Before we know it Holy Week will be upon us.
Holy Week starts at the Palm Sunday Service on March 28
with the Blessing and Procession of the Palms and the reading of
the passion-this year according to Luke.
Our Maundy Thursday service begins at 6 p.m. April 1,
ending with the stripping of the altar and an agape meal of soup
and bread. The Good
Friday service will be at 12:15 p.m.
April 2. Parishioners and guests also will have the
opportunity to walk the Stations of the Cross at 11:30 a.m.
before that service. Our Easter Day service will be at 9:30 a.m.
as usual on April 4.
Also, remember the Ecumenical Easter Vigil, which will be
held at Gloria Dei Lutheran on April 3 at 7 p.m.
Art Simon, founder of Bread for the World, will be the featured
speaker at 7 p.m. Thursday March 25 at a prayer service hosted
by Second Congregation Church, 312 N. Church.
Imagining
with Diana Butler Bass
The
Office of Life Long Christian Formation in partnership with St.
James Cathedral, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and the
Congregations Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago is
sponsoring a series of conversations and presentations with
noted author and educator Diana Butler Bass.
The
program is scheduled for March 11 through March 13 and will take
place at three locations around the diocese for clergy, lay
leaders, parishioners and the general public.
"Trends, Tinker Toys & Transformation" is the topic for Thursday
and Friday March 11 and 12 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Martin
Episcopal Church, 1095 Thacker St. in Des Plaines.
Bishop
Jeffrey Lee and Diana Butler Bass will be featured in a program
from 5:30 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. March 11 at St. James Cathedral,
Wabash & Huron St., Chicago. At this event there will be
refreshments and a book signing.
The final presentation, "The People's History of Christianity"
from her book of the same title will be offered from 10 a.m. to
2 p.m. Saturday March 13 at St. Paul Episcopal Church, 900
Normal Rd, DeKalb.
The
registration fee for Thursday & Friday is $40 (includes lunch
both days).
There is no fee for Thursday
evening’s event.
The registration fee for Saturday
is $20 (includes lunch).
An all-event pass is available for
$50.
More information is available on
the diocesan website (www.episcopalchicago.org).
Register online or contact Barbara
Rasero 312-751-4206.
For other questions, ask Pastor
Andrea.
Episcopal Diocese of Haiti
continues work
The Diocese of Haiti will continue to care for all Haitians
through its schools, clinics and churches. The future of
the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti may well look very much like its
past in one very important aspect -- its service to the people
of that impoverished nation.
"We have been here before, we are here now and we will be there
after," said the Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir, a Haitian native and
one of four Episcopal Church missionaries assigned to work with
the diocese in the impoverished country, who spoke to ENS Jan.
27 via telephone from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
The
Episcopal Church of Haiti, known locally as L'Eglise Episcopale
d'Haiti, will mark its 150th anniversary in 2011. Haitian
Episcopalians have preached and practiced a "gospel of
wholeness" since its founding in 1861, according to Bishop Jean
Zach Duracin.
A
second missionary, the Rev. Lauren Stanley, echoed Beauvoir's
promise. "For 149 years the diocese has taken the lead in
caring for the people of Haiti through our schools, through our
medical clinics, our feeding programs, our water programs,
through our churches, through the music program, through taking
care of abandoned handicapped children."
Stanley said that the diocese is committed to all of the people
of Haiti, "not just Episcopalians in our pews," adding that it
will rebuild its schools, hospitals and churches and "will
continue to care for the people that nobody else cares about
because that's what we have always done.”
On
Sundays January 17 and January 24, we collected donations at St.
Anskar’s to be sent to Episcopal Relief and Development for the
Haiti Relief Fund. More than $300 was collected, which
includes the loose offering on Jan. 24.
With some additions from the
Rector’s Discretionary Fund,
$850 was
sent in to ERD for Haiti.
Give thanks for blessings, loved ones
with Easter flower
donation
The
Altar Guild is seeking donations for the flowers for the Altar
of Repose and decorating the church for Easter. Any amount is
welcome.
A donor’s list will be included in the Easter
bulletin.
Flowers may be given in memory of a loved one or in thanks-giving for
special blessings.
Please
fill out a check and the form below and:
Give or mail a check payable to St. Anskar's Flower
Fund to Jennie Lamp, Flower Chairman, 6047 Carriage Green Way,
Rockford, IL 61108, OR
Put your check made out to St. Anskar’s Flower Fund
in the collection plate,
and remember to write
Easter Flowers on the memo line in
the lower left corner of check.
Or you may give the check
and requested intention
to Dan in the office.
Ministry opportunities
abound for parishioners of all ages
With our young people graduating and going
off to college, we are in need of some people who might be
interested in serving as acolytes.
Older children as well as adults are
invited to consider this opportunity to serve.
No prior experience necessary --
just an interest.
We will be happy to provide the
training.
Please contact Pastor Andrea for more information or if
interested in this ministry.
