Do You Love Your Calling?

[lusciouschaos]

I do. Apart from the managerial duties, I get to be involved in some really interesting/challenging projects.

After you read this, feel free to share some experiences around the insights your calling has provided:

I am the Director of Public Affairs in my Southern California Stake. We recently started a program in our stake called "Women of Faith." The intent is to introduce our sisters and eventually women in the community to the beliefs of women of other faiths.

Our first session in February was an introduction to Judaism. In April, we featured Islam which I knew almost nothing about.

Well the session on Judaism created an opportunity for a most interesting friendship between sisters from our LDS Cambodian branch and the Jewish sisters.

This story was featured in the Long Beach Press Telegram.

Hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Holocaust pain shared in Long Beach

By Sandra Escandon

Posted: 04/19/2009 10:06:32 PM PDT

On March 22, Robyn Hendricks, a prominent leader of the Long Beach Jewish community, addressed an audience of Cambodian Mormon teenagers and some of their parents.

It all came together earlier in February after Robyn was invited to speak at a lecture series at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Institute of Religion at Cal State Long Beach University called "Women of Faith."

The series was started as a way for LDS women to meet with women of various faiths who would come and share their religious beliefs. The lecture was followed by a question-and-answer period and refreshments and fellowship. Robyn was the first speaker.

In the audience was a member from the Park Ward, a predominantly Cambodian Mormon congregation in Long Beach. After the lecture, the two women soon found common ground in the human tragedy of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge regime. Robyn was then invited to speak to the young Cambodian Mormon members of The Long Beach Park Ward. She gladly accepted.

Robyn, an accomplished singer and songwriter, started off the evening by teaching everyone some Hebrew and a fun Jewish song about families. Everyone had fun pronouncing some of the strange-sounding words like "ach" for brother. She then turned the topic to her family, telling of her grandparents, parents and other relatives who lived through the horror of the Holocaust and of the members who did not survive.

It was a stirring and emotional account that especially affected all those in attendance who had members of their family killed during the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge.

A question-and-answer period followed. It went on so long that Robyn promised to come back again.

As the evening came to an end, Chhay Choun, a Cambodian parent, suddenly stood at the back of the room. During the program he had sat next to an interpreter, but now he stood and in his best English he addressed Robyn. He told her that when he had learned of the Holocaust it caused him much grief.

He shared with her some of his family's experiences in the "Killing Fields" of Cambodia, and his belief in God. He ended by saying, "You are my sister."

Robyn ended with the song, "May the Lord Bless You and Keep You."

After the program, all in attendance commented on the many similarities between their faiths and were anxious to hear from Robyn in the future.

Robyn's family history has been chronicled in the traveling exhibit "A Reason to Remember, Roth Germany 1933-1942." It is a touching story of five families from the small rural village of Roth, Germany.

This story, which is a microcosm of what occurred throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, contains photographs, documents and images of artifacts that can be seen nowhere else. This exhibit is en route to Long Beach and will be on display at the Alpert Jewish Community Center until May13.

Robyn has invited the teens and their families from the Cambodian LDS Church to be her guests for a tour of the exhibit.

Thank you, Robyn. We think you are "sababa!"

[lestertheemt]

Thanks so much for sharing this!! We can truly learn from those of other faiths!!