I’m often in the wonderful

position of being very proud

of my congregation and I

find myself in that position

again.

Back in cold February we

gathered together for a meal

we called “Soup for Syria.”

Many people contributed to it

being an evening of good

food and good information.

First and foremost, the goal

of the dinner was to raise

awareness of the greatest

humanitarian crisis of this

decade: the many ugly faces

and consequences of the civ-

il war in Syria.

Once again, this past month,

pictures of children killed by

chlorine gas outside Damas-

cus have reminded us that

this horror continues.

While the main goal was in-

formation, we also took the

opportunity to ask you to

consider giving an ‘over and

above’ gift to help with

groups who are working with

the many helpless and inno-

cent people who have been

caught up in this war and be-

come refugees.

While most of the giving

came in that night, some gifts

have trickled in over the past

two months. So, it’s taken us

a while to tally what was

given. And this is where I

need to thank you: the total

was $7500! That’s amazing!

For the past several years we

have been giving funds from

our regular budget and the

Foundation to two Christian

groups doing relief work in

Syria, or with refugees in the

surrounding countries:

World Vision and the Out-

reach Foundation.

We plan to split this amount

between these two groups.

The need is still enormous

and the refugees are still

streaming out of Syria. Your

generous giving will be

greatly appreciated and well

used. Let me echo the Apos-

tle Paul when he tells the

Christians in Corinth:

You will be made rich in

every way so that you can be

generous on every occasion,

and through us your gener-

osity will result in thanksgiv-

ing to God. - II Corinthians

9:11

- - - - - - -

One final, unrelated topic.

This fall I’m leading a tour

to Greece to visit Biblical

sites. To help prepare for

that trip I’ve found a new

video series by Ray Vander

Laan.

Ray has done a series

called, That the World

May Know where he pre-

sents Biblical concepts and

insights in the historic loca-

tions when they happened.

I’ll bet many of you have

seen some of the ones he

has done in Israel.

This latest series has five

lessons all from Biblical

locations in Greece (all

places we’ll be going).

Even if you’re not going on

this trip you would enjoy

and learn from them.

So, I’m going to be show-

ing them and leading a

short discussion for five

Wednesday nights, start-

ing May 9, at 7pm in the

Chapel. Again, this is not

just for people on the trip

(though, you might get a

little jealous watching

them). Please come and

From the Pastor’s Desk

Sunday Worship Schedule

9:00am Contemporary Service

11:00am Traditional Service

Pastor: Rev. Al Sandalow

Children’s Ministries Director:

Cheryl Smith

Youth Director: Chris Hagan

Session Members and Deacons 2

Youth News 3

Mother-Daughter Banquet /Prayer Chain 4

ECO Offering/ MAG 5

Children’s Ministries / Quilters News 6

Calendar 7

Inside this issue:

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Volume 9 Issue 5

May, 2018

“The need is still

enormous and the

refugees are still

streaming out of Syria.”

Page 2

Current Session Members & Ministry Responsibilities/Deacons

E LLENSBURG

Judy Wright— Congregational Life*

Judi Anderson — Children’s Ed*

Roger Glaser—Nominating*

Gregg Hall—Properties*

John Harbaugh — Worship and Music

Dan Hiersche — Worship and Music

Rick Holmstrom—Properties

Camille Hutchison -Cong Life/Sm Grps

Mary Kraft — Missions

John MacRae — Stewardship/Personnel

Alice McMechan—Missions*

Chuck Norelius — Shepherding

Lyle Smith — Youth

Wayne Smith — Small Grps

Ginny Sorenson—Worship and Music*

DEACONS

Marilyn Charlton Julie Cutts

Clara Davis Susan Hanson

Julile Hiersche Shirley Hood

Clay McMechan Steve Noyes

Gordon Pross Mary Seth

Janett Walker Fritz Wichterman

The office of deacon as set forth in

Scripture is one of sympathy, witness,

and service after the example of Jesus

Christ. It is the duty of deacons, first of

all, to minister to those who are in need,

to the sick, to the friendless, and to any

who may be in distress both within and

beyond the community of faith.

ELDERS

Our church secretary is going to be on vacation May 7-11 and we need some one, or more, to be in the office.

General receptionist duties are typical: answering the phone, greeting anyone who comes in the office, some-

times using the copier, and the “dreaded” chore of doing up the bulletin and printing it. There will be help

available for that.

