THE SPIRE
May, 2008
|
Volume XIII No.5
Published monthly |
|
|
God is still speaking, |
|
THE
ANNUAL MEETING OF
THE
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF
KENT
,
CONNECTICUT
(UNITED
CHURCH
OF
CHRIST
)
WILL
BE HELD ON
SUNDAY,
MAY 18, 2008
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING WORSHIP
BUSINESS
TO BE CONDUCTED:
- Election
of standing committee members and church officers
- Hear
reports of the Treasurer, the Committees and the Pastor
_______________________________________________________________
CHURCH SCHOOL NEWS
This
month children are examining family issues such as hard feelings, lies,
conflict resolution and trust and realize that God can help with their
family relationships through their study of the stories of Jacob and
Esau.
This
year will conclude with
Church
School
Sunday – a celebration of the year – on June 8, when the children
will lead the service and a picnic
will be held after worship. Mark your calendars!
New
plans are in the works for next year’s Church
School
. The RE Committee has decided to have a separate curriculum for the
youngest and the oldest students in
Church
School
and continue with the workshop rotation for grades 1-6. More to come on
this later.
FAMILY NEWS
»»» FOR
SALE: Anyone interested
in buying a custom marble 2 bowl white sink for $500 please call the
church office. This was a
special order from Rings End and retails for over $1500.
It is being donated to the church because it was not the right
size. It is 66” wide and
22 ¼ deep. Call the office
for more information.
We are pleased to report that with your generous
donations, we were able to collect over $1400 for One Great Hour of Sharing. Well done!
The Outreach Committee
WANTED: Photos to put on our website.
We are looking for nice photos to
put on our website of our church family.
If you have any that you would like to share please email them to
firstgloria@sbcglobal.net
Only emailed photos can be used.
Safe
Church
Policy:
In order to make members of all ages feel
comfortable and safe within the confines of our church, (and to satisfy
our insurance company) the Council of Ministries has developed a “Safe
Church Policy” for all volunteers and hired employees.
In this policy are definitions of sexual harassment and
exploitation, policies to follow when enlisting help of volunteers
(especially with children) and hiring new staff, policies to follow in
case “safe” boundaries are crossed and forms to be filled out by
volunteers and employees.
A copy of this policy has been given to
all members of the Council of Ministries, the Religious Education
Committee and all teachers. There
is also a copy of the policy in the church office or we can email you a
copy. If you would like to
see it, please feel free to come in or contact the church office.
Reserved
Parking:
Please save the parking places on either side of the church
building closest to the front sidewalk for those people who have
difficulty maneuvering in the snow and ice.
Also, please save the 4 spaces in the back of the church for
people who need to park close to the church and the handicapped ramp,
and for those doing coffee hour. Those
who can maneuver the snow and ice are asked to park in the lower lot.
“I
haven’t’ seen….lately….I wonder where she/he is?”
Have you ever thought this in church that someone you usually
see isn’t there? Why not
give that person a call? Reach
out and let him/her know that they are missed.
See if there is anything you or the church can do for them.
Also, let Melinda know if there is anything that she can do to
help someone in need. This
is our work as the community of faith – to care for one another!
OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN THE CONGREGATION
TORTILLAS
COMING SOON
In May we will kick off our 2008 Tortillas for Teupasenti campaign.
We hope to repeat our previous successful campaigns to feed the
children at The Children’s Rescue Mission.
Stay tuned!
NEW MEMBERS will be received on Sunday, May 18.
If you are interested in “formally” joining this church,
please talk with Melinda.
THE 14th ANNUAL WOMEN’S
LUNCHEON will be held on Thursday, June 12 at The Fife and
Drum Restaurant. The menu
for lunch will include basil chicken, salad and dessert.
The cost is $15 which includes tax and tip.
TAG
SALE - June 14 - To benefit the group going to
Honduras
More information next month. Donations gladly accepted.
But please:
- No
baby car seats
- No
computers
- No
broken items
- Clean
items only
Bring donations to Culbertson Hall – beginning
Sunday, June 8 and during that week from 7:30 AM – 5:30 PM.
Prayer
shawls …
In the fall, we began a “prayer
shawl ministry.” Many
people donated their time and talents by knitting prayer shawls that
were given to members and friends of our congregation who were going
through illness or difficulties. We
are now in need of more prayer shawls.
If you can knit and would like to contribute to this important
ministry, please bring prayer shawls to the church.
