YAV Emma – What Peace?

Emma writes:

So what do I believe? This year is an excuse to declare myself a constant learner, or, a student of planet earth, a phrase coined by an artist I met here. But in all honesty, I really don’t know what I believe. As distant as I sometimes want to feel from the values of my work placement (although it is eerily familiar to faith traditions from earlier in my life), I still find myself reluctant to identify with a specific church or even faith practice. What keeps bringing me back to UCCP, besides my host family and site coordinator’s involvement, is the church’s clear desire to resist the systems I wrote about in previous blog posts. In a sermon titled “What Peace?,” a local pastor denounced thousands of extra-judicial killings of the current administration of the Philippines as a “violence to memory of Jesus himself”. He said that “peace cannot be delivered…to a passive people,” and he encouraged listeners to act together to create change.

Read Emma’s entire post here.

On Sunday, August 27, 2017, we commissioned Elizabeth Welliver and Emma Warman, who dedicate a year of their lives to learn what God is doing through them and in them. We hope to follow their journey through their online blogs. 

To follow Emma and Elizabeth as they live their YAV experience, visit their blogs:

Emma Warman (Philippines) https://emmayavyear.wordpress.com/

Elizabeth Welliver (Austin, TX)  https://medium.com/@ElizabethWelliver