Peg and her great grandson watch in awe and excitement as the bidding goes higher!
Thank you to all who made the evening such a success. Details and more pictures below.








Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley
Thursday MEMO
November 25, 2010

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Services for Sunday, November 28th, the first Sunday of Advent, will be at 8 and 10 AM, with coffee hours follow both services. We hope you will join us for worship and fellowship. Advent prayer and activity calendars ("Slow Down. Quiet. It's Advent") are available on the table in the Parish Hall.

You will notice a few changes to the liturgy as we enter the Advent season, starting with a newly-designed bulletin. Please give the new format a try. Deb and I have worked together to have something that we hope is "user-friendly" even for visitors, convenient to follow, and still be conservative in our use of paper. And we are open to comments and ways to improve them. Advent invites us to quiet reflection and simplicity. Expect more moments of silence in the liturgy; they are intentional and will follow the readings and the homily. At the later service we will be using "plainsong" (Gregorian chant) settings for the Psalms. If the notation is unfamiliar to you, listen to the choir with an open mind and allow yourself to pray and sing along after the first few verses.

Boughs and Bonbons Christmas Fair is a week from this Saturday! This will be a busy week of preparation. Wreath decorators are asked to gather on Thursday. Talk to Elaine South or Judy Grace for details. Your home-baked Christmas cookies should be delivered to the church on Thursday or Friday, Dec. 3rd by 9 am for our very popular cookie plates.

Harvest Supper and Pie Auction Report: After the expenses were paid out, we brought in about $1300! 15% of this will be used toward church operating expenses, and $180 will go to each of the following organizations: Starting Point, Seafarer's Friend, The Edith Junior School in Kenya, The NH Community Loan Fund, the Pilgrim Reconciliation Project, and the Tamworth Community Christmas Project. AND, as you can see from the pictures below a great time was had!



























Readings for this Sunday: Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44.

Food for thought from Wendel Berry ...

The sounds of engines leave the air.
The Sunday morning silence comes at last.
At last I know the presence
of the world made without hands,
the creatures that have come to be
out of their absence. Calls
of flicker and jay fill the clear
air. Titmice and chickadees feed
among the green and drying leaves.
Gratitude for the gifts of all the living
and the unliving, gratitude which is
the greatest gift of all, quietest of all,
passes through the trees."

We wait in quiet expectation.

See you in church,
Blessings, Heidi+

Pies for the pie auction tomorrow!!! Have you baked yours?

Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley
Thursday MEMO
November 18, 2010

Services for Sunday, November 21st, will be at 8 and 10 AM, with coffee hours following both services. We hope you'll join us for worship and fellowship.

Our Harvest Supper and Pie Auction tomorrow is Friday, November 19th. The supper begins at 6 PM and the auctioning of pies will get underway at about 7. Bring yourself! Bring your friends and family! This event has been a fun and lively community happening.
You are welcome to bring your own wine or beer. Apple cider will be provided.

The proceeds from it will go to support the work of six organizations: The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, Starting Point (providing service particularly to women and children locally in domestically abusive situations), Seafarers' Friend (pastoral care and attention to mariners), The Edith Junior School in Kenya, the Pilgrim Reconciliation Project (working primarily in war-torn countries in Africa), and The Tamworth Community Christmas Project (TCCP).

Our support of these organizations extends our reach as we do our part to "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves."

And don't forget, we need your delicious pies for this event. Please deliver your pies to the church Friday afternoon by 3:00. Pies should be labeled with ingredients.

Our Ecumenical Community Thanksgiving service will be this coming Sunday evening at 6:00 at the Tamworth Congregational Church. Any singers who wish are invited to arrive at 5:00 for a choir practice. Please think of this as our Thanksgiving service, shared with the wider community. The location of this service rotates from year to year among the Tamworth churches, with the clergy and choirs of all churches providing the leadership and all the people of God welcome. The offering will go to the rebuilding of the Agape Ministries and Farm following their devastating fire a few weeks ago. (Agape is a companion ministry to our Food Pantry and Dinner Bell, providing food, clothing and household goods to people in need in the Ossipee Valley.)

