Ministry and Oversight Committee
1999 Year-End Report

This year, as usual, your Ministry and Oversight Committee took an interest in the general health of the Monthly Meeting. We have discussed Iowa Yearly Meeting and evaluated our Meeting's relationship to it. At times we made suggestions to the Meeting on ways it was felt our relationships with one another might be developed and enhanced. We recommended that Query discussion be conducted in a circle, and have made several suggestions for programs. We have felt there was perhaps a need for a weekend retreat or small group get-together, and currently there is a committee of Friends to consider this. We have concerned ourselves with our stewardship to the elderly and chronicly ill in our Meeting. We have been pleased with the increased stability of First Day School. Regularly, the children and the youth of Penn Valley are in our concerns. As Penn Valley was one of the Meetings on the IYM planning committee, we considered topics for workshops there and recommended persons to the nominating committee to fill the positions of representatives, caretakers, and nominating committee representative. Two of our members served on the IYM Ministry and Oversight Committee and attended their meetings.

Our committee made plans for the Steve Keitner memorial service and the $125 gift given to Meeting by Steve's family was, with the Meeting's consent, used to purchase items of baby furniture to accommodate our three new infants. Three book showers were held to greet the new arrivals, Benjamin Lee, Wesley Obadiah, and Skylar Blue.

Letters requesting membership were received from Donnie Morehouse on behalf of himself, Lee and Samuel, and from Kevin Chafin, as well as Jessica Rettig and Wesley Obadiah Smith, and a request for transfer for Geoff Smith. Clearness Committees heartily recommended acceptance of all into membership in Penn Valley Meeting of Friends.

We recommended the Recorder position be expanded to include the duties of Archivist. Pat Miller is currently assisting Reva Griffith in this role.

Ministry and Oversight encouraged Penn Valley Friends to adopt the more traditional Quaker practice in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, of minuting business items and the sense of the Meeting as they arose, with those in attendance holding the clerk in silence while she/he writes a minute which is then discussed, changed as needed, and finally approved or rejected. The Meeting adopted this for a three month trial period. Our committee has been pleased with the ability of both clerk and attenders to adapt quickly to this new method, and recommends its continuation.

— prepared by Nancy Moon, Convener