PRINCE OF PEACE LIFESTYLES

How has Christ made a difference in how you act in your daily life?

How have you responded in a situation of conflict that may have been different based on your faith in Christ and what you have learned of his teachings?

Do you have true stories of how others you have known have responded due to their faith?

WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR STORY OR STORIES!

The Virginia Conference Peace Committee is collecting stories to compile into a book of how members of our Conference Churches follow Christ’s teachings and modeling of being peaceful with others. The Youth in our Churches across the conference are collecting these stories and writing them down.

Help the youth author this book! Pass on your stories for all to benefit. Several stories have been placed on the back page as examples. These stories may or may not have a positive ending, but should reflect how you or others you knew responded differently in a situation than society might expect. This action may have been taken out of strong conviction, or these actions may have been taken without forethought based on an upbringing in the faith.

By telling your story, you can:

ü Encourage other Christians, and

ü Be a witness to non-Christians of how Christ makes a difference in your life.

The youth in your Church will be contacting you in the near future. Invite them over, meet them at Church, or meet them somewhere else to relay your story. They will be recording or writing down these stories.

Thank you for your help!

NOTE: Providing your name is highly encouraged as to give credibility to the story. However, consideration will be provided to printing anonymous stories. While we want to print as many stories as possible, personnel working on this project do retain the right to choose and edit all stories for content.

Cornfield Conflict

When I was farming in the Newport News area, I had a cornfield on the back of the farm where the corn would get mashed down every year by young guys in their cars or 4 wheel drives. This was when the corn was real tall and just about ready to harvest. They would run their vehicles right through the cornfield at night, when I could never catch them. I would lose a couple of loads of silage every year because of this. However, I knew that it was a neighbor boy who was involved because I saw corn stalks under his car. I could also tell by the tire treads in the field that they were his.

One day we were at the nearby service station at the same time, talking in a group of people about hunting, etc. When we were all about ready to go, I suddenly turned to him, grabbed him on his collar, looked him in the eye and said, “Leroy, what would you do if you were me and I was you and I kept racing cars through your corn field? He immediately looked down, embarrassed, and said, “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” It never happened again and we remained good friends.

- Story told by Myron Ross, Retired Farmer, Newport News, Virginia

From Worstest Enemies to Buddies

Logan and Drew were good first grade buddies. They always loved playing together. They were also beginning to share a mutual dislike for another boy in their class who always wanted to pick on them. This boy, Jack, especially loved to constantly pull on Drew’s coat. This really started to bother Logan, as his friend Drew was small and he felt that Jack was taking advantage of him. Drew went home and told his mother that he didn’t want to wear his coat to school anymore because of Jack. Drew’s mother was ready to go to the principal to complain about Jack.

One day, Drew and Logan were at Logan’s house playing and decided that they wanted to pray for people they knew. Logan’s mother suggested that they pray for Jack. “Oh no”, they said, “ we don’t want to pray for our worstest enemy.” However, after talking about it more, they did include Jack in their prayers.

The next day Logan came home to tell his mother that Jack was not his worstest enemy anymore. “What happened”, his mother asked. “Well,” Logan started, “Drew and I were talking on the playground and we decided that Jesus wouldn’t be mean to someone like Jack, so we shouldn’t be mean to him either. So we just went over to him and asked him to play with us. Jack said, “yes, I want to play with you.” After that, Jack played nicely with both Logan and Drew and they became friends.

Some time later, after celebrating Jacks Birthday with him, Logan turned to his mother and said, “I just can’t believe that I just had ice cream with my worstest enemy.”

- Story told by Logan Martin (First Grade Student), and Paula Martin, his mother – Stuarts Draft, Virginia.

Teaching All Nations

“I hadn’t really heard a lot about conscientious objection. I thought that was something hippies did in the ‘60s and ‘70s”…I just said to myself, “You know, the government is paying me $35,000 a year to do nothing, and I’m not helping one person. This is not making me happy, but I do get satisfaction from working for the Church, for experiencing the things of God.”

The Great Commission says, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” I said, “I can’t teach anyone with an M16 pointed to their head…”

-As spoken by Glen Guyton, Air Force Captain (Hampton, Va.), discharged as a conscientious objector in February, 1998.