Do you like to read aloud?
Do you like visiting with people?
As well as putting out a call for
acolytes, we are also looking for people to serve as greeters,
lectors and home cmmunion ministers.
Presently we are visiting four
different facilities to take communion to shut-ins on the third
Sunday of the month.
To get an idea of what being a home
communion minister entails, volunteer to go along with any of
the persons taking communion to our shut-ins.
We will provide the necessary
training and mentoring to anyone who might be interested in
helping out in any of these ministries.
Contact Pastor Andrea or Deacon
Nancy with questions.
Join
us for coffee, goodies, fellowship
after church on Sundays
With the help of our dedicated volunteers (this will
be their third year of volunteering one Sunday every month
to hostess the coffee hour), our usual coffee/fellowship
hour has resumed. Please join
everyone else in the parish hall and enjoy a cup of coffee
and some "goodies."
Get ready
for the next Attic Treasures
Please copy and save this list of items needed for the Attic
Treasures Sale and keep it handy during the year. As you
clean out your closets, cupboards, garages, or basements,
keep Attic Treasures in mind.
Dates:
April 15-17, 2010
Needed:
Padded hangers
Paper or Plastic Bags/Sacks: (with
handles)
Children's clothes
Linens: (please list size
of sheets and blankets.)
Jewelry
Housewares
Crafts
Appliances/electronics
(in good working order)
CD's, VHS's, DVD's
Books (No Reader's Digests or magazines!)
Church
members
invited to post video testimonies
A
communications initiative to tell the Episcopal Church's story was launched on
Ash Wednesday at www.episcopalchurch.org where visitors will find a new
interactive feature called "I Am Episcopalian."
The
so-called "microsite" contains short videos of people "sharing
their deep, personal connections to the big, wide, vibrant church that we
are," said Anne Rudig, who joined the Episcopal Church Center in New York
as communications director on January 5.
Users
will be allowed to upload their own videos, which should be no longer than 90
seconds. Communication staff will monitor the clips before posting on the
"I am Episcopalian" webpage, which will be active throughout Lent.
Visitors
to Episcopalchurch.org
will be greeted with the I am Episcopalian page which includes a short
description, a banner display of photo links to contributors' videos, and two navigation
links, one to upload videos and the other to continue to the
episcopalchurch.org home page. The microsite can be reached at http://www.iamepiscopalian.org/.
Campbell's offers
labels for education program
Campbell's Labels For Education is a program that helps schools
obtain free educational
merchandise such as computers, software, physical
education equipment, musical instruments, library books or even
a minivan. Either cut out the small label or send along the
complete label and we can have someone cut it out later.
Other products that do have this label on them include
Swanson's, Pepperidge Farm, Prego, V-8 beverages, and Pace
sauces. Please save your labels for our schools; a collection
box can be found in parish hall.
Check out St. Anskar's
new and improved library
St. Anskar's Library has been cleaned out, sorted and organized
by Judy Schultz. Books are now shelved by category/subject.
There is not a check-out system, just return them when you are
finished. Please stop by the Hearth Room and see what we have.
If you have religious books, study guides, etc., that you no
longer need, we could use them. Please
leave those books in
the box on the top shelf. and we will file them away later.
Maybe you will find some great reading for these cold winter
nights!
Save your box tops
for education
Ahhh------"If only the schools had all the money
they needed and the Air Force had to have bake sales to purchase
their bombers....." as the saying goes! But we do have a couple
ways we can help our schools in our own personal way.
One way is to save Box Tops For Education labels. Box Tops
celebrated the $250 million mark in 2008 and it has been around
for 12 years. More companies join in this wonderful cause each
year.
It started out with only General Mills products and now you can
find this label on other products such as: Betty Crocker,
Nestle, Frozen Green Giant Vegetables, Juicy Juice, Yoplait
yogurt, snack items, Kleenex, Huggies, personal care products,
Ziploc, Cottenelle, Scott and Hefty products.
Every Box Top coupon is worth a dime. Schools can redeem these
"little" coupons twice a year and individual schools could earn
up to $60,000 if enough coupons were turned in.
Wow! The money can be used for anything the school needs.
However, these coupons DO EXPIRE! so only save those from 2009
on. A collection jar has been placed in parish hall.
Help keep God’s world green:
Recycle those
cell phones
Did you know that more than 130 million cell phones and PDAs will
be retired this year in the U.S. but fewer than 10 percent of
them are likely to be recycled.
Donate your old cell phones to help women build job skills and
climb out of poverty.
The old cell phones can be refurbished and reporgramed as 911
phones for use by survivors of domestic violence, the elderly
and others at risk. Materials from broken and obsolete phones
and accessories can be reclaimed and used to manufacture other
goods.
St. Anskar’s has two collection boxes for phones
and PDAs. One is upstairs in the parish hall, and the other is
downstairs. Won’t
you please donate you old phones to this good cause. Thanks.
Study groups offer different ways
to learn about the Bible