Beginning on April 12th for Wednesday Faith Explorers and April 16th for Sunday Family Faith Explorers, we will be learning about a very timely topic that deeply lives in the intersection of our faith and culture. The four-part lesson plan is called “Love and Justice” and will focus on how anti-racism and anti-bias training is an important part of our faith formation, and how racism, prejudice, and stereotypes go against the created diversity of God’s good creation.
What Gives You Hope? - Marlene Stimpson
What does HOPE look like for the Church, for Mount Olivet? My HOPE for the church is to continue to work by Jesus’ example. We do that by giving HOPE to others in supporting our partners in the world through ELCA, Lutheran World Relief, Global Health. We give HOPE in the community with food, clothing, shelter through PRISM, Home Free, Northport Elementary, Loaves and Fishes, our community garden, Beacon, Habitat, and volunteering just to name a few. We give HOPE with freedom of voice in advocacy through writing or speaking to our local, state and federal representatives. We give HOPE in our prayers for and encouragement to our youth. I do see HOPE in our young people today.
What Gives You Hope? - Amber Harder
Recently I was reading a book about trees with my kids and I came across something new that surprised me. I learned that trees actually form their buds at the end of summer! Even before the trees change color and drop their leaves, they are quietly getting ready behind the scenes for the year ahead. While they look as if life is over in the winter, they are in fact already equipped with all they will need to blossom when spring’s thawing temperatures return.
What Gives You Hope? - Dan Roff
So it is my focus to try each day to transform those negative thoughts, memories and pains into my fuel of Hope where God’s work is accomplished. As we begin our Advent Season, I am hopeful for all that the Spirit brings to me in my life. Yes, as Christians, we celebrate the anticipation of the Christ Child, and it is not only a truth, but a reminder given to us through the Spirit. What gives me Hope?… the Holy Spirit gives me Hope, but only if I do the work to hear and feel that subtle yet transformational feeling that shows me my best self and then share that with all who cross my path.
Where Do We Go From Here?
What Do You Need?
How Do You Give?
I have a very vivid image in my brain from my childhood – we are at the carnival at the Days of ’76 in Deadwood SD (probably early 1960’s), my grandpa has been given tickets for the carnival rides and my brother and sister and I have had all the fun we could possibly have (or as much fun as our parents thought we should have), and grandpa still has a bunch of free tickets in his pocket. He doesn’t want them to go to waste so he starts passing them out to other children as we make our way toward the car. There are screeches of delight at the unexpected gifts handed out along the way and the kids of Deadwood are off for more fun. I know that this was not the most generous act I’ve ever witnessed as he got the tickets for free or at a discount, but the thing that stays with me is how much he enjoyed making those random, unknown kids so happy.
What Hurts?
I’d much rather distract myself from feeling where something hurts. I’d rather keep busy and white-knuckle my way through to the other side. What I’m learning is that whatever hurts is still there – whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. It just comes out sideways when I don’t allow my body space to feel it and process it.
KidPack Becomes Every Meal
Northport has decided to begin distributing food to kids via Every Meal for the 2022-2023 school year. Every Meal will source the food that Northport families choose, pack the food in weekend bags, and deliver it to Northport for distribution. Mount Olivet will sponsor Northport by providing part of the funding and volunteers needed to help distribute food at the school on Friday afternoons. Pastor Kristin will communicate about volunteer opportunities as the new program gets off the ground and more is known about what is needed.
Where Are You From?
Where are you from?
I was born among the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, the land of stoic German Lutheran immigrants, not too far from the town of Hershey which to this day on warm summer afternoons has its streets filled with the delicious scent of chocolate. I was held in the gnarled hands of my grandfather, Sterling Lentz, a World War II veteran turned barber, and my earliest memories are of my grandmother, Emma, as she would peel apples for me in her hospice bed in one swirling twist of apple skin that fascinated and delighted my young imagination. I was baptized on Reformation Sunday, my baptism connecting me to the community of saints of our shared Lutheran heritage that began with a German monk saying "Here I stand" on behalf of the poor and marginalized, a heritage we all share and continue to proclaim.
I am heir to another heritage, too, that of the LGBTQIA+ community whose history is found along the margins of society, even though love, loss, desire, and longing form the common currency of all human experience.
My name is Pace, a name I chose for myself, which is a nod to yet another heritage–my mother's Italian lineage. Pace in Italian means peace, and my name is as much a promise as it is a commitment. In English pace reminds me to continue moving, to grow and change, to keep the pace as I follow the divine's movement in my own life.
Where are you from?
What commonalities bind us, and differences shape us?
What connects you to the past while propelling you into the present?
-Pace Warfield-May