If you need instructions on how to create a prayer shawl, please
talk with Helen Conlon.
We are still
collecting used toner and ink cartridges.
There is a collection box in the Lecture Room.
THE DEACONS
ARE SPONSORING A BAKE SALE to raise money for the Seminary
Scholarship Fund. It will be
held at the IGA on Saturday, May 10 at 9 AM.
Please Help. Bring
baked goods to the IGA by 9 AM or to the church office on Friday by 5:00
PM. If you can’t bake,
please come and buy!
Check it out!! http://www.crmission.org
now has a link to QSP Readers Digest site. We can now reorder all our
subscriptions to magazines, buy music CDs, and buy books on the CRM
internet site and the mission will receive 40% of the sale.
So please take a minute to see for yourself. We have an opportunity here
to help CRM. (If you order the New York Times or Wall Street Journal
please do it through CRM.)
PLANNED GIVING
Please keep in mind how important it is to remember The First
Congregational Church in your will. Many in the past have remembered our
church in their wills, and the endowments that this generosity has
created help to secure the financial stability of our lives together and
for years to come. For further information, please contact Melinda.
ROMEOS (Retired Old Men Eating Out) meet every Tuesday morning at
8:00 at Caralees, for breakfast and conversation. All men are invited.
OPPORTUNITIES IN THE COMMUNITY
There will
be a Benefit dinner and movie for Cheryl Gleason on Saturday, May 10 at the Community House.
A spaghetti dinner will be held from 6-7:30 and the 2007 film
festival winner The Orange
Thief (not appropriate for children under 12) will be shown at
8:00. The cost is $7-
adults/$5 – children/$25 family of 5 or more.
Drivers are desperately
needed for FISH (Friends in Service Here) to drive
Kent
residents to doctor appointments, shopping, etc.
If you can help – for just one day a month – please call
Madeline Jacobsen at 927-3271
CHURCH WORLD SERVICE (CWS) BLANKET SUNDAY -
Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008
For more than sixty years, Church World Service has
fed the hungry, brought water to those who thirst, and cared for the
refugee. Today in some 80
countries, CWS continues to support people in need.
When disaster strikes, CWS is there.
When communities struggle against poverty, illiteracy, and
disease, CWS is there, too. But
we can only be there with your help.
We rely on the compassionate commitment of caring congregations
around the country to support us.
Relief work continues in the
Dominican Republic
, when CWS partner SSID has been working with impoverished communities.
Tropical storm Noel killed at least 122 people as it churned over
Haiti
and the
Dominican Republic
in November. Over 65,000
were displaced from their homes. To
date, SSID has distributed hundreds of CWS blankets and more than 8,400
servings of canned food.
In
Pakistan
, Church World Service is providing families
with tools to improve their lives following flooding in 2007.
CWS organized hygiene training sessions explain simple,
cost-effective methods to sterilize water before using it – a small
preventive step to help protect families from disease.
Providing safe drinking water is a first step toward recovery.
The CWS project is making a difference in the lives of more than
50,000 people. We will be “selling” blankets
during coffee hour on May 4 and 11.
Every $5.00 you give to CWS can provide a wool or cotton blend
blanket because they buy in large quantities.
Food Bank
For some in our community, the choice, this winter, will be paying
for heat or paying for food. We
can help. The Kent Food Bank
welcomes the donations of canned goods, dry goods, paper goods, fresh
produce and frozen foods that are given to members of our community for
whom this choice is all too real. You
can be a good neighbor. Bring
your donations to church. There
is a basket in the Narthex for your donations.
Fresh food and frozen food should be taken directly to the Food
Bank.
CAMPBELL’S LABELS
We hope you are all still collecting UPC’s (not
front labels) from various
Campbell
’s food items to help Elon Homes.
Bring them to church - we have a collection basket in the Lecture
Room. Benefits: Elon Homes
for Children in
Charlotte
,
NC
, an outreach ministry of the Connecticut Conference.
For more information visit the
Campbell
’s website: www.labelsforeducation.com
OPPORTUNITIES IN THE
WIDER COMMUNITY
AMERICAN RED CROSS
Blood supplies are critically low. Please donate blood this
winter. Every year, as the weather gets cold and often stormy, our state's blood supply falls to
dangerously low levels. This puts Connecticut patients at risk - whether
it's a child who needs blood transfusions to treat cancer, or a man
waiting for a heart transplant.
