"Hurricane Mitch cost us everything. We had nothing. My son was injured. People of the Church came to aid us, to give us back life and house. God was certainly present." This mother's testimony was one of many that we heard as the members of the Executive Council gathered in San Pedro Sula, Honduras in late October and early November, 1999. We met there to begin the work of the third year of the current triennium and, for many of us, to help in the Church's construction project to replace the many homes that were destroyed in Hurricane Mitch in November 1998. That devastating storm in which Honduras lost 70% of its infra-structure, 200 major bridges, and the lives of nearly 18,000 people seems still, a year later,to grip many of that country's citizens, and especially its very poor. The immediate response of the Presiding Bishop's Fund of the Episcopal Church was to send funds to purchase land and materials for the construction of a new community appropriately called "Faith, Hope and Joy." Each house, built on the same plan, contains a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen with running water, and a shower and toilet with complete indoor plumbing. Members of the Executive Council --including its three members from Province II--worked, together with Honduran skilled workmen, for two days as laborers. We laid cinder-block walls, hauled sand and blocks, prepared sand floors to be covered with concrete, cleaned up construction sites, and carried out simple tasks that released skilled workers to do work they were prepared to undertake.

The first 30 of the anticipated 100 houses in the project were essentially finished while we were there. Each house was blessed and dedicated in a simple ceremony in which the Honduran workers, the families selected to live in the houses, and the American workers were present. Senior students from the Episcopal High School in San Pedro Sula were present with us and translated back and forth in their excellent and quite colloquial English to help draw us closer together. Often, however, our contacts were without words, such as a little girl "Fatima" who attached herself to some of our group. Children with serious faces were everywhere, watching, trying to understand all that had happened to them and their families in the previous year. Their vigor and animation were clear, however, when they rushed forward to be dampened and refreshed with the blessing of water administered by Frank Griswold,the Presiding Bishop, at a ceremony dedicating a parcel of ground for the construction of a church near the housing site to serve those who will live in the community of "Faith, Hope and Joy."

Commenting on all that we had seen, the Bishop of the Diocese of Honduras, the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, remarked, both in Spanish and English, "There is no evil that does not produce good." Again and again, we heard that it was God who had brought about the wondrous changes these particular Honduran people experienced in a year of terror, loss and recovery. For our small part in all of it, we of the Executive Council know it was something we shall not forget, nor the gratitude and the hope, faith, and joy we shared with our new Honduran friends.

On Sunday, the 31st of October, a special service was conducted at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in San Pedro Sula. It was a bright, cheerful space filled on this occasion with flowers and plants bringing the outside inside. Bishops and clergy members of the Executive Council were vested and all of us moved in procession to our places in the Cathedral, passing as we entered large numbers of people assembled outside to watch the proceedings. The Eucharist was led in Spanish by Presiding Bishop Griswold. Bishop Griswold also preached in Spanish--to the delight of his congregation--and then in English. A young persons' choir sang hymns in English and Spanish and a troop of costumed folk dancers carrying examples of local produce: stalks of bananas, coconuts, flowers, and various other fruits and vegetables--even cigars--and offered them with the bread and wine for the Eucharist. Hugs and hymns of praise, laughter and movement accompanied the exchange of the Peace. Outside more than a thousand people from all over the country gathered. Some of this unexpected crowd, we learned later, had traveled all night to be present. This group was accommodated under a large canopy outside the Cathedral. The bishops from the Executive Council seated around the altar and other clergy slipped out of their places to go to administer Communion to those standing and seated outside. Meanwhile, those of us inside the Cathedral sang hymns--sometimes several times over--to mark a pause in the service so that all of those present and gathered outside the Cathedral could be communicated. It was one more experience of delight and tears of joy which we encountered several times over in our time in Honduras, land of pressing poverty--the poorest country in Central America--and yet with a sense of warmth, openness and faith.

This feeling of warmth and energy, such as being in the midst of a large and demonstrative family, carried over into the working sessions of the Executive Council. We on the Council felt ourselves a caring community as well and many of us came to remark on that feeling among ourselves. Our agenda was long and crowded with important decisions. These highlights express the range and character of our concerns.

The Presiding Bishop and Dr. Pamela Chinnis, the President of the House of Deputies, who alternately chair the sessions, opened the meeting with remarks. Bishop Griswold observed that although signs around Honduras proclaim that "Christ is Coming Soon," ("Christ es pronto") the fact is that Christ is already here in the Eucharist. "Once again our brothers and sisters of Honduras guide us to our understanding of Christ in our lives when we see evidences of Christ in their lives," the Bishop said. He spoke too of the Jubilee year, not a year of inactivity, but rather a reorganization of what and how we do things. In this way, he said, we acknowledge our interdependence. In other remarks the Bishop said, "Justice--justness--is entering into God's own way of seeing his purposes. The opportunity of being here (in Honduras) is to experience God's presence, and to encounter Christ who brings into being the purposes of God." The Bishop also described his recent trip to Russia to visit the Russian Orthodox Church, and later Istanbul where the early Church councils took place, Kosovo, then San Francisco, and now Honduras and other parts of Central America. He spoke of his meetings with young people and the most recent session of the House of Bishops "...where we entered into the exchange of ideas in ways that are not assaultive." Bishop Griswold told us of the great number of invitations he receives from all parts of the Church and from those outside the Church, but he finds himself limited to accepting only about 40% of the invitations he receives.

