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Jeff Halper is the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions. Their latest initiative is the launching of a web page, www.18000homes.org. It is intended to bring home the enormity of Israel’s house demolition policy: the destruction of 18,000 homes of Palestinian families in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Please take a moment to visit the ICAHD site. |
Mary Lawrence is a retired Elder in the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. She can be reached at MAL617@VERIZON.NET
In June 2004 Mary completed three years’ service with the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron, in the Occupied West Bank. She used to spend three months in the Hebron area, and three months back in the USA preaching and speaking. She is now a reservist with CPT, and will visit Hebron less often.
For more details, select Mary's Biography
While Mary was in the West
Bank she e-mailed home daily, and these e-mails were the
material for a weekly Newsletter. You can find them at the
Newsletters page. You can subscribe
to the newsletter by e-mailing:
awlcpt-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Mary visits churches and other organizations in New England. She offers two kinds of presentation about CPT’s work in Hebron:
—> Preaching at Sunday (or other) worship services, with discussion
forums after the service
—> A talk illustrated with slides (computer-projected
graphics).
Select Presentation Outline to see the outline of a typical presentation. The talk lasts about 45 minutes, with as long for discussion and questions as is available.
Click “Contact Us” to invite Mary to speak or preach at your church or other organization.
The Reverend Mary Lawrence is a retired ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, and served churches in Massachusetts for eleven years. She was born in England shortly before the outbreak of World WarII. She came to the United States in 1974.
In 1985 her interest in peacemaking took her to the Soviet Union on a Christian Leaders’ delegation with Bridges for Peace. She has been a participant in various peace groups and peace studies over the last twenty years and has been an Amnesty International Partner of Conscience for the past sixteen years.
In 1996, as a recipient of the United Methodist Stowell Scholarship, she made a study tour of the Holy Land. She visited Israel/Palestine again in 1998. In 2000 she traveled to Hebron in the Occupied West Bank as a delegate with Christian Peacemaker Teams and experienced first-hand the difficulties of living under Israeli military occupation. In January 2001 she completed her training with CPT. At Annual Conference in June 2001 she was appointed to the peacemaking mission of the church, and became a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron. She retired from full-time ministry in June, 2004.
Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of active peace-making, initiated by the Mennonite Church, the Church of the Brethren, and Friends United Meeting. Responding to the gospel call to be peacemakers, CPT provides small teams of peace workers in areas where there is conflict. Teams are trained in human-rights reporting, creative public witness, and non-violent intervention. They support people on both sides of a conflict who are calling for a just and viable peace to be achieved by non-violent means.
Between June 2001 and June 2004 Mary spent six months each year working with CPT in Hebron and the surrounding areas in the Occupied West Bank and six months preaching and teaching in the New England area. She returns to Hebron occasionally as a reservist with CPT, leading a delegation in April 2005, and assisting in Hebron in November 2005.
Rev. Lawrence holds a B.A. in psychology from Boston College, an M.A. in
Pastoral Counseling from Emmanuel College, Boston, and a Masters in Divinity
from Boston University School of Theology. She and her retired engineer husband live in
Lunenburg, Massachusetts. They have four adult children and two grandsons.
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