We are grateful to Downer's Grove meeting forproviding us with a video tape of "The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It."  Our local Public Television Station had refused to show it, but we were able to share it with some of the other peace churches in the area.

A potluck on March 24 welcomed Tim Walls and his family as he transferred membership from Stamford-Greenwich meeting.  Most recently they had been in Louisville and at the Louisville meeting.  Now they live in St. Joseph, Michigan, almost an hour from South Bend.  Tim hopes to start a worship group there under the care of South Bend Monthly Meeting.

It is always helpful not to have a long drive, particularly during the Northern Indiana winter.  Jordan Lee, a life long Friend who has taken a position in Warsaw, Indiana, immediately sought us out.  While she will still be joining SBMM at times, we were pleased to be able to recommend the worship group initiated by SBMM members Ed and Jean Smith a few minutes away from Warsaw at North Manchester, Indiana.

Urbana-Champaign Meeting
By Terri Mittenthal and Mariellen Gilpin

Urbana-Champaign Friends continue to come to decisions with one another relatively comfortably, and there have been many decisions.  We believe we actually are close to breaking ground for our new meetinghouse.  We are fine-tuning plans and seeking the sense of the meeting about our priorities in the space we can almost afford. Friends have given time, energy and, most importantly, patience to this undertaking.

We continue to meet in a very pleasant room in the Illinois Disciples Foundation.  Space is not the best for First Day school, but the Wee Friends do not appear daunted by their environment.  Presently our Tween Friends are few and our Teen Friends have left us for the Unitarian Universalists, where there are many teenagers

David Westling and Jerry Nurenberg

In the meantime we tend to our ordinary and extraordinary business.  At Christmas we again
"adopted" the Kidco unit at the Children's Campus, a residential facility, and caroled at Portage Manor, the county home.

We learned a great deal from our experience assisting with the burial of the still born second child of our child care giver.  Lena is a graduate student in psychology from Russia who has been at Notre Dame with her Russian husband for a number of years.  Ever since she arrived, she has taken our children on the First Days when we do not have First Day School and is deeply loved by the children and the meeting as a whole.  While Lena and her husband come from the non-religious background of the old Soviet Union, they wanted some grave side recognition of their love and some support from community which we provided as best we could.  The occasion became a totally moving "giving back" which we will all remember.

Summer 2002 Among Friends  9