Culture, Tradition, Family, Community, are a few reasons we need Holy Trinity support and attendance at the Scandinavian Festival. Thank you to all who have volunteered in the years past. The Thrivent Financial Viking Dog Booth will be in full force once again. Please see Jim Esmay or Karl Schafer after church to sign up for your shift.
Davey and Goliath Happy Easter, the classic, restored 30 minute special from 1967, will air on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005, at 12:30 p.m., EST. Special coloring-book pages may be downloaded to accompany the Easter broadcast.
When we meditate, “we come to physical stillness… Physical stillness has a direct effect upon the silence of our mind, and so helps immensely to bring body, mind and spirit into harmony.†from Christian Meditation by Laurence Freeman
You are welcome to join the Holy Trinity Meditation Group on Thursdays at 4:00 PM in the Narthex Lounge.
Hallmark Channel will air a 60-minute version of the award-winning program, “Glory to God Alone: The Life of J.S. Bach,” on Palm Sunday, March 20. The program is presented by Faith and Values Media as part of “The World of Faith and Values” series on Hallmark.
The documentary will be broadcast at noon Eastern and Pacific Time and 11 a.m. Central Time. Viewers in the Mountain Time zone should check local listings.
Bach, a well-known German composer (Source: ELCA News …)
Like the NFL’s New England Patriots on “Super Bowl Sunday” Feb. 6, members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have found that effective teamwork can yield winning results in a challenge of a different kind.
For the last 16 years, the ELCA and other faith groups joined together on the day of the Super Bowl for the “Souper Bowl of Caring” — a national effort aimed at raising millions of dollars for hunger-fighting organizations across the country. Source: ELCA News …
It’s time to dust off your walking shoes that have gathered dust over the last several months and get ready for the 2005 CROP Walk. This year’s CROP walk will take place on Sunday, March 13.
Africa is one part of the world where CROP WALKS are making a big difference—in helping people grow food for their families, in providing clean water to villages, in the struggle against the AIDS epidemic, and in countless other ways.
Many CROPWALKERS this year will be wearing T-shirt depicting some of the ways they are helping to make a difference—with assistance for uprooted families around the world. ..with water resource development effort across Africa…with the more than 3,200 local food pantries, food banks, and meal sites in the United States who are providing food to neighbors in need.
Please help by joining this year’s CROP walk on March 13.
The Honey Tree children certainly got the feeling of winter and rain and more rain in January. They were all very happy to be able to play outside again.
In February, the children look forward to celebrating Valentine’s Day and being able to make and share valentines with their family and friends. As an outreach to the community, we collect food for Manna during the month.
Also the registration process for the 2005-2006 school year has begun. If you have a child that is eligible to attend, you need to call the Honey Tree office at (805) 492-1232 as soon as possible.
The Season of Lent is of course a time for introspection, for self-examination, and repentance, in preparation for Easter and the Resurrection of our Lord. The forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday (excluding the Sundays in between, as we must) are said to reflect the traditional number of days used to depict discipline, devotion, and preparation in the Bible.
We recall that Moses stayed on the mountain of God forty days (Exodus 24:18 and 34:28). Those who were sent to explore Canaan did so for forty days (Numbers 13:25). Elijah traveled forty days before he reached the cave where he had his vision (1 Kings 19:8). Nineveh was given forty days to repent (Jonah 3:4), and most importantly, prior to undertaking his ministry, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness praying and fasting (Matthew 4:2).
What will these forty days of Lent mean for you? What will they mean for our church? Fittingly, during the month of February Council will begin the journey of examining and pursuing in earnest the goals of the church for this year, as presented at the January congregational meeting.
While somewhat diverse in their nature, these goals all have as their underlying purpose the creation of more avenues for the congregation and the surrounding community to deepen its spirituality, whether through education, celebration, fellowship, or prayer. We can strive to learn more about the passion of Christ while developing our passion for Christ.
This Lenten Season, I pray that the Holy Spirit leads us all on a meaningful journey, and that we emerge from the wilderness with renewed faith, a clear sense of purpose, and a loving commitment to our church and all within it.
In Christ,
Gary Bague
Listen. Do you hear him calling? Be still. Was that his voice you just heard, calling your name? Listen, child of God. It is your heavenly Father calling you, beckoning you to service in his kingdom in this world.
With the recent devastation in Asia from the tsunami, we saw how quickly personal possessions could literally be washed away in an instant. Everything people had worked for and enjoyed, gone—with no chance of recovery. In thousands of tragic instances, whole families were swept away. It was a disaster of such a magnitude that the agony of it was hard to fathom.
Listen. There were those who heard their Father calling them to service in this catastrophe. They were called to be their Father’s eyes and ears and hands in this hurting world. They came by the hundreds, from all walks of life, from many countries near and far to help. To give aid and solace and food and clothing and medicine to those that had been injured in this tragedy.
Not all of us can travel to the far side of the world to help. This is not the only way we are called to do our father’s work in this world.
Listen. Do you hear our heavenly Father? He is calling you, to service in his church. Calling you to be his eyes and ears and hands in this world in which we live. How will you respond? Will you gladly put down what you are doing and come and help? Will you seek to use the gifts your heavenly Father has given you as he intended?
Our church has need of many talents: typing, painting, baby-sitting, counting, praying, preparing the altar, singing, reading, gardening, organizing, acolyting, teaching.
Listen. Our Father is calling you. How will you respond to his voice when you hear your name called?
Margaret Dove
For the next five to 10 years, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will work with its “companion” Lutheran churches in India, restoring and rebuilding tsunami-struck communities in India. The Dec. 26 tsunami claimed more than 200,000 lives in several coastal countries of the Indian Ocean. More …
Wow, what a lot of rain! As I sit to write this, the sun is finally shining. Those who have been evacuated are beginning to return to their homes, and people in La Conchita are mourning and still looking for loved ones. What a mixture of feelings. We need the rain, but Lord this is way too much.
I have a running friend in Arizona, who each morning would comment, and it inevitably was either too hot or too cold. It just seemed that nature could never get it right. While I think he was partly joking I have a feeling that many others are serious about a kind of discontent that occurs when it comes to God.
We are in the season of Epiphany and we are thinking about how God is seen in Jesus, in our world. Soon, very soon, February 9th, Ash Wednesday will be upon us and we will be once more reminded that we are simply dust in God’s hands, the very work of God’s creation, which ought to humble us.
As we move through Lent, we will be reminded of the costly nature of Jesus’ time on earth, and that ought to humble us. Do you see a pattern here? God is God and we are not. When we come to realize this fact about God and that the costly death of Jesus on a cross was for us, the race, love and mercy that comes from that is for us we should bow our hearts, heads and souls in humility and come before God to worship and sing God’s praise.
I invite you to join me in doing that throughout Lent, right into Easter.