22 Sept 2010
Annual Meeting of the Congregation
There will be a General Meeting of the congregation following worship this Sunday, September 26. All members and friends of the congregation are invited and encouraged to participate. Lunch will be catered - wraps by Linda Krampetz.
The agenda and annual reports of our groups and committees are linked below. Printed copies will be available on Sunday morning or by appointment at the church office (753-8439).
There are also some interim financial reports for your information. This isn't a budget meeting, but you can see where we stand financially at this point in the year.
8 Sept 2010
We're back to School!
Summer with the Pinawa Lutheran Church is always a blessing, but the PCF has a unique identity formed by our flexibility and our nomadic life of worship and service. On September 12th we're returning to our regular time and place of Sunday worship - 10 am in the F.W. Gilbert School. The school has been turned upside down this summer with extensive landscape work outside and the replacement of all the ceiling tiles and light fixtures inside. Yes... that includes those hideous orange sodium vapour lamps in the gymnasium! They might not be installed for our first day back but the lights are ordered and the work is under contract. Soon we will see everyone's true colours!
27 Aug 2010
Sign of the times!
Herm Saxler came by this afternoon and installed our sign outside the WB Lewis Business Centre.
Not having a church builidng means we need to pay attention to our public presence in different ways. Herm will also be updating the church sign at the Pinawa Mall and we still have a rather large sign from our old office at the Whiteshell Centre. Perhaps that should go out on the highway somewhere?
13 Jul 2010
New Meeting Room and Office
We've moved to the W.B. Lewis Business Centre on 24 Aberdeen Avenue in Pinawa!
The new meeting room is large enough for gatherings of 20 or more.
We have plenty of storage now!
And an inviting and light filled office space ...
Come and check out room S.14 at the Lewis Centre.
The new meeting room is large enough for gatherings of 20 or more.
We have plenty of storage now!
And an inviting and light filled office space ...
Come and check out room S.14 at the Lewis Centre.
Mission and Service Letters from Mozambique
Mission and Service Letters from Mozambique Letter 240 21 May 2010
God delivers the needy when they call.... -Psalm 72.12
That’s good news, but in order to call, the needy require a voice. And preferably a listening human ear as well as God’s. Otherwise, they’re without any say or social power. God calls us to do what we can to strengthen the voice of the weakest and most marginalized, because those most needy are often least able to articulate their needs in a way and forum that can influence those with power to help them. One recent project of the Christian Council of Mozambique is called Listening to Poverty. In four provinces including Zambezia CCM calls public meetings, invites the articulate poor to testify, invites government officials to listen and respond, videotapes the proceedings, and delivers the edited tape direct to the President and Prime Minister of Mozambique, to let them hear their neediest citizens call out, testifying for themselves.
A hearing took place recently in Quelimane. First, a team of 5 CCM youth spent a day interviewing 30 people in the poorer bairros of Quelimane, gathering their views and experience of daily life in their neighbourhood. You see a photo of one of the interviewers, Sonia, with one of her subjects in the yard of his family’s house ( www.stpaulsunitedchurch.com ). On the second day; three of the most eager and articulate came to speak at the public meeting, on the plaza of a public school in another of Quelimane’s many poor bairros. You see one speaker, amid the project’s video cameraman, the camera of MTV Mozambique’s national television network, and the microphone of national Radio Mozambique. About 150 people turned up, teachers, journalists, civil servants, religious and community leaders, and many urban poor themselves to support their speaker neighbours. A neighbourhood dance troupe with drummers danced two original numbers about lives of poverty in Quelimane. The provincial governor showed up to listen and then to speak in response. So did the official representative of Quelimane’s mayor.
The speakers talked of the lack of street-lights and police, that lets gangs of unemployed youth armed with machetes roam the city’s night’s shadows robbing citizens at will.
They spoke of the lack of drainage, the standing water that blocks roads and breeds malarial mosquitoes.