Dr. Chinnis spoke of being "hospitable" especially in our conversations with each other. Anglicans, she remarked, have deep and dividing perceptions: the ordination of women, the authority of the Bible, and the understanding of human sexuality. These three matters divide us. Even so, dramatic reunions have taken place. We agree that separations are a scandal. There are long lists of bilateral conversations, attempts to rejoin the scattered, conflicted experience of the Church. Dr. Chinnis reminded us that "...we must maintain hospitable options. God is with us. The Holy Spirit will guide us."

The Bishop of Honduras, the Rt. Rev. Leo Frade, also greeted us by drawing on Matthew 28, saying "God has never forsaken us. Thank you for showing us again that that is true." Bishop Frade described the Diocese in these ways: it has six bilingual schools, 12 clinics specializing in social health ministry, orphanages (especially "Pequenas Roses"--Little Roses--founded by Diana Dillenberger-Frade, the Bishop's wife, also a member of the Executive Council), clinics for the legal defense of women, a technical training school for boys, and group works with prostitutes. The Diocese numbers 20,000 people in 67 congregations. There are 27 seminarians and 45 priests and deacons. Most of these developments have taken place during Bishop Frade's tenure. The Diocese has good relations with the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant religious group in the country. The orientation of the Diocese is toward Liberation Theology. There is wide use of the Alpha Course.

In the five days of Executive Council sessions, the Council heard, considered, discussed and acted on a number of important matters which are summarized here briefly:

The Executive Council will meet twice more in this Triennium: January 17 to 21 in New Orleans, and in Washington, D. C. April 27 to May 1.

December 4, 1999

To the Provincial Leaders:

On behalf of the Standing Commission on the Structure of the Church, I want to thank you for meeting with Kit Caffey and me in October. It was very helpful to us and to the commission. Also, we sincerely thank you for the responses to our questionnaire.

Structure is the process of finalizing its Blue Book Report as preliminarily adopted at our November Meeting. While the Report is not yet final, the Commission has asked me to write to you and give advise as to our proposal for the provincial system so that you hear from us and not from the general gossip that seems to go forth before the Blue Book is issued.

Given the comments to Structure’s Draft Comment Report of 1996, the survey conducted by the Commission and the experience of the Commission, the Commission has found that there is a very wide ranging body of opinion in the Church as to the present system of Provinces from highly useful on one end to a waste and a bother on the other. In order to open a dialogue and a decision making process in the Church, Structure is going to propose to the General Convention that the present system of Provinces be discontinued generally in favor of mission and ministry networks. We wish to engage the General Convention in a process to consider whether or not the present governance layer of Provinces furthers the mission and ministry of the Church and our goal of subsidiarity or whether it is a hindrance, rather than merely legislatively tinker around the edges. By proposing to discontinue the present system, the issue can be met head on for full and frank Legislative Committee and floor consideration and debate. This just as easily could lead to a reaffirmation and strengthening of the Provinces. Structure proposes, General Convention disposes.

We promised to send to you the results of our survey and will do so when it is in final form.

Again, we thank you for your interest and assistance in our work

Respectfully yours,

December 28, 1999

Dear John:

First - and you have heard this from most of the provincial officers already - you are proposing a conversation about the future of the provinces and, at the same time you are eliminating from the conversation those who have the most to say about provinces, the people in the existing provincial structure. This sounds a little strange, to say the least.

Thirdly, when I first became involved in church at the level of Province, only three or four of the nine provinces had any real life. Today all of them are vital. This must reflect something of the working of the Spirit.

Finally, you are opening the door to the, I find, rather dangerous movement in the churches to eliminate anything and everything having to do with our common life; joining forces with those, who for but two examples, would do away with the councils of churches, and those who would make the meetings of the General Convention occasional or much more widely spaced.

In the long-unfolding liturgical renewal of the life of the church, perhaps the single greatest fruit is the extension of the whole ministry of the church to the whole people of the church; the great reality now upon us is the empowerment of the whole people of God in the ministry of the Church. Our ecclesiastical structure simply must reflect this new reality! In such a new situation, the creation of a magisterium of/at 815 Second Avenue by removal of all other levels of leadership is exactly contrary to what the Spirit has been saying in the Church. The provinces of this Church are stronger today than in a very long while precisely because of what God is calling the churches to do and to be in the new Millennium. What you, the Commission, are proposing sounds rather unfaithful to me, and I pray you will give this matter a whole lot more thought before carrying resolutions to General Convention to eliminate the nine Provinces.

Thank you for hearing me out, John.

Faithfully,