The Take This Bread group discussion will meet on Tuesday, November 23rd, at 5:00 in the Prince Room. Whether you have read all or just some of the book, or even if you're just curious, please come.

Hard as it may be to believe, our Boughs and Bonbons Christmas Fair will take place two weeks from this Saturday, on December 4th from 9 to 1. Click on the "HELP NEEDED" section in the upper left for details.

Readings for this Sunday, the Sunday of Christ the King: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Canticle 16 (The Song of Zechariah), Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43

Food for thought as we enter the season of festive eating in community with others:
This prayer comes from our current book, Take this Bread, which focuses on making the connection between the eucharist and how we live as baptized Christians in the world. It would be wonderfully appropriate as a table grace at any meal.

O God of abundance, you feed us every day. Rise in us now. Make us your bread, that we may share your gifts with a hungry world and join in love with all people, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.















Mary Ellen bids on a great pie last year!

See you at church!
Blessings, Heidi+

Our worker-bee Stewardship Committee express their gratitude for your pledges of support to Saint Andrew's.

Shown here, Elaine, Gretchen, George, Marty, and Sammie hosting the Celebration Breakfast on All Saints' Sunday.
Additional pictures below.

Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley
Thursday MEMO
November 11, 2010

Services for Sunday, November 14th, will be at 8 and 10 AM, followed by a coffee hour.

The service in celebration of the life of Marie Cannon, affiliate of Saint Andrew's and sister-in-law of Peggy Cannon, will take place at 11 AM, Saturday, November 13th. Marie passed away on November 4th, at her home in Portland surrounded by family members. May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

REMINDERS of other up-coming events:

A concert Friday evening, November 12th at 7 at the Chocorua Church: Indigenous Voices. Jesse Red Horse and Kim White Feather will play Native American flute music to benefit Agape Ministries and the Straughan family's recovery from their house and barn fire. Donations at the door.

Two discussions have been scheduled for the book Take This Bread by Sara Miles. the first will be Wednesday, November 17th at 10:00. The other will be Tuesday, November 23rd at 5:00. You are invited to come to one or the other. If we discover that one session is not enough, we can schedule a second meeting with the group that is gathered.

Bow-making workshop Wednesday the 17th at 7 pm. What are Christmas wreaths without bows???!!! We need some strong-fingered folks to create a sufficent number for the wreaths for Boughs and Bonbons.

Next Friday, November 19th is our annual Harvest Supper and Pie Auction. We are counting on you for your pies and for spreading the word! Dinner will be served at 6 PM and the Pie Auction will begin at 7. Please click on "HELP WANTED: Harvest Supper and Pie Auction" in the column to the upper left for details. (Pies should be delivered to the church by 3:00 on Thursday, the 18th.)

Join us on Sunday, November 21st, at 6 PM for the Community Thanksgiving Service, as we give thanks together for the many gifts of this life. This year it will be held at the Tamworth Congregational Church. This is offered by the Tamworth Associated Churches: The Chocorua Community Church, Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church, the Tamworth Congregational Church, and the Unitarian Universalists of the Eastern Slopes. Interested choir members should arrive by 5:00 to prepare the anthem and other music.

Boughs and Bonbons Christmas Fair Saturday, December 4th from 9 to 1. Please click on "HELP WANTED: Boughs and Bonbons" in the column to the upper left for details.

From the Stewardship Committee: Thank you for your strong support. At the time of our in-gathering last Sunday, we had received 54 pledges for the coming year. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! If you have not yet turned in your pledge card, please do so soon. The Finance Committee will be meeting shortly to begin work on the 2011 budget and their work is dependent on pledging information.
















The honey cells are almost full. Each full cell represents one pledge. Thanks!

Food for thought in this season of Gratitude...
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
by Melody Beattie

Readings for Sunday: Isaiah 65:17-25, Canticle 9 (The First Song of Isaiah), 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

See you in church!
Blessings, Heidi+

Come and see!
Thanks to the hard work of Brian (an outside helper), Sally, Bruce, Duane, Vic, and Debra, our kitchen "refurb" is well underway! Everything has been emptied, thoroughly cleaned, and now painted, ceiling included. (Cupboard doors will be reinstalled after the acquisition of new hardware.)
Additional pictures below.







