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Our family camping weekend was held at Catoctin in September. In spite of the rain, we hiked and canoed, cooked s’mores at the fireplace, and had a great time building community.

The Annapolis Friends Meeting Peace and Justice Center has offered two sessions of the basic Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), one session of the advanced program, and one of the training for trainers program, which will qualify graduates to apprentice as leaders. Participants represented the Meeting, the board of education, the city and county human relations commissions, and a local African American church. We hope to offer the training throughout the community and we are lining up opportunities to give presentations on the program to community leaders.

A visioning session was held in October to consider the future of the meeting. Sixteen Friends identified and prioritized their spiritual leadings for two, six, and twelve years into the future. Each First Day in October, Outreach Committee provided sandwich materials and invited newer attenders to share a meal and get to know one another better.

In November we welcomed four new children into the meeting community. Kind words were spoken, certificates were signed, and a potluck was enjoyed by all present. Many tasks were completed at our fall project day, including an extension to the parking lot. The adult education program offered the Exploring Quakerism program over several sessions. Pastoral Care Committee has created a buddy system for Friends who live alone and would have no one to help them if they had an emergency. Individuals can sign up to have someone check on them each morning. We are offering a spiritual friendship group based on the BYM Spiritual Formation Program.

We continue our relationship with an inner city school in Philadelphia. We have established a program of pen pals between Friends and the children there. We have provided school supplies and mittens and gloves.

Three quarters of the proceeds from our annual Christmas Market on December 5 will be used for scholarships to AVP workshops. The other 25% will go to our Growing and Greening working group to pay a consultant to advise us on greening issues. We celebrated Christmas late—January 3 (!) at our regular potluck with a children’s program and caroling, due to the 20 inches of snow that made it impossible to reach the meetinghouse the Sunday before Christmas.

We have temporarily stopped posting the minutes of our business meetings on our Web page as we seek unity on how to balance desires for confidentiality with the desire to let our light shine into the digital world. We would be interested in other Friends’ thinking and practice.