December 31, 2004

A New Assignment -- Tonga

[Bergton, Virginia] Since my last update, I've been given a new place of assignment -- Tonga. I don't know much about it yet, but I'm excited about serving the community in the South Pacific. I'll be leaving in a couple of weeks, so I guess I'll have to start packing -- and cleaning up the mess I have left around mom's house. I'll continue to update this site with frequent information about life in the Kingdom of Tonga.

Casey likes Christmas

I hope your Christmas was fantastic! It was my first Christmas home in three years, and it was so great to spend it with my family. (If you can't be in Bethlehem for Christmas, it sure is nice to be home.) I especially liked opening gifts with my niece and nephews. I'm not sure if Casey (age 4) or I had the most fun. It was nice to get together with relatives on both sides of the family. Sounds like a few friends and family might make it to Tonga in the upcoming years. I think I'll have more visitors to the South Pacific than I had in the Middle East.

But of course it was impossible to celebrate Christmas without my thoughts going back to my friends in the community around Bethlehem. How is the community? How are the families? Despite all of the good news I've heard from the US media, my friends in Palestine tell me that life there for the typical Palestinian is still the same. Israeli settlements continue to grab more and more Palestinian land, Bethlehem continues to shrink, the separation wall is still being built, checkpoints and roadblocks are still stopping Palestinians from going from one side of their villages to the other, and Israeli military invasions are still common. We'll see how things develop. As a reminder, you can get information on eyewitness accounts from internationals in Palestine. The ISM posts a lot of inside material from people in the area. You can read their reports and join their mailing list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/palsolidarity/

And for good websites, I'll continue to refer you to my links page. There is accurate information from Bethlehem Media Net and the International Middle East Media Center.

The tragic news of the many victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean has been on my mind a lot. I sure don't have answers as to why these things happen, but I'd like to try to do something to support the devasted communities that survive. Our church has an excellent program for assisting the people in need. One hundred percent of your gift goes to relief and recovery efforts. The United Methodist Committee on Relief has a website that can receive your donations:

http://www.methodistrelief.org