Contributors:
Rev. Dr Sandra Bochonok, Pastoral Leader and Founder (on sabbatical in 2004)
Rev. Clay Witt, Interim Pastoral Leader
Geraldine Wright, Translation Coordinator

          Soul Food Ministry had another very successful year reaching out to the world wide community of GLBT Christians. People from 126 countries, representing every continent, downloaded more than 369,000 articles from our site in 2004. The month of January saw 20,949 total downloads: 7,828 in English, 8,555 in Spanish, 1,274 in French, 3,042 in Portuguese, 161 in Russian, and 89 in Chinese. By December the downloads had grown to 35,031: 14,680 in English, 12,719 in Spanish, 2,011 in French, 5,204 in Portuguese, 239 in Russian, and 178 in Chinese. Our peak month of the year was November with 43,116 downloads: 16,677 in English, 16,464 in Spanish, 2,371 in French, 7,145 in Portuguese, 285 in Russian and 179 in Chinese. Significant increase in the traffic was seen in all the languages, in some cases nearly doubling over the course of the year.

          A big milestone was reached when Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok's book of daily devotions, "Living as the Beloved", was released. We would like to thank Adam deBaugh of the Chi Rho Press for his diligent efforts to get the book published and in the bookstores.

A statement from the Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok follows:

"The Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok, founding pastor of www.soulfoodministry.org, used her sabbatical year to walk more than forty outdoor labyrinths in the United States of America. For intellectual work, she completed and graduated from the Washington State University Extension Master Gardener's Program. God also blessed her with unexpected prayer partners, spiritual companions and soul sisters among the Little Sisters of St. Clare (LSSC), and she joined a local Franciscan community as an associate member in January 2004. As her renewal year progressed, Sandra spent numerous hours of volunteer gardening and doing important retreat work at Harmony Hill Retreat Center (www.harmonyhill.org), including one life-changing weekend as a volunteer assistant house mother for a cancer retreat.

Dr. Bochonok's major sabbatical highlight occurred when her long awaited book of daily devotions, LIVING AS THE BELOVED: One Day At A Time, was published through www.ChiRhoPress.com. Sandra joyfully promoted her book locally in the Puget Sound area, and the book has been embraced by readers representing the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal church, the LSSC's, Harmony Hill Retreat Center, and the ecumenical Lutheran Holden Village retreat center (www.holdenvillage.org).

Sandra's 2005 ministry goals reflect her contemplative calling as she resumes local ecumenical and interfaith pulpit supply, retreat work, labyrinth events, spiritual direction, and writing.

1. Through www.soulfoodministry.org, she is determined to reach online seekers in every nation with the non-homophobic inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ, while co-partnering outreach with like-minded web sites such as www.christianlesbians.com, www.mccChurch.org and www.whosoever.org.


2. She intends to explore with UFMCC leadership, funding resources to translate carefully selected MCC documents (The Bible and Homosexuality, Not A Sickness:Not A Sin, and Living With HIV/AIDS) into prioritized languages for online and offline ministry outreach."

          During Rev. Bochonok's sabbatical we had the pleasure of working with Rev. Clay Witt as our interim pastoral leader. He submitted weekly devotions under the title "Soul Food for the Week's Journey", which are based on the "Revised Common Lectionary". He finished Year C of the lectionary at the same time that Rev. Bochonok returned to the ministry, but graciously agreed to continue writing devotions for Years A and B. Rev. Witt also acted as the Soul Food representative at the Region 3 regional conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico in July.

A statement from the Rev. Clay Witt follows:

"It was a privilege and a joy to serve as Soul Food Ministry's interim cyber-pastor while Rev. Dr. Bochonok was taking a well-deserved sabbatical to refresh her spirit.

As I look at Soul Food's 2004 annual report I am reminded again of how much things have changed over time. As we can see from the stories in the "New Testament" book of Acts, spreading Jesus' message of God's grace and inclusive love for all people began as a slow and laborious process. That good news spread from one person to the next in person-to-person conversations and talks given to often small groups of people in cities and villages. Taking the message to the next place involved slow, hazardous journeys.

Later the word was spread by letters and books; books that for many centuries were rare and costly items copied by hand that few people could afford to own. Things improved with the invention of the printing press and still more with the advent of modern media like radio and television - but even those modern miracles of science are limited in the people they can reach.

Things are radically different now. Now a message for God's people God puts on someone's heart can be placed on the Web and shared with others in almost any corner of the globe in an instant. People everywhere who did not know the wonderful story of Jesus' love for them personally can have their lives transformed by that knowledge. People who are already walking with Jesus on life's journey can learn from others who are a bit further along on that journey.

