Greetings from Ft Lauderdale and the 2008 General Assembly!

Things get going officially on Wednesday with the Opening Ceremony at 5 PM Pacific time. It will be streamed online at http://uua.org. If you look at it I would love to get some feedback on how it works for you.

Today was the UUA Board meeting which meets today and then next Monday following GA. Today we dealt with some reports from various committees about happenings of GA. We did do some business work though including appointing several people to committees. First and foremost I am happy to let you know that Michael Sallwasser has been appointed as co-chair of The Journey Toward Wholeness Committee replacing our own Reverend Monica Cummings. Reverend Greg Stewart, minister in San Francisco and formerly Minister of Religious Education at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena has been appointed as a member of the Ministerial Fellowshiping Committee. There are other appointments and they will be reported in the minutes for the meeting shortly.

We found out some good news and bad news about the UUA finances; first, the bad news: the attendance at this GA is significantly lower than projected with about 3,200 being registered. This is about one-half, or less, than Portland last year. The result is that it is expected to lose over $200,000. The god news is that the UUA as a whole is in the black this year, despite the projected losses of GA, by about $300,000 plus.

Do follow along with what is going on at GA both online and from my blog and let me know if there is anything you would specially like to hear about. I will be talking to you again soon!

In faith and trust,

Tom