If we are lucky, once or twice in a lifetime we might experience an example of thanksgiving so deep, so wide, that we can recall it and use it to move ourselves away from the sense of scarcity that the world embraces and move us to the sense of the abundant life which Christ promises us.  One of those experiences for me is that I, a man, had the privilege and joy of serving on the United Thank Offering Committee from 1985-1988 as an Executive Council Liaison from The Episcopal Church.

The UTO Committee members were most welcoming.  And wow, do those women work hard!  A hard worker myself, even as a young man I could scarcely keep up with UTO Committee members, some of whom were old enough to be my mother.  In each and everything we did there was a sense of giving thanks at all times and in all places.  After all, what other response can we human beings have for the extravagant and unconditional love of our God for us, and for all creation?  Mine is a story of how  UTO in its mission and ministry has created a  sense of thanksgiving in those whose lives it has touched all over the globe.

In 1987, Presiding Bishop Ed Browning sent me to the South Pacific Anglican Council Meeting in Suva, Fiji to represent the Episcopal Church.  What an adventure!  I arrived in Fiji to find out there had been a military coup, which had taken place while I was flying there.  Anglican Bishop Jabez Bryce bravely supported the elected government over and against the coup, and we were forced to hold our meeting under guard in an Anglican orphanage outside the city.  But that isn’t my story.

Each member attending the South Pacific Anglican Council did diocesan visits across the province. I was sent to the Solomon Islands and the Diocese of Malaita, which was the “frontier” of Christianity; some parts of the island of Malaita never having heard the gospel.  People welcomed the Bishop of Malaita, with whom I traveled, with great joy, and I had such a sense of the church in mission.  I suspect that St. Paul must have had some of these same feelings on his missionary journeys to places which had never heard the Good News of God in Christ.  There were miraculous things going on as people were healed, long rivalries and tribal disputes calmed as the reconciling power of the Spirit was loosed in Malaita.  But, those wonders are not my story.

While we were there a number of people, children in particular, were made very ill with malaria. The Bishop, some clergy and lay leaders, and I agreed to help evacuate the sickest of the children to the only medical facility.  We carried them across fast flowing rivers that forced us to hang on to heavy ropes with one hand and carry the children draped over our shoulders, holding them with our other hand.  The one medical vehicle on the island in those days was, you guessed it, purchased with a grant from the UTO.  The only trained medical personnel in the mid 80’s, there in the rural part of the island, was an Anglican priest who had been trained as an R.N. by an Episcopal Church overseas development grant.  After loading the children in the “ambulance” they were taken to the one medical clinic there.  Yes: it was built with a UTO grant.

I had been directing Native American ministries in the Dioceses of Minnesota and North Dakota, and every new church building for a Native American community had been built with UTO grants.  So I was not surprised, after getting blank stares when he said I was from the Episcopal Church, the Bishop introduced me as “Howard Anderson, from the UTO Committee.” That brought broad smiles, much nodding of heads and the comment, “Oh the Episcopal Church, is that a part of the UTO?”
UTO continues teaching people all across the world to be thankful at all times and in all places, and gives each one of us a concrete way to say “thanks be to God” for all that we have been given.

The Rev. Howard Anderson, President & Warden, Cathedral College
Washington National Cathedral