Learn Healthy Ways to Process Grief

Dear Faith Leaders,

 On Wednesday, March 23, we welcome ICF-certified Grief Coach and End of Life Coach Jason O'Neill to share skills to deal with the personal and collective losses we experience on a daily basis, yes still. Learn ways to support the healthy processing of loss and grief for yourself and for those you care about. You are invited to bring authenticity and vulnerability into this gathering as we learn together and are reminded we do not have to journey alone.

 Jason is part of the support team for ELCA Coaching, as well as the Synod Communicator and Assembly Planner for the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod. Jason has been coaching for nearly a decade, has earned their ACC accreditation with the ICF, and has nearly completed all requirements for their PCC. Jason believes in the power of community and does their best to work, live, and coach through a lens of interrelatedness, as referenced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

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Processing the Pandemic for Ministry.

Drinking from a fire hose?

For a lot of us, the last two years have been one change after another. Before we’ve even gotten comfortable with one new way of life—from preaching to a computer screen to online worship—we’ve found ourselves having to figure out something else.

While there’s been an abundance of new learning taking place, very little (if any) time has been available for reflecting—or even being still. It’s been a hectic season, and if you feel like you’ve been drinking from a fire hose, you’re not the only one.

Preparing for Lent

We enter into the Lenten season in a few days. Are you ready? Have you made plans for these 40 days already? Or on Ash Wednesday does the imposition of ashes remind you to embark on this journey with setting some intentions? However you prepare and plan for Lent, this season offers you the opportunity for deepening your spiritual life in Christ.

Global Mission Newsletter | February

For two years, as the world has reeled from the effects of a deadly pandemic, we have seen the number of hungry people around the world rise, watched as food pantries and soup kitchens expanded to serve an ever-growing number of guests, and longed for the time when we “will hunger no more, and thirst no more … and God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes” (Revelation 7:16).

Thank you for all you are doing in your congregation and community to continue God’s work and to share the grace and love of Christ. We invite you to continue your work by connecting your congregation to the church’s global work to end hunger and poverty during ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving, which begins on Ash Wednesday, March 2.

Global Mission Newsletter | January

TUMAINI GIRL’S SCHOLARSHIPS

After our Companion Synod partnership was formed, Bishop Keller and his wife Betty went to visit Ulanga Kilombero. While there, Betty developed a passion for the girls to be able to go to secondary school that at the time cost $150 for a year. She found that it was sometimes more than a family made in a year and if they did make enough to send a child, a son would have priority. She brought her concern to the Synod Women’s Organization at our next convention after they came back. From that our women’s board developed a plan to raise that $150 each for 10 girls to continue their education.