Please Mark your Calendars! This is the largest fund-raiser for our operating budget. Come help your church!
Calendar of Events, volunteers are needed for all of the following.
Volunteers are needed for each of the work days listed below. If you feel you don’t have time or are overwhelmed with other commitments please remember, even an hour of your time will help make this event a success. It also will give you a chance for fun and fellowship while working together with our church family for the benefit of our church. Come, bring a friend and enjoy. Sign-up sheets will be available in church and calls will be made to fill all shifts.
Pie Crust Dry Mix Day: Thursday, August 1st, 6-9 p.m.
Help to prepare individual bags of spice mix and help make the pie crust dough for the pies to be made for this year’s festival.
Muffin Day: Thursday, August 1st Prepare, bake and package muffins 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
The goal is to make lots of muffins working in shifts throughout the day. A few hours of your time will help things run smoothly.
Pie Day: Fri., August 2nd, Make pies 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Lunch Included
Pick-up for pies 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Something for everyone to do and enjoy. Pie crust mixers , blueberry and spice mixers, crimpers, baggers, empty box collectors. Sound interesting? Come join us, whether it is for one hour or eight hours! 800 pies is our goal.
Refreshments and lunch will be provided.
Blueberry Festival, Pancake Breakfast
Saturday, August 3rd, 8:00 a.m.– 12:00 p.m.
Come on down and give us a hand! There are many jobs to be filled, from selling pies to parking cars to clearing tables!
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Join us this summer as we take a closer look at the many parts of God’s creation! We will be building nests, crafting a rug, making trash sculptures, creating an oil spill, helping with clean-up efforts and much more!!
I am looking for volunteers to facilitate some of these activities over the summer. Right now I need people (1-2 adults) for the following Sundays: June 30th, July 14th, July 21st, July 28th, August 11th, August 18th and August 25th. If you are available and willing to help and have fun, please let me know and I will sign you up and fill you in on the day’s activities.
In addition to facilitators, I am in need of the following: old t-shirts, old greeting cards, old (but clean) socks, newspapers (lots!), someone willing to purchase some PVC pipe, someone willing to cut PVC pipe, masking tape and worms (for 8/25). If you are able to help with any of these items please let me know.
I look forward to seeing you throughout the summer. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me: skrhla@yahoo.com or (860)491-2793.
— Sara Krhla
When youth get in my car to ride to an event, there is often some discussion about the radio. “Pick what you want,” I tell them, “but no channel surfing!” You probably know about channel surfing. It is the act of listening to the radio or watching TV and continuously flipping around among stations. You rarely listen to an entire song, but just a bit of it before surfing up and down the dial looking for something better! The experience of listening or watching becomes very fragmented—bits and pieces with abrupt changes. Just as I get invested in a song, the surfer abruptly changes the station. It makes me crazy!
I recently heard a radio commentator, Colin McEnroe, saying that we are more and more getting into the practice of “Life surfing” with a little help from all our electronic devices. We are sitting in one meeting, but under the table checking out email on 15 topics of interest, making the grocery list, and thinking about where we need to be next. We multi-task in an attempt to fit it all in. At the end of the day we may find we have not been fully present anywhere!
And as one who frequently plans events, classes and meetings, I find more and more folks don’t want to commit until the last possible minute! People “calendar shop” for the best possibility and want to stay flexible to make sure some better offer doesn’t come along.
While some of this is the reality of this age, I wonder if we don’t pay some price for “Life surfing.” There are some things that take commitment in order to get the full benefit. An athlete who only trains when something better doesn’t come along won’t win many races!
When I read about Jesus’ life in the gospels, it seems he was pretty busy and that there was lots going on that would have interrupted any plans he may have had. He seemed to do amazingly well at responding to the person right in front of him—of being fully present in the moment. But when I keep reading, I find he repeatedly took times to retreat into a quiet place for prayer! He made time on a regular basis to pray without interruption. I suspect that made it possible for him to stay so grounded at other busy times.
There is a spiritual practice of mindfulness—trying to be fully present in the moment and watching for the holy in the midst of the present. As we come to summer and the shift in our schedules that often comes with it, perhaps these are days to give up “life surfing” for a time and to practice mindfulness.
And remember, we will offer worship at 8:30 am, as well as 10 am on Sundays. Join us!
Blessings!
Pastor Paige
Our Annual Picnic Sunday will take place Sunday, June 23 at 10 am at Camp Coch. Weather permitting, we will worship on the beach followed by a cookout. The church will provide burgers, hotdogs and drinks. Church members are asked to bring salads, deserts, and sides. There will be a lifeguard on duty from 11-1 for those who want to swim. Please bring lawn chairs or a towel to sit in for worship and dress for the picnic.
The Worship service will include the commissioning of the Dominican Mission team which will depart 2 days later.
If the weather is poor, worship and lunch will take place in the Camp Coch building.
Note that 8:30 am worship will take place as usual in the sanctuary
Soup Supper, Film and Discussion each month!
