wfn.org | Conference Focuses on Childrens Needs

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (379
notes).

Note 379 by UMNS on Oct. 10, 1997 at 15:56 Eastern (3514 characters).

CONTACT:	Ralph E. Baker						  567(10-71BP){379}
		Nashville, Tenn.  (615) 742-5470			Oct. 10, 1997

EDITORS NOTE: Photo available

Special session focuses conference
attention on children in need

by Bobbie Armstrong*

	PINEVILLE, La. (UMNS)  Memories are the "blueprint of a childs future," a
great granddaughter of missionaries to China told a special session of the
Louisiana United Methodist Annual Conference here Oct. 4.
	Mary Taylor Previte, author of Hungry Ghosts and renowned expert on
rehabilitation of child and youth offenders, said most of the children she
works with at the Camden County (N.J.) Youth Center have empty memory chests
about their families and they repeat the pattern with their own children. 
	"Shaping a child forever are the experiences within a family or the memories
that are not there," she declared.
	Citing a parable of an aged shepherd planting acorns one by one on the top of
a mountain to change its shape, she said, "it will be ordinary people like you
and me that will change this mountain called America, not presidents or judges
or mayors."
	Previte contrasted the abusive homelife of a 16-year-old girl, who at age 11
ran away from home to become a drug addict and "go-go dancer," with her own
home where, after losing her left hand in an accident, she felt her fathers
love and support.  
She said, whenever she felt she couldnt do something or felt handicapped, her
father would say, "Well I dont know why not."
"I was the inheritor of my fathers words," she said, "and so was Maria the
inheritor of her fathers words" when he beat her with  an extension cord or
wine bottle and called her "a freeloader." 
Children do what they see their models do whether those models are their
parents or drug dealers who befriend them, Previte said.
	Describing her childhood as a daughter of missionaries to China, separated
from her parents for more than five years - three of them as a Japanese
prisoner of war during World War II - she said, the teachers and missionaries
who helped her through that difficult time influenced the structure she used
to set up her award-winning detention center.
	Challenging her listeners to use their "God-given gifts" to be there for a
child, Previte said, "I stand before you as a witness . . . we can change the
shape of this mountain."
	Bishop Dan E. Solomon, speaking on the theme "Feed My Lambs," explained that
John Wesley, Methodisms founder, placed a high priority on caring for
children and the poor.
	"Like the early Methodists, children must be our priority," he said.  "The
crisis is not that there are no children around us; the crisis is, we are not
among them and they are not among us."
	Conference participants brought with them 27,210 pairs of tennis shoes to be
sent through the United Methodist Committee on Relief to churches in Africa
where children suffer illnesses and even death from walking on sharp lava rock
without shoes.
	Six motions approved by the conference commits every congregation in
Louisiana Conference to have ministries with children, locally and globally;
to support the United Methodist Bishops Initiative; and over the next four
years to focus on a different aspect of poverty beginning with "Children in
Need" (younger children) during 1997.  In 1998 the focus will be "Youth in
Crisis;" in 1999, "People in Poverty;" and 2000, "Families in Faith."
#  #  #

	* Armstrong is editor of the Louisiana United Methodist Review.

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