Mike and Danae Yankoski have released Zealous Love: A Practical Guide to Social Justice. “Through first-hand accounts and up-to-date facts about eight global issues, Zealous Love uniquely provides readers with the information, inspiration, and involvement they crave to personally make a difference in their world.” Contributors include Eugene Peterson, Dr. Matthew Sleeth, Wendell Berry, Francis Chan, and our own Megan Robertson among other. Included is information about A Rocha and practical things we can do to better steward our world.

We are excitedly planning a two week set of workshops designed to help the next set of creation care leaders to mobilize their communities through education and practical conservation projects. In addition to seminars on a range of topics within creation care, conservation field work, and project design/implementation sessions will help equip participants to make a difference in their communities.

The A Rocha Institute will be held in Santa Barbara during June of 2010. Please contact us at institute@arochasb.org for more information.

We will be postponing our November 14 garden build at Santa Barbara Community Church and will announce a new date in the future. We hope to re-schedule this event for January.

In addition, a few other changes are emerging including bridging the content from this site to the arocha.org site. We are excited about this and look forward to providing more details in the days to come.

Rich will be presenting the work of A Rocha this Wednesday, November 11 from 10:30-11:15 in Hieronymus Lounge at Westmont College - please join us.

Don’t forget to check out our other outlets for news and updates including Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Links to these resources can be found at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for being interested in A Rocha.

We will have a booth at WorldFest this Saturday and Sunday, October 24th and 25th. This event is labeled as “Santa Barbara’s Cultural Celebration”. Stop by and see us at Earl Warren Showgrounds.

Join us at 9:30 a.m., October 10, during our Creation Care Symposium, at Turnpike Church of Christ (677 N Turnpike Rd, Santa Barbara, CA). We will construct our latest community garden that will be used to provide a neighborhood organic garden. RSVP at symposium@arochasb.org

Check out this four page summary of A Rocha’s work which includes a color map with highlights from each country including an update on A Rocha’s very first project based in Portugal which started in the 80’s.

A continuing thanks goes out to Habitat For Humanity’s ReStore. This initiative diverts usable building materials away from local landfills - a great stewardship of existing products that reduces the demand for raw resource harvesting. We recently heard from one of our A Rocha members who bought a window from them and saved greatly. The ReStore has been a valuable partner in our garden initiative and we thank them for their support.

Learn more about the ReStore and the resources it provides by clicking here and email us about the gems you find.

A thanks to Laurel and Jonna for passing along some great resources as we begin working on a new project that connects conservation work to our community garden initiative. We have been very thankful for the response from local churches who have been requesting assistance in creating community gardens. With these opportunities comes the ability to begin practical conservation work through utilizing citizen scientists to both educate about and promote biodiversity in our community. We look forward to sharing this work with you and invite you to join us as we begin a new garden on October 10 as part of our Creation Care Symposium. To find out more information about this event and to RSVP, view the invitation here.

Thanks to the Palladinos for their invite to lead a hike and talk about A Rocha with a small group. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset walk through the A Rocha site and into the San Marcos Foothills. The evening was very warm but provided us the opportunity to talk about the uniqueness of our local natural resources, especially those in the San Marcos Foothills. We capped our evening with a talk centered around the Biblical call to care and steward our natural resources. I found the discussion and ideas insightful as people processed how conservation and creation care matter for both our local ‘backyard’ as well as for those in remote places who are dependent upon raw natural resources for their health and well being.

I look forward continuing dialog like this during the October 9-10 symposium that we will host at Santa Barbara Community Church. Let us know if you are interested in more details or RSVP.

A huge thanks is due to Anchor Point IT - they are the ones responsible for creating our website and making this blog possible. This summer we passed the one year anniversary of our site and we are thankful for it. We have connected with people from near and far as a result of it being in place. One of the most wonderful parts of A Rocha for us is hearing from you about what you learning and growing into with creation care. Thanks to Anchor Point IT for helping make our online presence a reality.