Dear Friends,

Belated Easter greetings to you.  I pray that you are continuing to enjoy the Easter season.

In the past month I have been on the road traveling to India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China visiting missionaries, and looking for sites for new YASC assignment; which is in part the reason my Easter letter is coming to you so late.

As always during my travels, I witnessed the impressive ministry being undertaken by our mission personnel.  On this most recent trip I met with Randy Giles in South India who is working on original music for a vacation Bible school program and planning to assist with editing the Church of South India’s Prayer Book; Lynn Coulthard in North India working with the diocese of Durgapur to develop numerous social outreach programs, and working with the many poor communities in the region; Elyn MacInnis in China working with a new worshipping community; and Dianne Wong in Taiwan working with an International English speaking congregation in Taipei.

I came home gifted with a wide and varied range of experiences, from eating with my fingers and drinking chai in India to eating with chopsticks and drinking green tea in Taiwan.

The most profound experiences I had were in witnessing the diversity, growth and excitement of the Church around the world. In Southern India, I witnessed the excitement in the Diocese of Madras of a growing church with many communities experiencing an increase in numbers. In the parish I preached, there were well over 1000 people in the congregation, many of whom were seated in an overflow area outside the church. The diocese has a very active evangelism program with over a hundred missionary evangelists working around the diocese supported by a dedicated prayer group. In the Diocese of Durgapur I met with their first female priest, The Rev Swagata Das who was ordained in February 2009. Rev Swagata is working with her bishop, The Rt. Rev Probal Dutta on a number of women’s initiatives in the diocese. In China I visited Amity Press, which is capable of printing a million Bibles a month. I also spent time with the China Christian Council and the Amity Foundation, both of whom witnessed to the strength and growth of the Church in China. In Hong Kong I attended a conference on Global Warming with church members from the churches in Asia and the Pacific, where in many parts of their regions a rise in sea level would have a major impact. This group is planning on working together in very practical ways to address the issues of global warming in their areas.

We currently have 14 young adults attending the missionary training in Toronto in June. This year we will be using the Canadian Churches Forum for Global Ministries orientation program. This will be an ecumenical orientation, although over half of the participants will be our YASC group. My hope is that outsourcing the orientation will give me more time to support the candidates as they work through the orientation program. We also hope that this ecumenical environment will further enhance the experience for our prospective missionaries.

In Christ, David.

The Rev. David Copley
Mission Personnel Director
Mission Leadership Center
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