Won't you please call 1-800-GIVE LIFE (800-448-3543) or
visit http://bloodct.org
and make your appointment today. Remember: a single blood donation cost
you nothing, and can save up to three lives! The American Red Cross
thanks you on behalf of patients throughout the state!
The United States Department of Agriculture has several
programs to help people, in particular - elders, with needed repairs to
their houses. Grants and loans are available. Restrictions with regard
to income level do apply, and further information is available by
calling the office of the USDA I Windsor (860.253.4590 x 4) or at the
website www.rurdev.usda.gov/ma.
F R E E F O O D & GREAT
GIFTS!!
Give Free Food to those who are hungry!! It doesn't cost you
anything.
Each person who has a computer connected to the Internet can give
free food to the hungry by clicking on the free food button. This can be
done once each day.
The food is paid for by the site sponsors (no, you don't have to buy
anything) and distributed to the hungry by Mercy Corps (which alleviates
suffering, poverty and oppression in more than 25 countries including
Eastern Europe and the Middle East) and America's Second Harvest (which
is the largest food distribution organization in the United States and
serves more than 26 million people).
Anyone who clicks The
Hunger site daily will have contributed about 400 cups of
staple food (rice, wheat, corn) in one year. Think what that means to
hungry people.
Just think: if only 50 people in our congregation give food daily
(say for 320 days out of the year), we will together give 17,500 cups of
staple food to hungry people in the next year. Imagine: if each of the
50 people asked one other person to give, that would be a total of
35,000 cups of staple food to feed the hungry.
Working in an office? You can give food at home and again on your
computer at work. Questions? The Hunger Site has a FAQ page. Also, talk to any of us
listed below.
It's easy to remember to click. Just add www.thehungersite.com
to your home page, your desktop, or the links at the top of your
Internet connection. Or, you can ask the hunger site to send a brief
email reminder to you each day for an easy click.
AND be sure to check out all their wonderful stores with items from
around the world at very reasonable prices.
H
NGER
The
problem can’t be solved without you.
Kiva.Org
The Outreach Committee has
recently come across an intriguing web site which allows any individual
to become a worldwide philanthropist for only $25.00. It
is called Kiva.org, and all you need to participate is a computer and a
credit card. Several members
of the Outreach Committee have already signed up as
"philanthropists" and we thought it would be fun to invite
other members of the congregation to consider participating.
Here is the way
it works
Kiva is a non-profit
organization based in
California
that brings together (through the internet) small scale entrepreneurs
who need short term loans with lenders who are willing to lend $25.00
toward the project. The borrowers are poor people throughout the third
world who want to borrow $500 - $1200 for six months to a year to help
their very small businesses grow. Potential
lenders, also located around the world, are advised of these loan
requests and if the situation has appeal, they can commit to fund $25.00
of the request. The reason
the amount is so low is simply because there are so many lenders waiting
in line to make loans. It is
hard to believe, but the typical borrower is completely funded in less
than two days after his/her loan request is posted on the internet.
The typical borrower is a woman who has started a tiny business
in order to supplement her family’s meager income. Examples of these
businesses include poultry raising, used clothing sales and small retail
operations. It is especially interesting to note that Kiva’s record of
loan repayment (Kiva is three years old) is 99.8%, probably better than
most
U.S.
banks.
When a loan is paid back, the lender can either get his money
back or sign up for a new loan. Currently,
three of the loans being made by members of the Outreach Committee are
to women micro-entrepreneurs in
Nigeria,
Cambodia
and Viet Nam.
If there is a show of interest in Kiva by other church members,
it is our thought to create a bulletin board of current loans. Who
knows, maybe we can create the Congregational Kiva Club. Thanks to the
beauty of the Kiva software, each loan listing will be supported by a
picture of the small business person as well as a brief description of
his/her family background. If
nothing else, Kiva can provide a helpful insight into the explosion of
micro-enterprise activities throughout the developing world.
If you are interested in learning more, simply key in www.Kiva.org.
For even more info, try
Kivafriends.org. The latter
site describes how groups of Kiva lenders can work together.
If you are interested in becoming a lender, please speak to a
member of the Outreach Committee.
Would
you like to buy great coffee and bring a little bit of justice to the
world? You can!
Order "Equal Exchange"
Fairly Traded Coffee through the church.
Approximately 4 times a year we make an order and sell it to you at our
cost.
|
