Day 6 Embark

The first day of full legislative plenaries started today! YAY!! I can hardly believe we are already half way through! This has been a fun time down here.

Today, as legislation began, we started the day with votes on the consent calendars. Each passed easily, though many did have pieces of legislation pulled from the consent calendar to the floor of General Conference. This went by easily, and was followed by elections to the Judicial Council and the University Senate. Then, complication began. Voting at General Conference is done electronically for most votes, including these elections. To vote for elections, there was a very specific process that must be followed. If you are to vote for two people, then you actually cast two ballots. You may not choose the same person both times, and you must vote both times. If either of these criteria are not met, then the ballot is declared invalid.

In order to teach people the voting system, they asked the delegates to vote for their favorite Apostle. Peter and John consistently ranked at the top, Yay Peter! However, there were many invalid ballots each time. Over and over, the instructions were explained and the test votes were taken. Eventually, people got so frustrated, that a woman rose to speak. She said, "I am a second grade teacher, and suppose we ask every person to vote 1 and then 2, and we can be sure that everybody can follow that instruction on their voting pads." There was widespread affirmation of this idea. The chair chose not to follow this advice and eventually chose to have everybody vote for Peter on one ballot and another Apostle for the other. We ended up with a 98.7% vote for Peter. Peter was successfully voted to the Judicial Council!! Of course, the vote was swayed by the chair... At this moment they decided to continue with the elections.

For those of us observing, this was not the most interesting thing to observe. At one point, early in the test process, the woman sitting next to me apparently was not paying attention. She leaned over toward me and said, "but how are we supposed to know who these people are?!" As I stared at her, a few of us said, "they are the Apostles!!" My did she look embarassed!!

As the elections for the Judicial Council and University Senate began, the drama was not yet over. For Judicial Council, 11 laity were up for election. Two people had to be elected, and both were elected easily. From the remaining 9, 6 people had to be elected. When 6 votes were taken in a row, all ended up at above 50%. The bishop acting as chair did not understand what how this could happen. As we looked at the numbers, several mathematicians stood to explain how this could happen mathematically. Trying to explain math to a bunch of clergy and professional laity seems to be akin to explaining computers to somebody in their upper 80s. Sometimes it works, some fall in love with it, but many others are overwhelmed. The bishop ruled that we would move on to the next election while they discussed the matter and made a ruling. Eventually, the statement by the mathematicians/math teachers was upheld.

The major debate that happened today was in regard to the bishops. There was a proposal that died in legislative committee but was brought to the floor. This petition was to limit the term limits of bishops. It would eliminate lifetime election to the episcopacy. Because this is a constitutional ammendment, it required a 2/3 vote to pass. Over the morning and early afternoon, many amendments were made to the petition to try to make the petition more palatable. Each would allow re-election of bishops, but they would have to be re-elected after serving a given amount of time. Each amendment was rejected. In the end, the entire petition was voted to about 50/50 yes/no. Yes was slightly more than 50%, so it did not pass because it was not a 2/3 vote.

Those in favor of the petition to implement term limits for bishops did so for several reasons. 1) They reason that it will increase bishop effectiveness if they have to be re-elected to continue. This causes and increase in accountability. 2) We are very focused on effectiveness right now and it is appropriate to do this for bishops at a time when we are considering removing guaranteed appointments for elders. Those against the petition responded to each of these points. If our bishops have to worry about re-election this will 1) stifle their prophetic voice and 2) require them to focus on re-election rather than the work of their episcopal area. It will also limit the work that they can do over time, because some work takes more than 8 years to get done. As I said, the latter voice prevailed and bishops do not have term limits and do not need to be re-elected.

Not only has this been an interesting and significant day for legislation, but it has also been a great day for connections. At lunch I was privileged to sit and chat with a pastor about the good and bad experiences I have had in my candidacy process, and I am grateful that I have had more good than bad. He and I chatted about sermons and the importance of keeping all sermon manuscripts. I was enjoyable just to sit and chat about something other than General Conference, but something that is still significantly important to both of us. I love meeting new people and networking across the connection!

This evening, they had a Higher Education reception, which includes free food lots of music from various educational institutions. Some of my favorites were Africa University's choir and a Mariachi band of high schoolers from El Paso. I enjoyed the dinner, but I have to say mingling was very difficult for me because I am an introvert, so I eventually escaped. As I escaped, I went to get a pop with the person who invited me to the USO gathering the other day. She saw my blog about USO, as she was reading various General Conference blogs, and recognized the story! More connections! She and I sat and talked about seminary, young people, ageism, and the UMO. She talked about how horrible it was to watch what I was going through and be unable to stop it, and she thanked me for being brave enough to tell the story. I gave her permission to share my story from my blog as she will, and she says that she will absolutely share it. Hopefully people will learn from it and it will make a difference! Its kind of cool that my blog is getting around.

After I finished speaking with her, I decided to head back down stairs to the Young Delegate lounge, to escape the crowds for a little while. As I walked past the Higher Education reception, I noticed the high school band from El Paso, and decided to stop and watch the dancing. As I stood, one of the boys came and took me by the hand and took me in to dance! I learned two things...1) it is really fun to dance with a random Mexican guy in the middle of the hall way and 2) I am really bad at following when I don't know the dance. I think all the connections with people today made my day! So now that worship is over (it was great, definitely watch it online for the music), I'm off to be an introvert and rest a bit. Good night all and God bless! More coming tomorrow!