Title: LWF Exectuive Addressed Women of the ELCA Convention ELCA NEWS SERICE July 13, 1996 WOLFORD: JOIN EFFORT TO BAN LAND MINES 96-WO-15-AH MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) -- Kathryn Wolford, executive director of Lutheran World Relief (LWR), challenged Lutheran women to gather 67,725 signatures on a petition to send to President Bill Clinton asking for a ban on land mines and funding for mine clearance. That number would match the number of quilts LWR has sent to Angola for use among displaced families. Wolford addressed the Third Triennial Convention of Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America here July 13. LWR is the relief and development arm of the ELCA and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. #What brightness and hope might that bring into the lives of Angolan women and their children?# Wolford wondered. #What if every woman at this convention carried this petition back home and got more signatures? I am here to make that plea ... and ask each of you to join in the international campaign to ban land mines.# Wolford thanked the women#s organization for its financial support. Through LWR, she said, the women#s gifts are #a ministry in places of the world that are marked by brokenness and suffering.# She described #the paradox of mercy and justice which seem to pull our response in different directions. Mercy calls for compassion, forgiveness and new beginnings; justice is the acknowledgment of wrongs committed, or repentance and the establishment of right and equitable relationships.# Wolford said, #We see the difficulty in a place like Rwanda where our humanitarian imperative calls us to feed all in need even with the knowledge that killers lurk within the refugee camps. At the same time, our justice mandate leads us to advocate for a war-crimes tribunal and an end to impunity for human rights violations, in Rwanda and Bosnia.# She said, #It is difficult yet essential for a Christian organization to uphold both mercy and justice.# LWR seeks to #create a safe space and facilitate conditions in which painful truth can be told, in which repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand,# and where fractured relationships can be restored with a new respect for human dignity, Wolford said. By the end of that morning almost 300 people had signed the land mines petition. For information contact: Ann Hafften, Dir., ELCA News Service, (312) 380-2958; Frank Imhoff, Assoc. Dir., (312) 380-2955; Lia Christiansen, Asst. Dir., (312) 380-2956