Christmas Blessings!
Merry Christmas, dear friends!
This is the last newsletter you will receive before Christmas, and I’d like to take a moment to wish you and your loved ones a blessed Christmas. And to tell you how very grateful I am for you.
2024 has been a good year for LAMA. In January we experienced record participation at Lutheran Day at the Legislature, and that set us on a good path. We went on to support SNAP Eligibility Probation Compliance and Free & Reduced Price School Meals, the Farm Efficiency Fund, Yes In God’s Back Yard and Arizona Casitas here in Arizona, as well as supporting many of the ELCA churchwide advocacy action alerts, including advocating for robust international food aid in the Farm Bill and the Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act. In Arizona, we opposed SNAP Eligibility Restrictions, Voting Center Bans and Voting Equipment Inspection, and the Homeless Shelter Fund.
We have grown our LAMA networks; our GCS Hunger Leaders Network promoted the successful 40-40-40 Region 2 Lenten Challenge and supported each other in its shared mission to meet hunger wherever they find it, and our LAMA Liaisons continue the connections, deep thought and rich conversations on current topics and Lutheran social teachings. We have visited and worked with several new congregations and welcomed new LAMA Liaisons. And for most 2024, we experienced the gift of Hunger Advocacy Fellow Autumn Byars. Autumn testified before the Health and Human Services Committee at the Capitol and was interviewed for Telemundo about SNAP and All of our good work this year has been because of YOU!
The LAMA office exists to be a resource for you, to help you engage in the call to advocacy. Reach out to us, let’s explore ways we can work together!
As we prepare to do it all again in 2025, we invite you once again to consider the Nativity through an advocacy lens. Autumn reminded us last year that regardless of whether you grew up with religious Christmas celebrations, we all are familiar with the dioramas of the stable, with the babe in the manger, his kneeling parents, and the triumphant angels. In the Nativity we see a moment of peace and joy, suspended in the midst of a much larger story.
Autumn wrote, “This Christmas, remember who these people at the Nativity are. Mary is a young, unwed mother, and Joseph is not an educated man, he works with his hands. Soon after this miraculous birth, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ will become refugees. The shepherds are in from the fields where they labor, and the Magi have traveled from lands afar to see the gift of the Christ Child. The angels cried to the shepherds, “Be not afraid!” and to us they say, “Be not afraid of what you are not used to!” The first Christmas brought together people from very different walks of life, and invited them to share the Love incarnate that they had been gifted.”
“This Christmas, remember those who need you—the young, the delicate, the refugees, the field laborers, and the holy men from far away lands. This Christmas, I invite all of us to open our hearts, not just to Christ, but to each other.”
Thank you for all the ways you participated in advocacy and engagement this year. We have needed, and you showed up, working together with LAMA toward a just world where true peace and prosperity exists for all God’s people. Please continue to engage with us in 2025.
Gratefully,
Solveig Muus
LAMA Director
