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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 08.09.2002 |
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| Lutherans Help Children to ‘New Ground’ Post-September 11 |
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No. 1 - LWI Series on LWF Tenth Assembly Theme “For the Healing of the World”
[As preparations get underway for the 21-31 July 2003 Tenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Lutheran World Information (LWI) will be featuring a series of articles that focus on the assembly theme, “For the Healing of the World.”
The “theme seems helpful as we yearn for healing in the events of last [11] September,” says Kathy J. Magnus, LWF regional officer for North America. The region includes four LWF member churches – in the USA – the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lithuanian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Diaspora, and – in Canada – the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada [which will host the Tenth Assembly] and Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church Abroad.
“The LWF gathers because of our conviction and proclamation that the God we know in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is ‘for the healing of the world.’ This is the witness and hope we bring to a whole world that is festering with violence, injustice, poverty, divisions, despair and sickness. It brings a word of hope to our thinking in the United States, as we look with hope to what God is doing in and through the brokenness of our lives and our world to bring healing and new life to humankind and all creation,” Magnus says.]
“Lutherans Help Children to ‘New Ground’ Post-September 11,” the first article in the series, is a highlight on the LWF North American region.
Lutherans Help Children to ‘New Ground’ Post-Sept. 11
Learning about Forgiveness
CHICAGO, United States of America/GENEVA, 8 September 2002 (ELCANEWS/LWI) - Placing children on “new ground” was the priority this summer for about 800 children from New York and New Jersey metropolitan areas.
“Camp New Ground,” a week-long day camp hosted by Lutherans, served to help children process their feelings from last year’s September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. It helped children move on “to new ground, to a new place of support, knowing that God is with us in that new place,” said camp director, Rev. Ann M. Tiemeyer, St. Jacobus Lutheran Church, Queens, N.Y.
Funded by Lutheran Disaster Response, a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America *(ELCA) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), the July 15 - August 16 camp featured morning and afternoon worship, music, arts and crafts, Bible lessons, recreational activities and mental health assessment.
Mental health counselors offered opportunities for children to talk about terrorism, identify their gifts and articulate their dreams for the future. Also available were resources for parents on ways to talk with their children about terrorism.
Each day campers met with a mental health professional and went “through a series of journal questions that provided opportunities for children to engage in conversation about September 11,” Tiemeyer explained. The children were asked such questions as, 'What makes you happy, and what makes you sad? What dreams do you have for yourself, your family and for your community?' she said.
“Joseph’s Journey” served as the camp’s theme. In the book of Genesis of the Bible, Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Later, famine swept the land and Joseph (chief administrator working with Pharoah to deal with the crisis) encountered his brothers and forgave them for selling him into slavery.
Tiemeyer spoke of a unique activity to learn about forgiveness. Children were given a brick-shaped red piece of paper on which [was written], ‘How I feel about terrorists.’ They were then instructed to write questions and draw. The bricks were structured into “a wall” and the children talked about how anger and hate “create a wall around us.” On the last day [of camp], the brick wall came down, as they drew pictures and talked about forgiveness, wrote prayers of forgiveness and about a variety of things in life where they have experienced forgiveness or offered it.
There was a variety of ways for the children “to be in community together and have a sense of support,” Tiemeyer said. Firefighters, emergency workers and rescue dogs also came for an afternoon to meet with the children.
For Tiemeyer, the camp’s main success was that it created a variety of new networks of support and care, not only for the campers but also for the host congregations and schools.
Information on Camp New Ground is available at http://www.ldrny.org on the Internet.
* The theme for the 2003 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, August 11-17, is “Making Christ Known: For the Healing of the World.”
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