUS at: http://www.urantiausa.org/URANTIA2008-KS.html.
- New Database System. The Fellowship is currently working toward a goal of standardizing all society database functions so that society officers will always have access to an easy and accurate database. We are counting on each society to help us keep it current. The sooner you can get names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses to us, the sooner we can make additions and/or corrections. Data can be sent to us in any format.
- Community Update Online. To receive the Fellowship’s monthly e-mail newsletter, go to www.urantiabook.org and click on Subscriptions at the bottom of the home page. If you are already registered for this service, please remember to keep us updated as to any e-mail address changes.
¶ The Mighty Messenger Staff
Published by Uversa Press for the Publications Committee of The Urantia Book Fellowship.
Members: Linda Buselli, Chair Lynda D’Arcangelo, Laura Hay, Nancy Johnson, Joe Liszka, Sage Waitts
877.288.3772
fellowship@urantiabook.org
www.urantiabook.org
“No act of good is ever wholly lost.” [UB 48:6.7]