TO: General Councilors, Society Presidents, and Field Representatives

Please send me your view of the long range goals and objectives of Urantia Brotherhood. We plan to spend at least two years developing this topic among various groups in the Brotherhood. We would suggest that regional conferences and the General Conference of 1978 consider this subject as one of the topics for discussion.

Plans for the Field Representative Workshop on March 5 and 6 must be formulated in the near future. We hope each of the Field Representatives will share their ideas with us for this two-day seminar.

We now have a firm date for the General Council meeting of 1977. it will be held on Saturday, June 25, 10 a.m. at 533 Diversey Parkway.

Mr. Richard Bain of St. Petersburg, Florida, Mrs. Shelley Hemendinger, Waterville, N.Y., and Mrs. Cheryl Prince, San Diego, California, have been accepted as members-at-large.

The Executive Committee started the New Year with a rather uneventful, but pleasant meeting in which department chairmen shared ideas for activities which they are planning. Several committees must fill vacancies which have occurred. The Committee on Education will be meeting on February 12. They are making a study of how various societies and study groups are conducting their meetings which they eventually will share with the Brotherhood. The next Bulletin will be published around February 8. The International Fellowship Committee reports that Henry Begemann is meeting regularly with an active study group in France.

The volume of mail coming into the Brotherhood office is relatively heavy. During the past month, for instance, around 90 letters were answered. This is representative of correspondence month after month. John Hales takes care of the majority of the letter writing. Often these letters require rather lengthy answers. Most of the letters express both joy in discovering The Urantia Book and curiosity about. the organization and people associated with it. Almost every month there is a strange letter written by persons claiming extra-planetary origins! Most letters, however, come from people who appear to be solid, insightful, and progressive searchers for truth.

Reading these letters coming from people in all stations of our social strata, from college presidents and diplomats to prison inmates, one is inspired with the tremendous potentials of the Urantia message.

This year, I believe, will mark the beginning of an enlarged and deeper unity within Urantia Brotherhood. Foundations are evolving which are rooted in the bedrock of evolutionary experience. Illusions of grandeur and despair are fading and we are facing more realistically the long and slow task of establishing a Brotherhood which will one day be the dominant and saving influence on our troubled planet.

We would invite each of you to unite with us in this great adventure of faith in the spirit of love - love which is grounded in reality.

Cordially,

Meredith J. Sprunger, President

MJS/mtr