Draft Arabic Translation Completed

Youssef Saliba has recently completed a draft translation of The Urantia Book into Arabic.  The Ottawa Study Group has begun posting side-by-side (English–Arabic) versions of his translation on our website and will gradually provide access to the entire set as formatting proceeds

The Ottowa group is hoping to find readers with an Arabic background to review the draft and provide comments on its fidelity.  Any assistance which anyone might be able to provide/suggest would be much appreciated. If you would like to help please contact David Graves at dcgraves@sympatico.ca

Arabic language support will be added to The Fellowship's polylingual search page.

See Youssef’s Draft Translation

The Fellowship's Urantia Foundation Liaison

The Fellowship has appointed a Urantia Foundation Liaison for purposes of fostering better coordination and communication between Urantia Foundation and The Fellowship. Both organizations share a similar mission with regard to the propagation of The Urantia Book in all of its translations. This position is currently filled by Marvin Gawryn. Here is Marvin's report on activities over the past year:

The Fellowship's Urantia Foundation Liaison has had an active and fruitful first year of function. The following projects have all been initiated and nurtured along in the last 12 months.

In August of 2006 Robert Burns and I met with the Urantia Foundation trustees at Silver Springs in order to promote cooperation and explore collaborative possibilities. The EC subsequently met and socialized with the Trustees in Boulder in February 2007.

The Fellowship and Foundation have formed a Committee on a Standardized Reference Text comprised of three participants from each organization. Work has begun on the project and reports of progress will be made to the Executive Committee and General Council of The Fellowship as the project unfolds.

The Urantia Community Endowment has been established and initially funded by a Board of six Directors comprised equally of leaders active in the Fellowship, Foundation and UAI. The Endowment is affiliated with the Nevada Community Foundation which administers the assets of many philanthropic endowments.

Personnel from the Fellowship and Foundation have discussed the desirability of hosting the Foundation's translations on the Fellowship's website, thereby allowing a dynamic suite of features to be added to these texts. David Kantor has developed a proposal which the Trustees are considering.

The Fellowship and Foundation are in engaged in a productive dialogue on use of the concentric circles symbol. Regardless of the end result, the tenor of this interchange is noteworthy for its disciplined and mutually respectful tone.

Perhaps most encouraging, leaders of all the three primary Urantian organizations are beginning to meet and communicate with greater regularity, seeking opportunities for collaborative function. I (and perhaps Robert Burns) will be attending the USUA conference in Seattle the week after our SSS. We have happily begun a process of increased fraternal relations, long overdue, which must be nurtured going forward.

With thanks for the opportunity to serve,

Marvin Gawryn, Urantia Foundation Liaison

 

Annual reports of other Fellowship Committees are available
on the website as follows:

• 2007 Annual Education Committee Report, July 2007
• 2007 Judicial Committee Report
• 2007 Interfaith Committee Report
• Information Technologies Committee Report
• Urantia Foundation Liaison Report
• 2007 Membership Committee Report
• 2007 Outreach Committee Annual Report
• Pipeline of Light Report
• 2007 Publications Committee Report
• 2007 Annual International Fellowship Committee Report
• 2007 Annual Finance Committee Report

IC08 Site Visit

During the month of July the IC08 planning committee visited the UCLA conference venue.  They spent four days becoming familiar with the campus and working on plans for what is already shaping up to be perhaps the best international conference The Fellowship has ever sponsored.   

Susan Cook, conference chair, writes: 

We met with our UCLA conference coordinator several times during our stay and were able to hone our needs on the spot. We have read your survey responses from past conferences and are trying our best to meet your needs. You asked for less walking, more time for fellowship, and fewer concurrent workshops. I believe we will be able to make this happen for you. 

As far as walking is concerned, all of the plenaries, except the first day, will be in the same building where all the other workshops will be held. The youth programs will be in the same building! It's a pretty big building. And our sleeping rooms are just two minutes walk to the workshop AND the cafeteria!  

We are planning working workshops. We'll have lectures as well but our focus is on service: teaching service, learning about service, and doing service. Our hope is to walk around this conference and hear you planning and using your imagination about the ways you can serve. We're giving you plenty of fellowship time to catch up with old friends, meet new ones, and discuss service work.

IC08 Reconnaissance Team 

The cafeteria is huge and will accommodate all of us. There are many food stations to accommodate all diets and places to eat other than the cafeteria that include Mexican, Sbarro's Italian, Taco Bell, Panda Express Chinese and a very nice salad bar. Just outside the campus is an area called Westwood with restaurants galore. 

The campus is beautiful with colorful flowers everywhere. There are two swimming pools for our use. It's a sprawling campus - runners will enjoy it very much. 

Tom Choquette and Fred Harris are sailing with the older kids to Catalina Island and invite parents and friends to the island on our free day which is July 4th. The Jerusalem Market Place has a perfect room and we have two other rooms for younger children and infants. 