The 50 days of Mission 4/1 Earth may be done, but there is lots of work to be done and lots to learn! The Mission 4/1 Earth team is sponsoring a film series on the third Wednesday of each month with a soup supper at 6:30 pm in the fellowship room followed by a short film and discussion. These events are free and open to the public. Here is the schedule for the summer:
June 19: “Bag It”
What starts as a documentary about plastic bags evolves into a wholesale investigation into the use of plastic and its effect on our world and ourselves. An average guy makes a resolution to stop using plastic bags at the grocery store. Little does he know that this simple decision will change his life completely. He comes to the conclusion that our consumptive use of plastic has finally caught up to us, and looks at what we can do about it. Today. Right now. The film follows “everyman” Jeb Bernier on a global tour and is informative, touching and in places flat out funny
July 17: “Waste = Food”
Humans are the only creatures in nature that create waste. In natural systems, what is waste for one being is food for others. McDonough and Braungart design buildings and industrial production systems that use this concept, going beyond “recycling” to “reusing”. In their Cradle to Cradle projects, they design products and materials that are safe for human health and the environment, which can be reused perpetually through biological and technical metabolisms. The film provides many examples, from fabric manufacturing to rebuilding of one of Ford Motor Company’s oldest manufacturing sites, where the new system not only avoids waste but also improves the business’s bottom line.
August 21: “Chasing Water”
about the Colorado river and a photographers account of following it from the source to the sea…which it no longer reaches! We will be joined by special guest, Margaret Miner, President of Rivers Alliance, to discuss our local watershed.
Confirmation, MiniGolf, Graduation Sunday & Mission Trips! As June arrives, we are getting ready for several youth events! There will be an informational meeting about next year’s confirmation program for interested students and their families on Sunday, June 9 at 11:30 am. We are considering a new format for next year, so even if you aren’t sure you want to participate, come and listen and ask questions. Our Minigolf trip has been postponed a week to June 9 at Noon. If the weather is nice, we are going to Farmington. If it is rainy, we will play the indoor course in Canton. We need to know who is going so we can have enough drivers! Cost is $10. We are celebrating our 7 high school graduates in worship on Sunday, June 16! Come join the celebration! Our Dominican Mission Team will meet on Sunday, June 9 at 4:30 pm. (minigolfers will be back in time.) This is a mandatory meeting. There are still some spaces available for our Overlook Farm Mission Trip. Let me know if you are interested!
And save the date: August 27 we will have our Catamount Ariel Adventure!
At the request of Goshen Community Care and Hospice, the Mission Committee has decided to set up a food closet at the church for those approaching the church in need of food resources. With a growing number of families and individuals struggling with food insecurity (1 in 6 in CT!) we are having more need for resources to share. Particularly needed foods include: cereal, juice, canned ready to eat meals like stew or soup, peanut butter and jelly, pasta and sauce, canned meat like tuna, canned fruit, apple sauce, coffee, and breakfast bars. Food is being collected in the narthex under the Deacon’s table and is divided between needs in our closet and our partners in Torrington as FISH, Friendly Hands, and the Soup Kitchen. On Spring cleaning day, we set up the closet and stocked the shelves. Food is available to those who ask with no restrictions on means or where they live. Access to the food closet is available during church office hours or by request to Pastor Paige or Deb Dipietro at the Goshen Community Care and Hospice.
New Bible Study Series Thursday Nights! One of the provocative teaching tools that Jesus used was parables – short stories meant to make us think about our faith. Many parables have more than one insight to offer and raise as many questions for us to ponder as answers! Many of these stories are very familiar to us – like the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son – and yet the wonder is that there are still gifts they offer in our faith journey! Join us for a series on Jesus’s parables. We will be using the resource “Parables from the Back Side” by Ellsworth Kallis. We will gather on Thursday evenings from 7-8:30 pm in the Fellowship room. Each meeting will consider a different parable. Come for one or for all! The series will go from April 26 – June 20.
Pastor Paige’s Page: “Still Revolutionary”
The Connecticut Office of Tourism has a new campaign to attract people to visit our state: “Connecticut: Still Revolutionary”. It is an engaging slogan that points us both to our history, but also to our present and future all at the same time.
The Rev Kent Siladi, our new conference minister, wants to appropriate the slogan for the church in the 21st century! While there are many who think about religion as old-fashioned, out of date, up tight, and judgmental, we know that the path Christ set before us was anything but! As we try to live our faith and love our community, we seek to be relevant – a resource for the challenges facing us as individuals and as community in an ever changing culture. The core values that Christ taught us still make us revolutionary 21 centuries later – concern for justice, for creation, compassion, forgiveness, peace making, loving people considered disposable by society, focusing on giving instead of getting, building community instead of trying to get ahead as individuals, and living as people of grace in a world quick to pass judgment.
For many of us, the church is a blessing – a place of care and challenge, of opportunity and inspiration. How can we share that blessing with others and open their eyes to the church as a force that is not antique by revolutionary?
