Dear Friends,

We totally enjoyed our time at the Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting’s Annual Sessions held at Reedwood Friends in Portland last weekend.  I appreciate Tony serving as facilitator and Brion Pinkerton bringing the message here at home in Klamath Falls. I have heard great things, and I so much appreciate their help and your prayers.  I would like to have more of the Klamath Falls Friends Church attendees join us in these Quarterly and Yearly Meetings.  It is a time to get to know other Quakers and hear about other meetings in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.  You get amazingly deep worship, poignant reflection and the benefit of hearing some very good speakers and ministers as we worship together, even in business.

One of the speakers and attenders of the Meeting was a representative from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Their name is Ainsley Bruton, the Quaker engagement coordinator, and they did a great job representing a huge organization that has activities going on all over the USA and the world.

One of their programs focuses on Gaza. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has been working in the Gaza area since 1948, totaling over seventy-eight years of humanitarian service and peacebuilding there. The United Nations initially invited the Quaker organization to lead emergency relief for Palestinian refugees displaced during the establishment of Israel. While AFSC handed over its initial refugee relief operations to the UN in 1950, the group returned in the decades following to run ongoing agricultural development, trauma healing, and emergency aid programs.

As we know right now is a terrible time in Gaza.  AFSC is hard at work. Daily necessities like food and water are at a minimum in Gaza.  People are dying of thirst and starvation, as well as dealing with the horrors of war. AFSC has, since this war began, provided food for 937,289 people; drinking water for 199,651 people; baby formula, Cerelac, and milk for 11,283 children; hygiene kits for 96,705 people, including women and girls, seniors, pregnant women, and newborns; mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, tents, & plastic sheets for tents for 12,812 people, educational activities for 5,600 children; psychosocial support sessions for 377 women.

We here at Klamath Falls Friends Church, working through our Peace and Social Concerns Committee, are showing our interest in Gaza by giving to the day-to-day survival necessities people desperately require at this time.  To help take care of some of these needs listed above, we are collecting a donation this Sunday during Announcements to send directly to the Gaza Emergency Relief Fund of AFSC.  If you want to bring cash or a check made out to Klamath Falls Friends Church with “Gaza Relief” in the memo line, please do as we try and gather as many resources as we can to go as directly as we can to the people of Gaza. We will take up an offering during Announcements.  There is also a cloth bowl sitting on the brown tithe box in the back of the meeting house in which to put an offering marked for Gaza Relief. If you are not coming this Sunday to worship, please go to https://secure.afsc.org/a/gazaer and donate.  Every little bit helps, and giving generously is a spiritual practice in which we all need to participate.

There are other things going on this Sunday.  At 9:00 AM, Peace and Social Concerns will meet in the church office for their monthly meeting.  We have many issues we are presently working on and could use your help if you have any interest in social justice, the environment, or those who do not have enough in this world.

One of the services of Klamath Falls Friends Church that is part of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee is our share of leadership in the Klamath Interfaith Food Pantry with The UU Fellowship, Klamath Lutheran Church and Hope Lutheran Church.  This is summertime, and we need to fill the pantry with food for children of the poor in our town.  Please fill the table in the entryway of our church with cans of chunky soup, stews and chilis; cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli and spaghetti; cereal bars and cereal; and other items that are easy for children to fix for themselves while their parents are at work or out of the home, like peanut butter and jelly.

Then, of course, is worship at 10:00 AM.  Please look at the bulletin attached and read through the queries.  There are also the questions for the book study that starts at 11:00 happening next. planned.  We have been having good discussions of the book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See by Richard Rohr.  Please read the questions that are at the end of your bulletin that is attached.

Don’t forget that our annual church picnic is coming up on August 16 at Moore Park.  Come prepared to have a good time and to experience some fun fellowship with other attendees. It is our summer potluck, so please bring your favorite dish and attend ready to enjoy many other dishes that will be brought.

Sincerely,

Leigh Tolton, pastor