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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 17, 1984
PAGE 9
I recently read the article in THE WORLDWIDE NEWS about SEP camp
at Orr.
It was very encouraging to read the impressions the
campers had at SEP.
I attended camp at Orr in 1980. I was at a point in my life where
I didn't want to go on living God's way of life. It seemed like
the Millennium was a long way off and sort of unreal. But camp
made it seem real. It was a place where people cared about you, a
place where everyone was happy. It truly was millennial.
That's what made me start thinking. It was a turning point in my
life. I think now if I hadn't gone to SEP I probably wouldn't be
in the Church today. But thankfully, through you and the staff
members at Orr, God showed me which way I should go.
What I'm saying is thank you for the Summer Educational Program.
I know that many more activities have been added since I was
there. I hope every teen has the opportunity to attend.
ON THE WORLD SCENE
MOSCOW'S NEWEST WORRY: GROWING TIES
BETWEEN EAST AND WEST GERMANY
S.L. (Navarre, OH)
--Richard Rice, Mail Processing Center
For more than a year, West Germany and Communist East Germany have been
moving closer together. Despite ideological differences and the fact that
the two nations are members of rival military blocs, officials in Bonn and
East Berlin have been intensifying mutual contacts, dictated, according to
an East German source, "by a concern for peace." Simply put, both German
states want to pursue the fruits of detente--increased human contact across
the Wall for Bonn and continued access to sources of economic assistance
for East Berlin--which are endangered by the new cold war atmosphere be
tween the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Nervous Moscow sees the professed "concern for peace" otherwise. The Krem
lin was particularly unhappy about two recent developments: a new $330 mil
lion extension of credit from Bonn, and the announced intention of East
German leader Erich Honecker to visit West Germany in late September.
Finally, by late July, Moscow had had enough. An editorial in the party
newspaper, PRAVDA, took both German states to task. It charged that West
Germany was using financial levers to "gradually erode the foundations of
the socialist system" in East Germany with the ultimate aim of achieving
German reunification.
PRAVDA also chided East Berlin for accepting the loan, the second big one in
about a year's time. Although it didn't say so directly, a clear impres
sion was also left that it would not be a good idea for Honecker to visit
West Germany--the first trip ever by an East German leader there.
At first the East Germans dutifully translated and reprinted the PRAVDA at
tacks in the official party newspaper NEUES DEUTSCHLAND. But at the same
time the paper defended its efforts to improve relations with Bonn, stat
ing: "Our Socialist German state sees as its task above all to cooperate so