Saint Andrew's-in-the-Valley
Thursday MEMO
November 4, 2010

Sunday, November 7th and All Saints' Sunday, we will have ONE service only at 9:00. The liturgy will include the in-gathering and offering of our pledges and will be followed by a "Honey Sweet" Celebration Breakfast, to which all are welcome, hosted by the Stewardship Committee. Thanks you to all who have already turned in pledge cards. Those cards, along with those that are brought in on Sunday, will be presented as a special offering. Remembering the departed: We will begin our liturgy on Sunday with the reading of names of departed loved ones. If there are additions to the names already submitted, please email me by Saturday evening (frantzdale@gmail.com) and they will be included.

Don't forget the time change! Set clocks BACK an hour on Saturday night. Our 9 o'clock service on Sunday will "feel" like 10 o'clock.

Special note on the wine at the eucharist: This Sunday (only), in keeping with our season's theme of bees and honey, we will be using mead (honey wine) in place of our usual tawny port. As always, our eucharistic bread is sweetened with honey (recalling both the words from the prophet Ezekiel (16:19) that the Lord had provided the people with "choice flour, oil, and honey," and the psalmist (81:16) My people "would I feed with finest wheat and satisfy with honey from the rock!"

Our Harvest Dinner and Pie Auction are just two weeks away -- Friday, November 19th at 6 PM! Time to get planning. What pies will you make? Sign-up sheet for helpers at the dinner are in the Parish Hall. This has been a wonderfully successful and fun event in the past, and a terrific opportunity to invite friends.

More about the kitchen work: In order to fully clean and paint the kitchen, all the cupboards have been emptied. At the time of the writing of this MEMO, everything is spread out on numerous tables in the Parish Hall (see the picture below)! The sorting team has discovered all sorts of things that have been unused for years, as well as a vast pile of unclaimed dishes from years of coffee hours and suppers! For us to have a well-ordered, workable kitchen, many of these items will need to find new homes! It is highly likely that there will be a "give-away table" this weekend. Plan to take a look and see if there is anything of yours or that you could use. Also, be forewarned ... there is likely to be a table or two of kitchen contents temporarily in the Prince Room for which a "new home" has not yet been found. Please bear with us. This has been a whirlwind of a week for those working on the kitchen. We have a hard and fast deadline to have things fully put away in time for the Harvest Dinner.

Also, be prepared. The cupboards will be without doors this weekend, because new hardware needs to be acquired. The advantage to this is that the contents of everything will be clearly visible. Since there will be some intentional rearranging of things, we will all be able to see quickly what is where as we get accustomed to new (and we hope improved) locations. Please bear with us. (FYI: All upper cupboards are a creamy yellow, lowers are a mid-range sage green.)

We had a free consultation from kitchen designer earlier this week who has made a number of potentially helpful suggestions to the functionality of ours as a community kitchen. Stay tuned for updates as we discern how to move forward.
























Bruce works on the drawer fronts.

















Vic gets the ceiling above the stove!

















How much of this do we really need?
























Sally on clean-up (after hours of painting)!

This week's readings: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31.

Food for thought as we conclude this Pledge Season with it's focus on our attention to this place as a community in which we all share:

(From Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, 1975)
The basis of Christian community is not the family tie, or social or economic equality, or shared oppression or complaint, or mutual attraction...but the divine call. The Christian community is not the result of human efforts. God has made us into his people by calling us out of "Egypt" to the "New Land" [one flowing with milk and honey!], out of the desert to fertile ground, out of slavery to freedom, our of our sin to salvation, out of captivity to liberation. All these words and images give expression to the fact that the initiative belongs to God and that God is the source of our new life together. By our common call, we recognize each other on the road as brothers and sisters.

May our offerings and festivities this Sunday be a celebration of our shared life, "on the road" together as sisters and brothers living with open generosity the new life we are coming to know in Christ.

So... come and feast!
See you in church!
Blessings,
Heidi+