FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

shop Qufity, and Catholic apostolic delegate, Rauf Najjar. In
Jerusalem, his program was mainly ecumenical, but he met,
also, Finnish UN personnel, and FELM missionaries. He assisted
Bishop Nassar in ordaining deacon Kokkonen to be a pastor for
Jaffo Lutheran Messianic congregation.
There was still some uncertainty as how to relate to the sister
churches in the Middle East: the yearbook of 1982 mentions, as
cooperation partners, "Lutheran Arab Church ELCJ" and "Arab
Anglican Church AECC". The following year, the same is said of:
"Jordanian Lutheran Church" and "Evangelical Episcopal Church".
Two other developments worth mentioning occurred:
1. A new church was built in Amman and it was inaugurated
23 rd of August 1987.
2. A sponsorship program of FELM to support low income families
in education was started first for 30 students from Beit Jala
Boys Home.
This very active period meant many visits to both directions. The
list is far from complete. It was not easy to collect this information
in Finland, since some of these visits were private in nature,
and no records were kept on all official visits.
The year 1979 is -very meaningful for ELCJ. To have an Arab
bishop meant for the church to have identity and dignity. The
church started to be less dependant on German Lutherans
only, but also got other friends in Finland and Sweden, and,
later, also in other countries. For ELCJ it was now possible to
build Church-Church relations, to meet high church officials
from European churches on equal footing.
Cooperation was shaped along the idea of partnership; even
still it was to a large extent, at least financially, a giver-receiver
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