They spoke of the lack of employment–one speaker told how he rides his bicycle as a taxi like hundreds of other men in Quelimane, earning 5 meticais (15 cents) per ride in the city, for 10 minutes or more pedalling hard with a passenger, then waiting who knows how long till the next fare, earning not enough in a day to feed a family and keep a bicycle maintained after the beating it takes on Quelimane’s bad roads. Another sells charcoal, buying a 50-kilo sack and selling it in small piles on the street for as little as 1 metical (3 cents), to people too poor to buy any more at once, just enough to cook their day’s one meal. Her way to try to feed her family.
And so the governor and everyone present heard compelling personal stories that lie behind poverty statistics, from the people who best can tell them, because they live them. Graca Machel, widow of Mozambique’s founding president, wife of Nelson Mandela, Mozambique’s most influential lady, already has an appointment to present the final product to the President and Prime Minister, from the needy who are calling. May God deliver them.
In mission and service, Karen and Bill Butt
God delivers the needy when they call.... -Psalm 72.12
That’s good news, but in order to call, the needy require a voice. And preferably a listening human ear as well as God’s. Otherwise, they’re without any say or social power. God calls us to do what we can to strengthen the voice of the weakest and most marginalized, because those most needy are often least able to articulate their needs in a way and forum that can influence those with power to help them. One recent project of the Christian Council of Mozambique is called Listening to Poverty. In four provinces including Zambezia CCM calls public meetings, invites the articulate poor to testify, invites government officials to listen and respond, videotapes the proceedings, and delivers the edited tape direct to the President and Prime Minister of Mozambique, to let them hear their neediest citizens call out, testifying for themselves.
A hearing took place recently in Quelimane. First, a team of 5 CCM youth spent a day interviewing 30 people in the poorer bairros of Quelimane, gathering their views and experience of daily life in their neighbourhood. You see a photo of one of the interviewers, Sonia, with one of her subjects in the yard of his family’s house ( www.stpaulsunitedchurch.com ). On the second day; three of the most eager and articulate came to speak at the public meeting, on the plaza of a public school in another of Quelimane’s many poor bairros. You see one speaker, amid the project’s video cameraman, the camera of MTV Mozambique’s national television network, and the microphone of national Radio Mozambique. About 150 people turned up, teachers, journalists, civil servants, religious and community leaders, and many urban poor themselves to support their speaker neighbours. A neighbourhood dance troupe with drummers danced two original numbers about lives of poverty in Quelimane. The provincial governor showed up to listen and then to speak in response. So did the official representative of Quelimane’s mayor.
The speakers talked of the lack of street-lights and police, that lets gangs of unemployed youth armed with machetes roam the city’s night’s shadows robbing citizens at will.
They spoke of the lack of drainage, the standing water that blocks roads and breeds malarial mosquitoes.
They spoke of the lack of employment–one speaker told how he rides his bicycle as a taxi like hundreds of other men in Quelimane, earning 5 meticais (15 cents) per ride in the city, for 10 minutes or more pedalling hard with a passenger, then waiting who knows how long till the next fare, earning not enough in a day to feed a family and keep a bicycle maintained after the beating it takes on Quelimane’s bad roads. Another sells charcoal, buying a 50-kilo sack and selling it in small piles on the street for as little as 1 metical (3 cents), to people too poor to buy any more at once, just enough to cook their day’s one meal. Her way to try to feed her family.
And so the governor and everyone present heard compelling personal stories that lie behind poverty statistics, from the people who best can tell them, because they live them. Graca Machel, widow of Mozambique’s founding president, wife of Nelson Mandela, Mozambique’s most influential lady, already has an appointment to present the final product to the President and Prime Minister, from the needy who are calling. May God deliver them.
In mission and service, Karen and Bill Butt
14 May 2010
Provoking Discussion
Following up on our very popular book study PCF Adult Ed is holding a provoking discussion every Wednesday throughout the month of May. We meet at 10 am in the Whiteshell Centre. On May 19th we will look at a challenging new translation of the psalms by Pamela Greenberg and talk about the translation process. The Introduction, Acknowledgments, Greenberg's story and translator methodology notes, and her translation of the first four Psalms are available for download here or you can get a printed copy at worship this Sunday, May 16. There's a lot to chew on and you should read this advance. If you don't have time to read it all, just look at the four newly translated psalms alongside a translation you are familiar with.
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