Tonight I’m in The Dalles (thank you Eric Berg for a reminder that I’m not in Dallas) attending the fall gathering of the Central Pacific Conference of the United Church of Christ. To get here from Portland you take I-84. This is the same freeway that I drove across when leaving Oregon for seminary in St. Louis and whenever I come out this way it reminds me so deeply of that journey east. So it was fitting tonight that our keynote speaker came west from St. Louis and Eden Theological Seminary. The Rev. Dr. David Greenhaw, the seminary’s president and professor of preaching, did what he does best in his presentations: he brought the Gospel message. I admire Dr. Greenhaw for his deep commitment to theological education and for how over nearly a decade he has provided leadership to a UCC-seminary during some difficult periods. Tonight he mentioned the genocide in Darfur and I invite you to read his recent op-ed piece on the subject that was published in the St. Louis Dispatch.

My companion in the car ride from Portland to The Dalles was Carlos Madrazos, a missionary with Global Missions, the joint UCC-Christian Church (Disciples for Christ) mission agency, where he serves as a development worker with the GMIM Synod of the Evangelical Church in Indonesia. Carlos told me in the ride over about how he and his wife (an ordained minister) had to flee their homeland in the Philippines during the mid-1970s because their work with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines was considered subversive by the government. Since then they have spent their lives as missionaries across the globe. It reminded me once again that some really do risk the cross today to be disciples. Keep all our missionaries in your prayers.