Ministry

With hefty pickaxes, hoes and shovels, three teenage boys turned over long-neglected ground. They struck heavy rocks, deeply embedded roots and unfamiliar underground growth, and yanked it all from the soil to make way for an urban vegetable garden. Farming builds character, said 18-year-old James Morrison, adding, "I don't mind getting dirty, and I am getting to appreciate manual labor." Morrison and several classmates from Our House, a residential job-training center for at-risk youth in Olney, volunteer weekly at the Samaritan Women, a fledgling ministry working to convert an estate off Frederick Road into a home for women in recovery, a culinary school, an events center and a community garden.

AMMAN, Jordan - Najim Abid Hajwal has been having a difficult time renewing his passport. He submitted his paperwork at the Iraqi Embassy here but was told days later that he was a wanted man back home in Iraq. It turned out that the Interior Ministry was after someone with a similar name. He submitted a new set of papers to prove his identity but was issued a passport with a wrong name. It's enough to make an Iraqi nostalgic for the good old days. "Under Saddam, a ministry was a ministry," Hajwal says.

Tensions between Western forces and the Afghan government flared anew yesterday when President Hamid Karzai and a provincial governor accused the U.S.-led coalition of killing 14 Afghans guarding a road construction project. Karzai has demanded repeatedly that Western troops take urgent measures to avoid killing and injuring Afghan civilians. Recent high-profile instances of civilian casualties have inflamed public sentiment not only against foreign forces in Afghanistan but against the U.S.-backed government.

Officials ask speedy aid in the wake of Ike WASHINGTON: Gulf Coast officials asked lawmakers yesterday for fast federal money for hurricane recovery and a minimum of bureaucratic red tape. Texas is looking at $11.4 billion in damage from Ike, including $16 million in damage to Houston, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said. Devastation in Galveston is $2 billion, that city's mayor said. Louisiana is facing $1 billion in damage from Ike and Gustav, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said in prepared testimony that the $40 million cost of evacuating his city for Hurricane Gustav has led to hiring freezes and a halt of any new expenditures until disaster costs are reimbursed.

James Horan, a Jesuit brother who worked with the Apostleship of the Sea, a Roman Catholic mariners' ministry that operates the Stella Maris International Seafarers' Center in Dundalk, died of melanoma Aug. 29 at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He was 76. "Brother Jim had an international reputation because he was known by seafarers from all over the world who had gotten to know him in Baltimore," said Monsignor John L. FitzGerald, the group's director. "He visited ships and picked up crewmen in our van and drove them to the seafarers' center so they could use the phones and computers to communicate with their families," Monsignor FitzGerald said.

The Rev. Foyce Clay Mackey, co-director of youth and young adult ministries at Mount Pisgah Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, died of complications from heart transplant surgery Aug. 23 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Northwood resident was 33. "We had such high hopes for him, and we're going to miss him. He had a very bright career ahead of him," said the Rev. Lynwood Hudson Leverette Sr., who has pastored the Sandtown-Winchester church since 1993.

A jury will decide whether 21-year-old Ria Ramkissoon is guilty of murder in the death of her son, Javon Thompson, who police say was starved to death in 2006 while his mother was a member of 1 Mind Ministries, a secretive Baltimore cult. But it's already clear that others also were involved. The 21-month-old toddler's death, related in charging documents released this week, is a horrific tale of cruelty and neglect. Police say Ms. Ramkissoon allowed group members to beat her son for trivial infractions such as disobeying orders to say "amen" at meals, then slowly starved him to death.

Bishop Monroe Randolph Saunders Sr., who was founder and senior pastor of the First United Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic, now Transformation Church of Jesus Christ, died Friday of cancer at his Ashburton home. He was 89. Mr. Saunders, the son of farmers, was born and raised in Florence, S.C. He was high school valedictorian and earned a scholarship to Virginia State College for Negroes, now Virginia State University, in Petersburg. After the death of his eldest brother, he left college and moved to Baltimore to help his sister-in-law raise their four children.

One year ago, Renee Cooper was evicted from her home, a high school dropout who walked the streets at night with her family until police officers let them sleep on the station floor. Cooper, who returned to school and recently graduated from Annapolis High School, is looking for a job in child care. She has shown drive in her effort to turn around her life, say officials at Annapolis Area Ministries Inc., who have chosen her to be the first resident of Willow House, its new house for homeless women.

As a Christian preacher listening to the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., it's somewhat gratifying to be reminded that words matter. Those of us who accept this vocation wouldn't have it any other way. We spend hours agonizing over words every week - words written in the Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek; words that we parse, translate again, memorize, seek to understand, and ultimately shape into a new word in the sermon. But in recent days, as more and more commentators have dismissed Mr. Wright as the "crazy uncle in the attic," my pleasure has turned to anger and dismay.