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Planting in California and Oregon

Dear Friend,
“Thank you so much for coming to share with the students; I am sure we will talking about this for a number of days,” remarked one of the staff members at the Wellspring Friends School in Oregon.

“Wow, look at the donations they made,” I said to my friend Cyrus after my presentation at the Modesto Junior College. Cyrus responded, “Students don’t have much money, so when they make donation, you know you touched them.”

“These books about peacemaking will be great for our library; I’ve been thinking that we need something along this line,” remarked the librarian after I contributed peace books after giving a presentation in four classes at Mission High in San Francisco.

I had many good conversations and feel my sharing was received very well in the 25 venues at which I presented in Oregon and California. It was quite exhausting at times, though it seemed well worth it.

Pray that the seeds planted in that trip would sprout, grow, and flourish.

Thanks for your prayers and the financial support that enabled me to make this trip.

Blessings of peace to you this holiday season,

Jim

Here is a photo of many of us who attended the Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Conference in San Francisco. At the bottom center, wearing a tan coat, is Dario Lopez, the keynote speaker. He is a Pentecostal from Peru. Preaching from Amos, he shared how the Protestant church in Peru has fallen into the trap of blessing the government rather than challenging it to walk in the light like Amos did. I could see many parallels to the USA situation. Dario is a pastor of a church in a Lima slum.

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