What makes this week “holy”?
Maybe it’s the invitation to enter the depths with Jesus?
Maybe it’s the chance to live the sacred story?
Maybe it’s the anticipation for the Easter Celebration?
Whatever it is for you, may this week be a time when something new opens, maybe even new life, as symbolized in the rolling away of the stone.
See you Sunday, 8am and 10am with the JeffCo brass helping us celebrate!
One of the ways we can help in Haiti is through UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief).
We’ll talk more abouit this on Sunday.
Children acting out the Christmas story complete with angels & shepherds, camels & sheep, carols and of course, a doll. You can’t go wrong.
Thanks to Susan Chavez and Stacy Anderson for directing, to the numerous adult volunteers who helped make it happen, and to Chuck Smith and Randy Penn for the A.V. projection. Volunteers make the world go round!
Let’s embrace the story. Christ is born!
The Admin. board approved AUMC joining the Progressive Christian Alliance of Colorado. There are a number of churches and other organizations that belong to the alliance including Christ UMC, Carmeron UMC, Iliff School of Theology, St. Andrew UMC, Montview Pres. and others.
I felt we needed to be represented on the Alliance and through our membership we will be able to post our events and be invited to sit on the membership board as these churces and organizations continue to strive to be the voice of progressive Christianity in the Denver Metro region.
It’s exciting and I look forward to getting to work with them.
Determining where the people called United Methodists stand on any issue is an ambitious task. For we are by our very nature a diverse people with diverse views.
The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church give us some basic ground to stand on as we tackle the controversial matters that face our society every day.
Rusty and I invite you to join us for a 3 week sermon series on the Social Principles starting September 13th. After worship we’ll gather in the Chapel for a half hour “Talk Back” where you’ll have a chance to speak and listen to others.
Maybe ambitious; surely fun; definitely important.
We all made it back from SLC! We worked hard, we played hard, we found out things about each other…what could be better?
The last day in Salt Lake City, the group got to watch the Founder’s Day parade outside the Episcopal Retreat Center where we stayed. We couldn’t believe that people had been lined up and camping out for more than 24 hours to watch that parade! The floats were great. The First UMC of SLC float was terrific but unfortunately didn’t win any prizes this year.
We left Salt Lake around noon and headed back to Grand Junction to stay at the Crossroads UMC on the east side of Grand Junction. When we got there, we found that they had a large all purpose room (like ours) and we got to play basketball and badminton and frisbee. We had a closing ceremony for the seniors (Mallory, Sarah, Ian, Nathan, and Clara). It was a nice way to tell them all how much they had meant to us all.
On Saturday, we drove to Glenwood Springs and took a whitewater rafting trip down the Colorado. Great Fun…I didn’t jump in the water like the rest though!
We made it home around 7:00 p.m. and I can tell you I slept well that night.
I want to especially thank the adults who gave up a week’s vacation and spent time with the youth. Lisa Frisch, Matt Cox, Dan Drabek were excellent sponsors and thank you to their respective spouses who allowed them to go!
We talked about the next work trip for the youth. It will be in the summer next year and will be somewhere in Colorado.
We split into two groups yesterday and in the morning went to the Utah Food Co-op where are a group of us sorted raw spaghetti into two pounds bags. We placed the two pound bags into boxes and we figured we did about a ton of those. Another group worked at the UMCOR Depot and continued working on school kits, health care kits and flood kits. Tiredness coming on!
We did go see the Harry Potter movie at 9:00 p.m. in one of the downtown movie complexes…
Thursday morning: People started bringing in tents/chairs/sleeping bags and placing them in front of the Episcopal Retreat Center where we are staying. They are getting ready for the Founder’s Day Parade on Friday morning. This is supposed to be the third largest parade in the US (after the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade and the Rose Parade.) It should be interesting.
Day 4- The group bagged uncooked rice into one pound containers…lots of rice! More kits at UMCOR. Mind boggling. Youth having fun…we think!
Made it through Day 2 of the Mission Trip! We started the day by going to the Crossroads Urban Center near downtown SLC. There were probably 20 people waiting in line to get in and get some rent/food assistance and some bus tokens and other help. We did a quick tour with the St. Paul’s UMC group that is here and then we were sent out in two groups. My group went to a thrift store associated with Crossroads and we cleaned the parking lot and cleaned and waxed the floor of the Thrift store. The other group began working on Health Kits at the UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) Depot. After lunch, we all went back to the UMCOR depot and continued working on the kits.
The health kits are made up of two towels, comb, toothbrush, bandaids, fingernail clippers, comb. These are all rolled together and then put in a plastic bag and then placed in a box. They will be sent from UMCOR all over the world. Yesterday we put together over 1900 Health and School Kits. Pretty impressive. We are going to try and beat the record by the Mountain View UMC team…3700 kits in 3 1/2 days. Sorry Mt. View!
More infor to come!
The Youth Group Mission Team arrived in Salt Lake City on Sunday afternoon. We checked in at the Episcopal Retreat Center in downtown SLC around 5:30. What a fantastic place! It is awesome. Two conference areas where we can meet, a chapel, a book store (I’ll probably be going to that), a full brand new kitchen, rooms with two beds (no sleeping on the floor), showers and it’s only a couple blocks away from the Food Bank and UMCOR Depot where we’ll be working tomorrow morning. We’ve ordered pizza and hopefully get to bed at a decent time.
Wow. What a fourth of July event this year. The day started out early, I got here at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday morning and Dirk, our custodian was already busy at work. Jane Winter and some of the volunteers showed up shortly and began to work on preparations for that night.
The weather was sketchy so Jane made the executive decision to hold the event inside the Fellowship Center. That was a good idea! Even though it didn’t rain, one mother told me during the event, “Thanks for holding it inside, it was easier to keep track of my children in here!”
The crowd watching the firewords was a little smaller than what we’ve had before but I think we had so much fun in the Fellowship Center that it didn’t matter. Thank you Jane and all the other volunteers who pulled off another great 4th of July event.
