wfn.org | Peace Fellowship honors Lois Kroehler

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Note #6041 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

GA00093
June 28, 2000

     Peace Fellowship honors Lois Kroehler

	Longtime teacher and missionary in Cuba								 
	by John Filiatreau

LONG BEACH, June 28 - Lois Kroehler, the recipient of the 2000 Peace Seekers
Award from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, worked as a missionary, music
teacher and peace advocate in Cuba for half a century, devoting herself to
what she called "the work of peace that the Prince of Peace does through
us." She said on Wednesday that justice demands a lifting of a U.S. trade
embargo against Cuba, especially as it applies to food and medicine, and
predicted that "the fruit of justice will be peace."

	Kroehler told an audience of about 125 at the annual Peace Breakfast at the
Long Beach Hyatt Regency of an occasion when she and the Rev. Jesse Jackson
were visiting Fidel Castro. In a Biblical reference, Jackson mentioned the
Balm of Gilead, and prayed that such a healing balm might be provided to
Cuba. A government translator thought he'd heard a prayer that God might
deliver a "bomb" to the island nation. Castro nearly swallowed his cigar.

	The guest speaker for the event, Kathy Kelly, the founder of the anti-war
organization Voices in the Wilderness and a longtime foe of the School for
the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. (whose name has been changed to the
Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation), said U.S. violence
and economic sanctions against Iraq "target the most vulnerable people in
that land, the elderly, the poor, women and children." She said the United
States is responsible for the killings of more than a half-million Iraqi
children.

	Despite the 10-year "state of siege," she said, Iraqis typically greet
American visitors with the words, "Oh, you're from the U.S.? You're welcome,
sit down and have tea."

	Kelly said the fundamental question in U.S. foreign relations is, "How can
we learn to live together without killing each other?"
	
	Kelly, a former high school teacher, sang "We Shall Overcome" in Arabic,
and said  the campaign against Iraq by the
"military/industrial/media/Congressional complex" is "one of the best-kept
secrets in the U.S." She said U.S. planes are still trying to "bomb Iraq
back to the Stone Age."

	Newly elected Assembly Moderator Syngman Rhee also spoke during the
breakfast, inviting PPF members to join him in "bridge-building."

	"A bridge connects two places and must touch both sides, sides that are not
only apart, but sometimes hostile," he said, "and sometimes the person who
serves as a bridge gets shot at from both ends, is misunderstood and called
all kinds of names."

	Such violence and "rumors" have been directed his way, Rhee said, since his
appointment of Rebecca McElroy, a member of the Lay Committee, as his vice
moderator. "We must take the risk of understanding and openness, and without
losing our own convictions, be open to the possibility of being a bridge.
.. If the church cannot build a bridge, the world cannot build a bridge."

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