This Week at St. Andrew's

This Coming Sunday

Sunday, January 10, 2010

10:30 a.m.

Baptism of the Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14 -17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Reader

Sally Martin

Greeting Elder

Gordon Taylor

In your prayers this week, please remember the family of Kay Mather, who passed away last week. Kay was a longstanding member of St. Andrew's, and lived the last years of her life in a retirement home in Thornbury, Ontario.

There are times when it is not until a funeral service that we learn much about the lives of those with whom we share our life together at the church. At the memorial service yesterday, her daughter shared a wonderful reflection on her mother's life. With her permission, you are welcome to read it by clicking here.

The annual Epiphany Pot Luck Lunch will be held on Sunday January 10, 2010. Please bring your contributions to the kitchen by 10:30 am, especially if they need to be cooked or re-heated.

This is a wonderful opportunity for fellowship, and the food is always fantastic!

The deadline for submitting articles and information items for the February issue of Catalyst is Sunday, January 10, 2010. Due to time constraints, this is a strict deadline. Please be sure to let the editors know about important milestones in the lives of your family members (births, deaths, marriages, special achievements, etc.) so they can be included. Kindly email your items to the editors (Kristen Stout at kwmathewson@rogers.com and Jane Martin at janemartin@pagemartin.com). Please do not email contributions to the church office.

Joe-Anne Roberts, who writes a wonderful weekly summary about each Monday night's dinner, reports:

Menu:

Split Pea Soup with ham

Penne with tomato meat sauce casserole, topped with cheese

Roasted Potatoes, Onions & Sweet Potato Green Salad

Vegetarian - Spinach Lasagna

Dessert - Butter tarts with Orange slices and Chocolate Chip Cookies.

And we had a good supply of sandwiches - Egg Salad, Tuna and Peanut Butter, thanks to our hard-working sandwich ladies.

We fed 227 guests last night. Unfortunately, Jude, our last guest, wanted a vegetarian meal and we were all out. So he made do with egg salad sandwiches.

Once again, as our guests left, we received the usual good comments: �thanks, thank you for a lovely meal, I am full and it was good, etc. Our food reviewer, Liz, stopped to say that the dinner was superb and she especially liked the vegetables she felt they were to die for.�

One our guests told his waitress (I'm sorry I didn't get her name) that he had been in prison for 11 years, where he was a baker. In that time he must have made 10,000 butter tarts. His comment was "whoever baked these has done a better job than I did in those 11 years�.

Another guest came and said to me: "I don't know if you people get enough thanks for the work you do here, but I want you to know it means the world to me."

So thanks again to everyone for your hard work and devotion to the program.

And many of our guests passed on their best wishes to you all for a Happy New Year.

Financial donations to support the program are always welcome, and can be sent to the church office. Please make cheques payable to "St. Andrew's Church" and show "Out of the Cold" in the notation line. St. Andrew�s covers all administration costs and all financial donations go directly toward the purchase of food and supplies for the program.

For information about corporate participation please speak to the "Out of the Cold" Coordinator Lorraine Irvine. Please feel free to share information about the "Out of the Cold" programme in your workplaces if there are requests for suggestions about corporate charity donations.

If you would like to donate new or used warm winter clothing, books (not romance novels, please) or magazines, please bring the items to the church or contact Judy Neal in the church office.

Our gifts to Presbyterians Sharing support Mary Gorombey as she ministers to refugee students in Budapest with the Reformed Church in Hungary. Mary is helping to integrate refugee youth into the Hungarian school system. She teaches Hungarian as a second language and tutors many students outside of class time in various subjects. An important part of her work is helping change stereotypes and attitudes in a climate that is not favourable to refugees. Mary feels called to this work as she is the daughter of a refugee. Her father fled Hungary and found a new home in Canada. As a result, she has experienced first-hand some of the challenges faced by children in a new culture. Mary says, �I really thank Presbyterians Sharing for enabling me to be in Hungary and to be able to work with these youth. We�re here to make change in this world, and it can be done.� Let us pray for Mary as she helps refugee youth discover a new home.

We are pleased to announce that donations to the Church, and to ministries such as the 'Out of the Cold' programme, can be made online. To learn more, please click on the button below!