Dear Folks -

I am so grateful to be back teaching Ordinary Life.

As many of you know part of the way we spent the time when I was gone
- and by "we" I mean Sherry and myself - was to accompany 18 other
people to Bolivia. St. Paul's has a sister church in Cochabamba,
Bolivia. Most of the people who went on this trip were from St. Paul's
and many from Ordinary Life. Others went from FUMC in La Porte.

I have asked some of the participants on that trip to share pictures
and memories, impression and lessons learned from this experience this
week.

As you may recall, one of my rants has to do with the understanding we
have of God. I sincerely believe that if people would change their
notion of God from that of some superhuman being located somewhere out
in space to the much more useful notion that each and every one of us
resides in the Sacred Heart of God and, paradoxically, God resides in
the heart of each of us, it would transform our world.

Parallel to this one of the insights I had on this trip is that we do
not go so much to carry out our mission as we go to participate in
God's mission of compassion and justice. To think that we have a
mission runs the risk of our imposing our values on other people. Our
job is to get our egos and our agenda out of the way so that something
bigger than ourselves can be allowed to come into being.

I really want you to see and experience, insofar as is possible, what
those of us who went on this trip saw, did and learned.

Much love,

Bill Kerley

The audio of the participants of the Bolivia trip that spoke on this Sunday is available below.

Click here to Download audio 20090920.mp3

A DVD copy of the PowerPoint presentation with music created by Bob is available for a $10 donation to the fruit and milk food program for the children in the Emmanuel UMC day school in Cochabamba, Blivia. Please email your interest in a DVD and your mailing address to susannahooper{AT}mac{dot}com.