More information will be coming out very soon. The conference committee is very excited and is dedicated to making an awesome conference experience for you. 

Susan Cook, IC08 Conference Chair

IC08 Reminder

“If you would share the Master's joy, you must share his love. And to share his love means that you have shared his service. Such an experience of love does not deliver you from the difficulties of this world; it does not create a new world, but it most certainly does make the old world new.”  [180:1.5]

Come and let us make this old world new and find the “Thrill of Loving Service” in our own lives.

Would you consider studying and experiencing the topic of service for a workshop at the upcoming 2008 International Conference?  Would you come with us next July and explore together how we might grow in the experience of loving service?

Our conference takes place in Los Angeles, California at the beautiful UCLA campus on July 2nd to the 6^th, 2008.

Visit our website at www.IC08.org or contact the programming committee at IC2008@sover.net

Service starts now.

Morning Star Foundation Online Catalog of Secondary Works

Morning Star Foundation, which specializes in secondary works of the Urantia Book (having taken over from the Good Cheer Press) now has an online catalog.

The Morning Star Foundation is a non-profit organization devoted to historical, educational and inspirational works relating to the teachings of The Urantia Book.  The Morning Star Catalog was created for service, not profit. When you order an item from the catalog you can be confident that any proceeds from that sale will help to provide the Urantia movement with affordable books and meaningful secondary works.

Think of Morning Star as a resource bank that is here to help you study and share The Urantia Book.

Visit Morning Star Foundation

 

SSS'07 Synopsis

Larry Geis writes:

"More than 125 readers participated in The Fellowship's 2007 Summer Study Session during the month of July. In addition to meeting many new readers, it was wonderful to see some long-time readers such as Dave and Marta Elders, Nick Scalzo, Carolyn Kendall, Meredith Sprunger, and many others. It was quite moving to be in a classroom where some of the "students" were 30 year or more veterans, mixed with a good number of young adults, recent readers, UAIers, Foundation staffers, etc."The feedback sessions, in which attendees have an opportunity to hear some of what took place at workshops they may have missed, have become quite popular and afford many new people a chance to begin presenting in front of an audience. Nick Stefero, who has 25 years of toastmaster training, was the coordinator. He kept things moving by incorporating the 5 minute timer used in that process. Nick hopes to have a multi-day toastmaster training incorporated into the IC08 schedule.

"The conference design was nearly perfect in structure: Concise worship/speech plenary; morning 2-hour workshop with only 4 choices; afternoon 2-hour workshop and then the feedback session for all 8 workshops. Evenings were just for social time and leisurely meals fostered much interaction. IC08 will be somewhat similar, rather than offering a bewildering number of choices and slots.

"I wish that every reader would make it a point to attend these gatherings--they are very enriching."

Some SSS'07 Attendees:

 

 

 

 

Fellowship Administration Meetings in Conjunction with SSS '07

During the course of the conference weekend TDA representatives, members of the General Council, and the Fellowship's Executive Committee held their regularly scheduled meetings.  The work of The Fellowship is increasing.  It is becoming more complex with decisions needing to be made that carry long-term implications for how we are spreading the revelation. Due to time constraints this summer's meeting adjourned long before the relevant issues could be completely resolved.  There are significant service opportunities available in The Fellowship ranging from study group leadership to administrative participation. 

Can you allocate some time from your busy life to help? What would you have to sacrifice in order to commit a few hours each week to the work of the revelation? Contact Michelle Klimesh or Paula Thompson if you have an interest in participating with the Fellowship's team of revelation workers. 

Your financial help is also needed to support this growing work!  Visit http://urantia-book.org/support.htm and make a contribution using your credit or debit card, or sign up for a monthly autodebit.  Monthly autodebits help us tremendously with cash flow projections and budget management, enabling us to initiate important projects sooner because of our confidence in the availability of cash when bills become due.

 

Up Close and Personal With The Urantia Book -- By JJ Johnson

JJ is to be heartily commended for this labor love. His book is a unique reference work for reading The Urantia Book. It is organized around several chapter headings, but the longest chapter is chapter 6 which functions as a kind of topical reference for a variety of subjects found in The Urantia Book. About 90% of the content is quotes from The Urantia Book. Another helpful resource is JJ's use of page references from both the Foundation and Uversa Press editions of the book.  These make cross checking and locating passages very, very easy.

The book promotes the core evangelistic message contained in The Urantia Book. Kindred spirits will be attracted to the "Wake Up Call" in Part I.  Part II relates specific passages to key concepts within the book.  JJ's "Up Close and Personal" is a very good aid for personal study of The Urantia Book.  Available from Amazon.com.

Published by David Kantor for The Urantia Book Fellowship
Visit our website, urantia-book.org
Send comments or questions to sysop@urantia-book.org
Contributing photographers: Phil Calabrese, Karen Larsen, Tommie Clendening, Beth Wenger, Lou Nicksic