Report by Foundation Representative Manager, Seppo Kanerva
On April 28 and 29 eight of the currently eleven Representatives of Urantia Foundation held their first conference and thereupon attended the USUA Symposium on Disseminating the Teachings. The two meetings took place at the Scarritt-Bennett Conference Centre in Nashville, USA.
The Representatives' Conference was attended by Mario Casassus Bulnes (Santiago Chile), Luiz Carlos Dolabella Chagas (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Nigel Hornby (Oslo, Norway), Algimantas Jokubenas (Vilnius, Lithuania), Ramon Jacobo Ortiz (Bogota, Colombia), Peep Sõber (Tallinn, Estonia,) Gabriel Salazar (Zacatecas, Mexico), Alfonso Luque Vasquez and Beatriz Arispe Valderrama (Arequipa, Peru). The Foundation Representatives in Belgium, François Dupont, and in Venezuela, Carlos Ortega, as well as the recently appointed Representative at Lima, Peru, Gustavo Proaño, were unable to participate.
The primary purpose of the conference was to provide the Trustees and staff members a chance to meet and get personally acquainted with the Representatives, and likewise, to give the Representatives an opportunity to get to know one another, the Trustees and the staff members. Another and equally important objective of the Conference was that of reiterating the importance of the Representatives' services to the readers in their respective countries and to the Foundation as well.
The Conference was celebrated in the friendly atmosphere of a family gathering. The Trustees, staff members, and the Representatives themselves learned a great deal from the oral reports that each of the Representatives delivered concerning their activities and the situation in their country in general, and that of the readership in particular. In the course of the conference the Trustees announced that they had reached a decision to approve the Latin American Representatives' wish for the Foundation to open an of fice in Santiago de Chile. the decision was welcomed with both delight and gratitude.
The friendly atmosphere of the Nashville meeting was expressed by one of the Representatives in his saying: "These four days have been the happiest in my life."