Ladies, please share with your partners that all adults are invited to the first movie night on July 16th. Liz and Jim Hance will open their house and turn on their big screen for us so we all can watch the movie Food Inc. at 7:00 p.m. Please bring a dessert to share.
On August 6th, we will watch the movie Home at Last – a movie about homelessness in the United States. Gary and Lauren Bernhofer will be hosting us. Again we will start at 7:00 p.m.and bring a dessert to share.
Please save the dates of September 24th and 25th for our annual retreat. We are looking to go away overnight this time. Activities and studies will all relate to the theme Fire. We will start with dinner on Friday and have some activities around a real fire. On Saturday we will have more on the agenda. Please let Erie know if you are planning on coming. We have two locations for the retreat and are still working out the details.
We announce the actual location in the coming weeks.
Our first regular fall meeting will be on October 10th. That is the second Sunday of the month. We decided to change to this Sunday so more people may be able to attend our meetings. As always all women of the congregation are welcome!
Since we all liked the Honor Roll breakfast so much, the Women’s Guild has decided to hold another one next year on Mar 5th! At our meeting on May 16th, the women talked about how exciting the breakfast was and what we all learned from it, through Lisanne Finston’s presentation. The Warwick Retreat will focus on a movie with the kids and the adults in order to learn more about the food industry and the over-processing of food. The movies Food, Inc. and Supersize Me are quite explicit and extremely interesting.
The Women’s Guild, though, also felt that there are other topics that we, as a congregation, are dealing with and so we are planning two Friday night movie events: Jul 16th and Aug 6th. The plan is to have a potluck dinner and to watch a movie together. An announcement will come later of exact times and locations.
If you are able to host either of these events, please see Erie.
Looking Ahead for the Women of our church:
Please save the dates of Sep 24th and 25th for our annual retreat. We are looking to go away overnight this time. Details will follow in the next newsletter.
The Advent Breakfast is scheduled for Dec 4th. Pastor Susan has been asked to write another skit about the birth of Jesus, this time from Joseph’s point of view.
Finally: the prayer shawls are still being made. Moreover, we have some ready that can be given away. If you know someone who could benefit of getting a prayer shawl, please see Erie.
The last few years, the Women’s Guild has scheduled a spring cleaning sometime in March or April. This year was no exception, but there was one change.
Earlier on in the year, a group of volunteers was supposed to come and help us with various activities as part of the Rutgers Martin Luther King Volunteer Day. That event was snowed out, so it was arranged that the volunteers would help the Women with their spring cleaning. Also, one of our building user groups had agreed to send a group of young people to help us out.
The Women’s Guild had made a list for the eleven volunteers that were expected to show up around noon on Apr 17 . To our surprise, we had in total about sixteen young, h th ardworking people from these groups. It was a job in itself to come up with jobs for them and to supervise their activities. But so much got done!
All of us that were at worship the next day could appreciate the hard work one volunteer put into vacuuming all the pew cushions, top and bottom. That was quite a task. Others worked hard to wash down the knee boards and backrests of all the pews. Even the ones without cushions, and the upstairs pews were not forgotten! The carpet was vacuumed throughout the sanctuary. The choir folding chairs got cleaned. And did you notice that the breezeway windows looked so much brighter? Every single pane was cleaned by other hardworking volunteers.
In the Fellowship Hall, all the chairs and tables got a good and thorough cleaning. The woodwork below the windows got washed. The doors to the bathrooms got a coat of paint. The deacon’s bench in the vestibule got two coats of paint, so now it matched the ones in Fellowship Hall. The vestibule walls were washed, as were the windows of the entry door. In the kitchen we had two gentlemen give the top of the stove a cleaning.
All of this would not have been done if Joan, Julius and Norma had not been there and help me think up jobs fast enough keep all the volunteers busy.
Thank you Ahmad, Alyssa, Dwayne, Haja, Hawanatu, Jennifer, Jelitza, Magan, Marette, Matt, Nisha, Randy, Sheri, Tori, Victoria and Zaahir. Our church and education building looks cleaner, more inviting thanks to all your hard work!
Tagged as:
Martin Luther King Volunteer
By Pastor Susan and Erie Beemsterboer
We are all familiar with the honor roll at our children’s school. Well, our first Women’s Guild Honor Roll Breakfast was organized as such: to recognize a woman from our community for the work she does. Moreover, we chose a woman whose work is essential but often in the background. This year our honoree was Yvette Molina from Elijah’s Promise.
A small yet diverse group gathered on the morning of Apr 24th with women from our church, the Interfaith Dialogue Center, Elijah’s Promise, Rutgers Campus Ministry and even the Keyport Reformed Church. All the food was delicious!
