Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The Offering of Letters Season is Here!

Writing letters to Congress at St. Timothy's Lutheran Church
The Offering of Letters season, coinciding with the arrival of Spring, got off to a good start on the weekend of March 18-19. Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church and St. Timothy's Lutheran Church in Albuquerque and Peace Lutheran Church in Las Cruces organized their congregations to write letters to Congress around Bread for the World's Doing Our Part to End Hunger campaign. Peace Lutheran Church and St. Timothy's Lutheran Church will continue their letter-writing campaigns the following Sunday, March 26.

The 2017 Offering of Letters is focused on urging members of Congress to make funding decisions that put our country and the world on track toward ending hunger. We want Congress to fund and protect programs such as SNAP, WIC, international poverty focused development assistance, and tax credits for low-income workers.

Three other churches in Albuquerque--All Saints Lutheran Church, Central United Methodist Church and St. Andrew Presbyterian Church--have scheduled Offerings of Letters over the next two months.  We hope to add a few more churches to the calendar in the near future.

We also plan to organize visits to the local offices of Representatives Michelle Lujan Grisham (and maybe Steve Pearce and Ben Ray Lujan) and Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich on the week of Bread for the World Lobby Day which will be held in Washington on June 13. Larry and Ellen Buelow from Albuquerque (and possibly Art Meyer from Farmington) will visit the offices of our elected officials in Washington that day. In preparation for our local visits, our recent Offering of Letters workshop included a panel of veteran anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates.  Happy Letter Writing! (And don't forget to get your letters blessed by your pastor and congregation before you send them off to Washington).

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