Another special visitor... and still more business

Today we had another special visitor at General Conference:
William Gates, Sr., father of the Bill Gates of Microsoft, came to us as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He came to talk about the partnership we have for the purpose of eradicating malaria from this world. The foundation is giving 5 million dollars to the United Methodist Church, as seed money to raise additional funds and to begin additional infrastructure for eliminating this disease.
It was great.
A basketball is being bid upon throughout General Conference, the proceeds of which will go to the Nothing But Nets campaign. The current bid is up to about $20,000 (an annual conference has placed the bid). Mr. Gates announced the Foundation would match the winning bid.
Exciting!

It was a nice break in the middle of today, a day filled with the big plenary session and lots of calendar items to debate and put through. These last few days of General Conference are filled with a couple hundred calendar items brought from committees to the the floor, of removed from the consent calendar.
At the moment, I think we have slightly over 100 left... and we can't leave tomorrow until they're done!
This afternoon's plenary has been filled with constitutional changes... which basically amount to changing the names of non-US conferences from "Central" Conferences to "Regional" Conferences. This might seem like a minor thing... except "central" evokes days of colonialism and rascism, and many central conference delegates feel the name change would be a sign that we now regard them as equal participants in a global church.
Additionally, if the legislation passes, there could be the capacity to make the USA a regional conference. The implications will not be fully known until a taskforce reports back at the 2012 General Conference... but they want some sort of go ahead from this conference so they do not end up "laboring in vain."

Ah, well, at some point you have to actually insert all the work of prior days INTO the Discipline... and that's what we're up to!
Keep it in your prayers, as important (for the most part) decisions are made.
-Jon Moore