This month’s news …
PAINTING PARTY this Sunday, July 25 after worship! Everyone put on your grubby painting clothes Sunday morning! Directly following worship we will head downstairs and freshen up the basement with a new coat of paint. If you have rollers or paint brushes, bring them along. If you’ve never painted, or think painting is not one of your top skills, come anyway. We promise it will be fun. Besides, won’t it be fun to come to church in your grungiest clothes?
SUMMER STRETCH DONATIONS: Our three junior high students are part of a program called Summer Stretch. They have been doing service projects Wednesdays in July. Together with three other churches from Ames, they have worked, worshiped and played together. The month of service will culminate in a trip to Valley Fair Amusement Park in Minnesota, where all students from the upper Midwest who have been involved in their own community’s Summer Stretch will gather for a day of fun. We are looking for donations to sponsor our three students. The cost is $75 per student. If you’d like to help support our students, please speak with Pastor Jen or write a check to Lord of Life earmarked as “summer stretch” and place it in the offering.
COUNCIL MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
RE Financial Secretary’s report …
May 2010 offerings - $5,507.15 (2009 May $6,384)
June 2010 offerings - $6,462.18 (2009 June $4,908)
Calendar year offerings - $35,316.97 (2009 calendar year $30,921)
RE Campus Ministry/Lord of Life outdoor sign … Council approved expenditure of approximately $500 for the Lord of Life portion of the sign when a revised proof is received and approved.
RE Pastor Steve Sabin … Council President Fred Lorenz will write a letter on behalf of the congregation as a Reconciled in Christ church congratulating Pastor Sabin’s return to the ELCA roster. (He currently is in the process of completing this action).
CHECK OUT THE LORD OF LIFE WEBSITE! Changes are being made to the Lord of Life website and your suggestions are welcome. The website will be updated weekly. Check out the calendar link to see what’s happening for the month. The website address is www.lordoflifeames.org. If you find broken links on the church website, contact Marta Mooney by email at mhaalboo@iwu.edu. Thanks.
PASTOR JEN’S PEN
As I write this, the sound of several chain saws buzzing fills my apartment. Three tree removal services have their trucks lined along the street. The workers are busy sawing tree limbs that fell and trunks that split during the storm early Sunday morning. The storm devastated many shrubs, trees, fences, and homes in our area. The meteorologist promises more storms to come.
The recent “meteorological events” cause to me to wonder about that famous storm we read about in the New Testament. It was not only a storm, but it whipped up over a lake where the disciples were floating. We all know the ending: Jesus stills the storm.
There is truth in the story about a man and his wife who were on vacation in the mountains. One afternoon the man returned to their cabin all scratched and bruised, explaining to his wife that he had encountered a snake on the trail. His wife quickly reminded him that the guide had told them before that there were no poisonous snakes in the area. To which the husband replied, “They don’t need to be poisonous when they can make you jump off a 20-foot cliff!”
You see, the snake was not the problem. The man’s unreasonable fear of snakes was the problem. In the words of the old German adage, “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.”
Dr. William Barclay, a renowned Bible scholar, reports that early in his life, he was devastated when his only daughter drowned just a few days before she was going to get married. Sometime later, commenting on the story of the storm on the lake, he said, “I am not so concerned as to whether Jesus stilled the tempest on the sea. What I do know is that He stilled the tempest in me.”
God has a love for us that is big enough to calms the storms in life. And that’s the good news for today.
JULY’s SOCIAL MINISTRY FOCUS IS STORK’s NEST. There’s still time to donate NEW infant and baby items for Stork's Nest, a nonprofit helping young mothers in need of support. Thanks for your many generous contributions already! Please continue to leave items in the designated box in the church lobby.
IN AUGUST, IT’s BACK TO SCHOOL FOR YSS. We will continue our August tradition of supplying back-to-school needs for Youth and Shelter Services. Please leave your contributions in the box after Aug. 1 and watch for more details and announcements from our YSS representative, Teresa Glover.
AUGUST WORSHIP TEAM IS GREEN. We’re trying a new system for assigning worship tasks. We have set up four teams -- Blue, Green, Yellow, Red – and assigned members to those teams. Each team includes Lord of Life members who indicated their interest in various worship tasks. The teams will rotate through worship tasks every four months. The Green Team is up for August; Yellow Team in September; and the Red Team in October.
If you’ve not yet been assigned to a team, contact the Lord of Life office and we’ll get up signed up. Here are the team assignments so far.
Green: Mary Bilstad, LeAnn Faidley, Teresa Glover, Trish and George Patrick, Laura Sternweis, Roberta Vann
Yellow: Sandy Chacko, Paul Fiala, Diane McCauley, Marilyn Paplow, Cindy Swanson, Bill Vogel
Red: Arnie Cowan, Thomas Chacko, Lon Hampton, Marta Mooney, Lucy Thomas, Elaine Torgeson
Blue: Fred Lorenz, Anna Hampton, Glenda Hughes, Marty Kelly, Don Swanson