Urantia Book Education Committee

I was born and raised in Switzerland. I completed my Master's and PhD work both in Europe and the USA in the Social Sciences/Sociology of Knowledge. I did further graduate work in foreign language instruction. I have a profound love of learning and teaching and have been an educator for over 30 years.

I was introduced to the Urantia Book in 2002 and have been reading it since then. The teachings in the Urantia Book immediately resonated with the spiritual truths and philosophical insights I gained in my life long searching of and communing with the Father. I joined the local UB study group in 2004 and the Fellowship Education Committee in 2007.

My husband Kosta and I live the life of pioneer immigrants on a homestead near Santa Fe NM where we built our own home and raised a multiracial family.

Bob Debold

Mr. Debold is a long-time reader of the Urantia Book. He has been associated with the Book since 1975, and began serious study upon settling in Washington, DC in 1981 with joining the John Bullock study group in Arlington, VA. He has delivered and facilitated four Super Sunday sessions in the local DC area over the years as well as participated in the project coordination of the “Art of Spiritual Living” held at Mt. Vernon College in 1998 as well as the Master of Ceremonies for the final day all group session. He has a Masters Degree in Organizational Management and in addition to functioning as a Director of Business, Capture and Proposal Development activities for a small disadvantaged business serving the Federal government in the DC area, he is managing a team of eight acquisition logistics professionals on site at the NAVAIR Naval Station in Pax River MD. He spent ten years teaching mathematics in the New Jersey public school system where he was active as an officer in the NJ Math Teachers Association. Mr. Debold has had the opportunity to attend scores of business workshops and symposiums over the past thirty years while working as a technical manager in Honeywell and delivering change management workshops to many of the fortune 100 middle management teams for a knowledge management enterprise software provider during the dot.com era. His published work, entitled “Performance Management in a Fourth Wave Society, Systemic Measurement, Evaluation, and Incentives for Developing a Holonic Performance Management System” was delivered to the Center for Advanced Team Performance, at the University of North Texas in 1999 and was subsequently published in the World Business Journal and Team Performance Management Manual. Many of the ideas were catalyzed and derivative of the Urantia Books’ presentation on the part and the whole (paper 12, section 7). Mr. Debold is currently working on synoptic treatises related to The Supreme Being entitled “Crouching Deity, Hidden Supreme.” Parts I and II can be found on the Fellowship web site. He has recently been selected as a member of the UBtheNEWS advisory council and is serving as the Vice-Chairman of the Committee for the Global Endeavor.

David Glass

David Glass found The Urantia Book in a San Francisco metaphysical bookstore in 1972 while on a cross-country spiritual-quest journey. Later, he was instrumental in organizing some of the initial statewide conferences of readers in Florida. Subsequently, David moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where, except for two years of activity in Portland, Oregon, he has continued to be involved in conferences, study groups and the North Texas Urantia Society. David is a member of the Publications Committee of The Urantia Book Fellowship.

John Lambo

Charles Laurence Olivea

I have been a close student of The Urantia Book for many years and regard the experience as a great blessing from our Father and from Michael. Guardian Angels have been incorporated into the religious, social and personal features of my life. I have prayed to them since I was a boy. I work with them today and have done so for a significant part of my life. I labor in faith. I believe in the statement that only good can come from knowing about them. Knowledge of them can serve as an antidote to the loneliness and alienation felt by many in this Agondonter world of ours.

Andre Radatus

André Radatus was born and raised Roman Catholic in the twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario in Canada with his younger sisters and brothers. His Polish-immigrant mother and Latvian-immigrant father were survivors of Bolshevism and Nazism during World War II.

Shortly after learning Transcendental Meditation, he fatefully met his best friend in high school, Jack Norenberg, who shared a desire to explore philosophical truth and led to his finding The Urantia Book when he was seventeen. He met his first "other readers" two years later in British Columbia at the Bowen Island Conference.

Two years later, André had the opportunity and moved to the United States in to teach learning difference youngsters for the next fifteen years.

He has worked in various capacities in commercial finance for the succeeding fifteen years and is currently self-employed as a certified full-charge bookkeeper.

He has two college-aged children and one adolescent high-schooler: son Michael and daughters Vanessa and Yvana.

He is working on the Introductory Course committee for the nascent UrantiaUniversity with the goal of creating a university-level Introduction to The Urantia Book as a first step and is a UrantiaUniversity board trustee.

The truths illuminated in The Urantia Book have spoken to him compelling these past 34 years, enriching the experience of living to such an extent as to make the Book "Handbook Earth" for him and an ever-close reference and companion. André is the first to admit that life hasn't become Heaven-on-Earth with The Urantia Book but does say that it has accelerated how quickly and how frequently life's trials arrive as a stimulus to spiritual growth.

André's great discovery and joy with The Urantia Book continues to be other reader-believers who, because of their hunger for truth, have found The Urantia Book and have learned that all human beings are their brothers and sisters because God is their loving Father. To that end, attending three different study groups regularly allows growing sensitivity to how differently we all approach the teachings and how differently the Book can be studied.

In his experience, The Urantia Book allows one to begin with one's fellow readers speaking a kind of shorthand that can allow one to assume a higher or deeper starting point for relationship. Study of the teachings of The Urantia Book becomes a catalyst for personal evolution, mutual understanding and appreciation of one's fellows, and growth in love and service of one's brothers and sisters on Earth.

Angela Thurston

I was raised reading the Urantia Book by my parents, Claire and Chuck Thurston. I live in Brooklyn, attend weekly study groups in Manhattan, and am a new member of the UB Society of Greater New York. As a playwright, I am fascinated by people’s natures—what motivates, inhibits, and transforms them. I am also Chief of Staff at a music conservatory, for which I’ve received formal conflict resolution training. Putting theory into practice to resolve conflict has provided invaluable insight into both the pitfalls and incredible potentials of association between personalities.

Neal Waldrop (see full bio here)

Spiritual journey

I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but at age 19 succumbed to a crisis of faith and suspended my belief in God. Time and subsequent exploratory reading eventually led me to The Urantia Book (November 1973). I was very active within the Urantia moment and ulimately served as a Trustee of Urantia Foundation for a tumultuous three years (August 1989 – August 1992); practical circumstances made it necessary for me to resign when my family and I were transferred to Canberra, Australia.

The Global Endeavor

I am currently serving as the Chairman of the Committee for the Global Endeavor. This independent effort will enable readers of The Urantia Book to contribute to the progressive growth and development of human society and civilization, based on the ideals portrayed in Part III and using the work of the master seraphim as our spiritual model. The project is still in its formative stages; further information is available on the committee’s modest website (http://www.globalendeavor.net)

Professional background

After graduating from college in June 1969 with a B.A. in history, I worked for the U.S. Department of Defense for just over one year. In September 1970, I entered the U.S. Navy.

In January 1976, I reported to the U.S. Department of State in Washington, in order to begin work as a Foreign Service Officer (career diplomat) where I performed various diplomatic or official duties in Washington, in New York City, and in four overseas locations (Taipei, Taiwan; Hong Kong; Canberra, Australia; and Geneva, Switzerland).

Since November 2006, I have been working as a translator from French to English and from English to French, carrying out these tasks for a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Personal background

In February 1982, I married the former Vanessa Wong, whom I met while assigned to the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong. We have two children: our daughter Charmaine (b. June 1984), and our son Kirk (b. February 1988).

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