So once again God has done something new and unexpected to enrich human life. It has been an honor to be a very small part of God's work in this new on-line world. I hope to continue my association with Soul Food Ministry as a content contributor, even though my tour as interim cyber-pastor has passed. As God grants I hope to complete the three-year cycle of weekly teaching that appears as "Soul Food for the Week's Journey." How God may use those weekly reflections I can not say, but then I need not know. I place that in God's hands.

I remain excited about the future of the ministry. Rev. Dr. Bochonok has returned from sabbatical with fresh energy and a renewed passion to tell "the old, old story" to those who "have never heard" in innovative ways. I look forward to seeing where that will lead in days to come."

          In addition to Rev. Witt's devotions, another English submission to the site was the completion of the "UFMCC Core Values Resource Kits", which had been previously uploaded in an unfinished state. The denomination has translated this document into Spanish, so we posted the Spanish version, as well. We also posted Rev. Luiz Fernando Pereira Garupe's Portuguese article "Lendo a Bíblia..." and it's English translation, "Reading the Bible with Life and Life with the Bible".

          We continue to translate the Lent devotions co-authored by Rev. Bochonok and an Australian minister. Early in the year we translated and posted the final installment of the devotions in Spanish, and it was available for the 2004 Lent season. We are now translating them into Portuguese. Most of the devotions are already posted, and the final set is at the translators. We expect them to be ready well in time for the Lent season. These Lent devotions, as well as the Advent devotions written by the same 2 authors, have been very popular. Their presence on the site leads to significantly higher traffic around Christmas and Easter.

          We made a big push to increase the French material on the site, translating a total of 7 articles. At this point there is now a very full selection of articles in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. In the coming year we plan to get a French translation of the popular Lent devotions mentioned above.

          We also posted a Russian translation of "HIV/AIDS: Is it God's Judgement", by the UFMCC Commission on Faith, Fellowship and Order. More articles in Russian will be prepared in the upcoming year. The current Russian articles are being downloaded by readers from a number of former Soviet bloc countries. It is my hope that, in this way, we can minister to GLBT Christians in these countries, even though we do not, at this point, have articles in all their individual languages.

          We continue to search for authors from non-USA MCC's. I have been in contact with the church in Rio de Janeiro, and they have agreed to prepare some articles. The Rev. Dr. Edgard Danielsen-Morales, originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, has offered to help me find Spanish speaking authors. This effort continues.

          In an effort to provide information to people who might be interested in the inner workings of the ministry, we have established a set of pages called "Friends of Soul Food Ministry". These include things like interviews with the staff and annual reports. Since the content is not spiritual in nature, we have separated it off with its own home page, which has a link from the main page. In the upcoming year we hope to set up a mechanism for on-line donations on the "Friends" pages.

          Very little E-mail was sent to the web site account this year. We did receive a few messages from Portuguese speaking theology students asking questions about the Bible and homosexuality. I directed them to contact the Church in Rio de Janeiro, where there are a number of seminary trained congregants.

          The goal from last year that we haven't made much progress on is getting additional volunteers for the ministry. For some tasks, I have been able to compensate. I already do all the checking of documents translated into Portuguese, and my ability to read Spanish has improved to the point where I will start checking the Spanish documents myself. For the other documents, I am exploring the possibility of buying high quality translation software so that I can at least check the overall content. The fundraising and grantwriting tasks are a different matter. I simply am not trained to do them, and taking the time to learn them would take away time from the translation tasks. We will have to continue searching for people in the coming year. I would also like to start an E-mail newsletter to inform readers when new articles are posted. However, this will also require a person dedicated to the task.

Here are some other goals for 2005:

• Concentrate on translating articles into Spanish - In the last couple of years I have spent most of my energy increasing the content of the Portuguese and French pages, and paid relatively little attention to the Spanish pages. It is now time to turn back to the Spanish pages. In particular, I want to get some of Rev. Bochonok's labyrinth devotions into Spanish.



• Post a new Chinese translation of "Homosexuality and the Bible" - We were contacted in October by the Canaan Fellowship, the Christian group in Taiwan which did the translation we now have posted. They are preparing a new translation. Once it is ready, we will post the new version.



• Begin considerations of whether to add an additional language to the site - Part of our mission is to draw GLBT Christians to existing MCC's. To this end, I will contact the MCC churches in Germany to ask if they have translated any UFMCC articles into German, and which articles they would like to see us translate. I will also talk to the churches of South Africa and ask if our English pages serve them well, or if they would like articles in another of their official languages. There is also a possibility of getting some Korean articles. A member of MCC-DC has expressed interest in translating some of the UFMCC documents into Korean, and perhaps we would be given permission to post these on our site.



• Publicity for the web site - I intend to rent a table in the exhibition hall at UFMCC General Conference to further publicize the Soul Food Ministry site. I also hope to network with potential authors and volunteers while at General Conference. I will explore the possiblity of advertising the site in the Advocate and the Washington Blade.

Abraços(Hugs),
Geraldine Wright
Translation Coordinator for Soul Food Ministry