Thank you to those of you who contributed in one way or the other. While we were enjoying our second cup of tea or coffee, Lisanne Finston, Director of Elijah’s Promise, gave us a “short” speech about the connection between Food Banks and the national obesity crises. This was an eye opener, and a very informative speech. For instance, cheap food is usually over-processed, non-vegetable or fruit stuff. She compared the dollar menu to the cost of a head of lettuce. When stuck with a tight budget, people buy the hamburger rather than the lettuce. This cheap food, though, is one of the reasons that obesity has increased the last thirty years.
Lisanne also pointed out the typical food donations that “soup kitchens” such as Elijah’s Promise receive from big food donors (which must remain nameless). For instance, she will receive a donation inventory list which will read: six pages of condiments, sodas, energy drinks and two pages of healthy food stuffs. Her point is that these donations are basically “waste management of food that the general population isn’t buying”.
Fascinating and challenging to hear such a description! Waste management… How many of us go to our shelves and look for that can of something that has been sitting there for several years and give that as a food donation? Canned food is part of the over-processed problem. Elijah’s Promise is addressing this problem by making connections to local farmers. There are several groups that are providing donations of fresh food to the soup kitchen. Also, the soup kitchen is trying to move away from canned foods. They are encouraging donors to give fresh vegetables and fruits.
Lisanne has so much to tell us and ask us, and, since we were about twenty people, there was a great deal of discussion about some of the topics that she presented. Some of her suggestions about food donations we will take back with us and see what we can implement here at First Reformed Church.
One of her suggestions was that we watch the movie Food Inc., which would open our eyes to the food industry and our over-processed culture. Look for an invitation to that event. The Women’s Guild is planning to share a meal (of unprocessed food!) and then to watch this movie together.
Once again: “Thank You!”to all of you that came and helped us organize this great event. We will certainly have this on our agenda next year.
Our last meeting was a very meaningful one. We had a great time with our Bible study book, God Is In the Hard Stuff. I really like the book as its chapters are rather short and most often give a good start for a good discussion. Even if you don’;t have the book, it is easy to follow along and take part in the discussion. We will continue with this book at most meeting, but please don’t think you cannot come to our meetings because you don’t have the book. At our last gathering, only one or two copies were present, but all seven ladies present were participating in the discussion.
Other agenda items during this meeting were our upcoming breakfast to honor Yvette Molina (see related article). I urge all of you to take that article and show it to a friend (or two) and invite her to come along to this event. It is free and promises to be a good time for all! I really want to show Yvette with a good attendance that we appreciate all that she has done and still is doing for House of Manna. And in today’s economy, it must not be easy for so many in the city of New Brunswick to get a good and healthy meal on the table for their families. Thanks to Yvette, and other people, they now can rely on House of Manna at least twice a week for a free meal in a family friendly environment. If you want provide some food for this event, please let Erie know! A sign up sheet will be available on the board as well.
On May 8th, the Church Women United are having their annual Friendship Service. Last year, Pastor Susan, Joan Fekete and I attended this service and had a good time, then it was held on a Friday. This year it will be on a Saturday so I hope that more of us can go to this year. I will provide more details about this at our next meeting on April 18th.
There are so many women who do marvelous things through their work by going above and beyond their ‘job description’. Our Women’s Guild has interacted with many such women, but there has been one in particular whom we feel has assisted our outreach ministries in a very special way; and most of us don’t even know her name – Yvette Molina. Yvette Molina works on staff in the administration of Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen. While we were planning the start of our House of Manna, Yvette was instrumental in getting the program off the ground. Every time there is a special holiday on a Tuesday or Thursday, Yvette is the one who drives the van over here filled with boxed dinners for House of Manna clients to take home.
There will be a program of recognition for Yvette Molina by the Women’s Guild
All First Reformed Church women are invited to a special breakfast on
Saturday, April 24, 2010 from 9:30 – 11:00 am.
The menu will include: egg casseroles, danish & coffee cake, juices, coffee & tea, amongst other breakfast treats
Please bring a friend [or two!]
RSVP by: April 18th
Tagged as:
Elijah's Promise Soup Kitchen,
House of Manna
The Spring-cleaning that was planned with the Rutgers volunteers was snowed out. However, we will try again on Apr 17th. We have asked a Girl Scout troop to help us this time. We are waiting for their answer.
On Apr 24th, we will honor Yvette Molina for all she has done and still is doing for House of Manna. We will do this by organizing a brunch. The final details for this celebration will be made at our next meeting on Mar 21st.
On Mar 5th, the Church Women United will celebrate World Day of Prayer with a gathering. Crossroads is planning a retreat again in April; if you are interested please see Erie for more details.
I hope to see all of you at our next meeting, which should start a little earlier as the last one.
Tagged as:
Church Women United,
House of Manna,
World Day of Prayer
