Dear Friends,

At every missionary orientation prospective missionaries get bombarded with information and advice from all sides.  Probably the best advice from the whole two weeks of lectures, discussion groups and Bible studies, was to “just love the people”; a piece of advice my wife was given by her grandfather and Methodist Minister, before she was ordained to the priesthood. Love the people, and seek to be in relationship with those whom you encounter.

Also, I want you to know that as missionaries, you are all deeply loved and are prayed for by the communion of saints in the Episcopal Church every week. At the “Everyone, Everywhere” conference in Baltimore, it was obvious that there was a genuine desire to be in community with our brothers and sisters around the Communion in a meaningful way. There was also a great desire to be connected and to know more about the missionaries that the Episcopal Church has around the world.
 
The annual missionary orientation was held at Mount Manresa again this year from June 1st – June 14th with 17 candidates attending. (We will attach their names and contact information to this letter so that you can begin to get to know them all.) The orientation was a little out of the ordinary this year, as in the middle of our two weeks, we piled everyone onto a bus and took them to the “Everyone, Everywhere” mission conference in Baltimore. Apart from the extra stress and work involved, the group survived the orientation, in part because the food in Baltimore was so much better than the offerings at Mount Manresa. This is my third orientation and every year there has been some kind of incident to mark the event. One year we had a fire on the retreat center grounds, then there was a flood which cut off the water supply. This year we had the “sauna in the bus”. On our return journey from Baltimore on a 110 degree day, the air conditioning on the bus failed.  The trip turned into a real life “practical” for mission service as the temperature and humidity rose on one of the hottest days of the year.
 
The mission conference in Baltimore in June was a great success with over 300 people attending from all around the United States, along with a number of returned and currently serving missionaries, including Paul-Gordon Chandler, Jo Ellen Nutter and Lauren Stanley. This event was a great opportunity for the attendees to meet with the new missionaries, and to pray for them as they were commissioned by the gathered community at the closing Eucharist.

Interest in sharing in the mission of God alongside our brothers and sisters in other parts of the Anglican Communion was evident at the conference.  I hope that this excitement and interest will enable the mission program to also go from strength to strength in the coming years.

I have been very active in recent weeks in working with the Standing Commission on World Mission (SCWM) and the International Concerns Committee (INC) in putting together a working group to look into the issue of compensation for missionaries in the long term. At the last meeting of the Executive Committee in Albuquerque New Mexico, I presented a report outlining the challenges in our budget and received a great deal of support for the program amongst the members of the INC. A resolution was written and presented by the INC and passed by the Executive Council to designate the 2009 World Mission Sunday be focused on missionary support as noted below.

Direct staff to adopt "missionary support" as the theme for 2009 World Mission Sunday (the last Sunday after the Epiphany), develop educational materials for the event outlining the need for missionary support, ask that congregation consider taking up a special collection on that day to support current missionaries and that that collection be celebrated at the 76th General Convention (INC047).

This resolution was designed to help meet the immediate needs of the budget while also highlighting the mission program. For the longer term, the INC officially commended the efforts of a working group made up of members of SCWM, INC and staff from the Church Center, in putting together a proposal for the support of missionaries for the next triennium and beyond.
There is a very strong feeling that the stipends for missionaries should not be cut, and the challenge now is how do we maintain and even improve the support for missionaries within the constraints of the budget. To this end the working group met by phone recently and is considering a proposal presented by Lauren Stanley to energize the Episcopal Church (TEC) community to encourage every diocese to support a missionary to supplement the funding provided through the Mission Personnel office.
 
The input that many of you have made through your correspondence in the past few months has been invaluable and has been taken to heart by the working group.  At this point, it would be useful to have a more accurate idea from you as to how much it cost for you to live in your location. With the continuing rising costs all over the world, we want to make sure that we are looking at realistic figures in terms of your living expenses as we consider the level of stipend needed.

In an effort to continue to strengthen the basic support for all missionaries, I want to inform you that we have committed to paying for all deductible health care expenses not covered by health insurance - up to $1,000 for a family and $500 for an individual (not including dental costs) in a calendar year.

The “Missionary Guidelines” is another project that we are working on in Mission Personnel. Some of you may have seen the old version which has not been updated for over 18 years, but I suspect that many of you have never been given a copy of the Guidelines for service as a missionary of the Episcopal Church. We are in the process of simplifying the guidelines and hope to have a copy approved by Executive Council before the end of the year. In the interim period, if you have any questions concerning policy, please call the office for clarification.

As we all move forward on our journey of faith together, I want to ask you to keep in touch with the Mission Personnel Office to continue to share your experiences through your blogs and letters. I know that at times we are not able to be in communication with you as often as we would like and some things will slip through the cracks, but we ask for your patience and consideration, and also for you to just gently remind us if there are issues that need to be followed up.  As you all know the Mission Personnel office is small and Yanick, Rebecca, Michelle and I work hard to keep in touch and to respond to your concerns and questions as quickly as we can.

Earlier this year I made my first trip to Sudan with a contingency from the Diocese of Virginia.  Before year’s end I hope to travel to Egypt, Jerusalem, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, as I continue to visit as many missionaries as is practical every year. I will also be traveling to England to attend a number of meetings including a Sudan coordination meeting, and the USPG (United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Anglicans in World Mission) annual meeting.

The Rev. David Copley
Mission Personnel Director
The Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue
New York NY 10017-4503
Tel: 1-800-334-7626  /  212-922-5461 
Fax 212-682-5594 cell 646-643-0959
 dcopley@episcopalchurch.org

2008 Mission Candidates:
Ms. Elizabeth Boe, YASC (Dio. Central Tanganyika, Tanzania) – elizabethboe@gmail.com
Ms. Laura-Catherine Conville, YASC (Dio. Colombia) – lcat222@yahoo.com
Ms. Cortney Dale, YASC (Dio. Grahamstown, South Africa) – missiondale@gmail.com
Rev. Zachary Drennen (Dio. Kakakwa, Kenya) – zachdrennen@elewana.org – www.elewana.org
Rev. Robert & Mrs. Deborah Edmunds (Dio. Jerusalem) – rde111@hotmail.com & dse111@hotmail.com
Ms. Kyle Evans (Dio. Haiti) – kyle.evans55@gmail.com
Ms. Audra Krislock, YASC (Dio. Colombia) – akrislock@gmail.com
Rev. Jeremy & Mrs. Penelope Lucas (Dio. Namibia, South Africa) – jlucas71@gmail.com & penelopelucas@gmail.com - www.missiontonamibia.blogspot.com
Mr. Finley Middleton (Dio. Juba, Sudan) – grazia_dio@yahoo.com
Rev. Valerie Miller, YASC (Dio. Honduras) – vmiller@eds.edu
Mr. Seth & Mrs. Elizabeth Raymond, YASC (Dio. Taiwan) – seth.raymond@colorado.edu & elizabethmccormick@colorado.edu
Ms. Dianne Smith (Dio. Maseno North, Kenya)– dianne.smith.rn@gmail.com
Rev. Robert & Mrs. Maurine Tobin (Dio. Jerusalem) – rwtobin@verizon.net
Ms. Christopher Wells (Dio. Grahamstown, South Africa) – cwells@nd.edu
Mr. Michael Young, YASC (Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in Tokyo, Japan) – myoung4142@gmail.com