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Shirley McGonigal and I attended the Annual General Meeting on April 19-21,2016 at Shady Creek-Brentwood Bay UC in Saanichton. The guest speakers for this event were Rev. Debra Bowman, Eric and Ruth Schultz, Mary Jean Krawciw, and Cara Calibara.

Eric and Ruth gave us a very good update on the Morogoro Project and told us about their own project called “For the Love of Africa”. It is a humanitarian, charitable organization working in cooperation and partnership with African community leaders to provide access to education and basic health care. They have built three preschools, a primary school, a daycare children's center for orphans and other vulnerable children, and a medical clinic. The current project is financing and assisting in the construction of a technical trade school.

Rev. Debra Bowman was an awesome speaker. The theme of this conference was Nourishing the Whole Body: Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, and she covered them all. It was interactive so we had to think, answer questions, write down our thoughts, do a little exercise, and some art. We had a lot of laughs, but we also learned some very good life skills.

Mary Jean Krawciw is an optometrist and we learned a lot about aging eyes, glaucoma and macular degeneration. It was very informative.

After all that learning, Cara Calibara put us through some physical activity with an hour of chair yoga. We didn't know you could stretch so many muscles just by sitting on a chair, or how many ways you could breath.

We were given an update on the National UCW 55th Anniversary being held next year at UBC. Linnea Good is writing a song for UCW. There will be a day of workshops, and a day of tours. Rev. Jordan Cantwell, our new moderator, will be speaking at the Thursday night banquet. Guest speakers at this event will include, 2 women from the Morogoro Project, 2 women from PROK (Korea), 2 women from the United Church of Christ (USA), 2 women from the Catholic Church and 2 women from the Presbyterian Church. We are to bring any Presbyterial banners we may have. Registration for this event will start in September 2016. This may seem a bit early, but all presbyterials in Canada are allotted a number of spaces first, then it is open to all UCW members on a first come basis. More information will be coming before September.

This was a very good conference. We enjoyed every minute of it.

~Gloria Kinley