From Rincon's newsletter:

I am excited to share news of the church mission trip the week of December 9th to Puerto Rico with our UCC mission partners there.  UCC Disaster Relief Ministries is seeking groups from UCC churches to help church partners in Puerto Rico in recovery efforts from the two major hurricanes that devastated Puerto Rico last year.

The dates are set for CRR's next service trip to Guatemala to help build homes for people who are living in extreme poverty. They will be there the week of February 11-15, 2019; travel dates are still to be determined.

The trip will be organized in conjunction with Constru Casa (“Construct a House”) which is a non-profit organization very similar to Habitat for Humanity except that they address the needs of people who are very poor.

The Women's and Men's Fellowship of the Sierra Vista Community United Church of Christ will be providing a luncheon for approximately 100 people at the Salvation Army Center.

A United Church of Christ sanctuary church offering immigrants refuge in the Arizona borderlands will soon be offering a place of hospitality, support and hope on the Mexican side of the border for people who find themselves deported from the United States.

The Shadow Rock UCC Sanctuary Action Team and the Rev. Ken Heintzelman, in an extension of the spirit and intent of their ministry of sanctuary in Phoenix, are in the process of establishing Hope Station Nogales, in Sonora, Mexico.

Jose Gonzales sent this thank you to everyone who donated to the trip he led to support children and families at the border. Taos UCC collected and donated $750.

Taos Immigration Allies are collecting donations again for another trip to the border to support refugee children and families. If you would like to donate for this next trip you can reach Jose at 575-779-6765 or jgonza37@unm.edu   

Conference Minister Rev. Bill Lyons signed a letter on behalf of the Southwest Conference supporting a designation to care for creation through a Wild and Scenic Designation of the Gila River area.

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The Southwest Conference has signed on to this amicus brief described here by Zachary Kolodin of PATTERSON BELKNAP WEBB & TYLER LLP.

We call on faith leaders to sign on to a faith letter supporting refugee resettlement and opposing nomination of an anti-refugee extremist for a key position in the administration.

This summer, town hall meetings with your Congressional representative and U.S. Senator are another great opportunity to make your voice heard. They “take the temperature” of their constituents at these events, and it’s our chance to turn up the heat for them on global warming. 

The Town Hall Project has created a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to town hall meetings happening around the country. To find a schedule of the ones nearest you, simply enter your zip code. You can also go to your Member’s website, join their email list, or call their office for event updates.

Getting to the Root of It: We’ve asked UCC advocates to help us unpack the complex justice issues that we’re working on. This month Sandy Sorensen, Director of our UCC Washington, DC Office, is discussing how advocates can work for change over the summer months.

My husband, Max Surjadinata, is in the middle of a six-month term as a Global Ministries Volunteer, serving on behalf of our United Church of Christ in Indonesia (the country of his birth).  He is teaching for a semester in a remote rural seminary in the small town of Lewa on the island of Sumba, where our mission partner is the Gereja Kristin Sumba (GKS) or Christian Church of Sumba.  Max teaches a course in liturgy and church music, as well as conversational English, and consults with students – he’s presently up to his ears, he says, in reading the final theses of students about to graduate, as well as reading and grading the papers of the students in his own course. 

​​​​​​​Sacred Conversations to End Racism (SC2ER) is a restorative justice journey created to move people beyond anti-racism conversations to active engagement intended to challenge people's thinking and behavior based on assumptions of privilege and superiority over non-European people. SC2ER provides new language, strategies, and realities that engage all the intersections of our lives to unmask, dismantle, and eradicate racism in America, including the Christian Church. SC2ER seeks to restore humanity, eliminate myths and stereotypes and engage in deep truth telling about the construction of whiteness and white skin superiority.

There was hours of singing and praying and reading our demands. The State Police arrived. There was pushing and shoving and more reading our demands. The long day ended with us being handcuffed and taken out into police cars.

Written by Connie Larkman

Living on the United States border with Mexico, the Rev. Randy Mayer spends much of his time, as he has for almost two decades, ministering to his migrant neighbors. The pastor of Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Ariz., is a founding member of many of the border humanitarian groups in the Santa Cruz Valley.

This week, Good Shepherd volunteers are accompanying a young mother from Honduras and her three sons — the infant, Diego, a six week old American citizen — to a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Maria and her boys have been in this country just two months, and have had to navigate changes in U.S. immigration policy since their arrival

written by Martha and Ray Phillips of St. Paul's UCC in Rio Rancho, NM:

In the past two weeks, we have participated in a teach-in at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe, stood by ourselves with signs at three locations in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, driven to Phoenix to join a ​demonstration (including St. Paul's own Gordon Nelson, who met us there) outside the ICE headquarters, and joined with many others (including Rev. Jocelyn Emerson) at Senator Martin Heinrich's rally in Albuquerque.

Why are we doing this? Because "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"  Micah 6:8

On June 26, in a narrow 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s Muslim Ban, a policy which, from its inception, was based on blatant discrimination on the basis of nationality and religion.