Can you help? Please sign up below and turn it in to the office, or call the church office by May 3 and let the

secretary know of your availability.

Monday, May 7 ____ Tuesday, May 8 _____

Wednesday, May 9 _____ Thursday, May 10 _____

(The day the bulletin is done up) (The day the bulletin is printed)

Friday, May 11 _____

(The day the bulletin is assembled)

NAME ____________________________________ PHONE ____________________

Remember that office hours are 8am through 3pm with an hour lunch, Monday through Thursday,

Help needed in the church office

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 5 Page 3

Keeping Up With Our Chris Hagan

Rock: Our small groups have be-

gun a two-part series titled "Love

God; Love Others." We spent this

first lesson talking about loving

others. Some junior high students

may grasp the idea of loving others

more easily than the idea of loving

God, so we felt it was best to build

a solid foundation on this topic be-

fore discussing our love for God.

The two topics, of course, are inex-

tricably linked, and both discus-

sions are vital for healthy faith.

We examined the parable of the

Good Samaritan in Luke 10. The

story's hero was "a despised Sa-

maritan" who treats the man's

wounds and spends his own money

to provide lodging at a nearby inn.

Jesus wants us to love everyone,

not just the people who are easy to

love or who are just like us. Love

for others is demonstrated through

our actions.

Here are some questions you might

want to ask your teenager as you

talk about this lesson:

Why do you think God wants

us to love other people? Why

does it matter to God?

If you truly love your neigh-

bors, what evidence will peo-

ple see in your life?

Why do you think God con-

nects or links our love for oth-

er people and our love for our-

selves?

Thanks for allowing us to spend

time with your teenager each

week. It's a real joy!

BASIC: Our high school group

will be studying the book of Eccle-

siastes. One of the most prevalent

worldviews that our students face

is the claim that life is essentially

meaningless. This can lead to de-

pression, anxiety, and other exis-

tential and psychological ills. We

can find comfort knowing that

these feelings are not unique to our

time - the author of Ecclesiastes

also faced this sense of meaning-

lessness and gave voice to his frus-

tration and pain. We’ll read

through the book and see how rele-

vant this book is for our time and

how we find meaning and purpose

for our lives by knowing and serv-

ing God while still acknowledging

that pain we may encounter.

Youth Sunday/Senior Recogni-

tion Sunday: Sunday, June 3, will

be our Youth Sunday service. It’s a

time where our students, both high

school and middle school students,

will have the opportunity to lead

our worship services! Additionally,

between services on June 3, we’ll

recognize and celebrate our gradu-

ating seniors! We’ll present them

with Bibles and quilts and hear a

little about their plans for after

high school. We hope you’ll join

us for worship and celebrate with

us between services!

Orcas Island Encampment: Sev-

en of our high school students

(Jack Taylor, Katie Pruis, Meghan

Wichterman, Kiadyn Whitney, Ella

Hughes, Jacqueline Whorley, and

Elizabeth Adams) will be partici-

pating in the Orcas Island Encamp-

ment this year. Together with men-

tor teams and adult leaders from

First Presbyterian Church of

Kennewick and Grace of Christ

Presbyterian Church in Yakima

we’ll be mentoring 42 K-2 grade

boys from the Tri-Cities and Ya-

kima. After the week-long en-

campment, the boys will graduate

to becoming Trailseekers, a weekly

program in Yakima and

Kennewick that helps the boys

grow in their faith and in fellow-

ship with their faith communities.

The boys are selected if they fit

any one of three criteria: 1) they

come from low income families, 2)

they come from non-traditional

families (living with grandparents/

single parent), or 3) they have a

family member in a gang or insti-

tutionalized. Please be praying for

all our mission team, the boys, and

our students especially that every-

one would experience the love of

God and grow in their relationship

with him.

Summer Camp: Our middle

school youth group will be attend-

ing Adventure Camp at Tall Tim-

ber Ranch near Leavenworth this

Summer from Sunday, July 1 to

Friday, July 6. Go to

www.talltimber.org to sign up!

Page 4 E LLENSBURG

Mother/Daughter Banquet

Prayer Chain

Those Crafty Women are already looking forward to this year’s Ba- zaar. With that in mind, as you put

“Blessings of Spring”

Menu:

Chicken Breast, Rice Pilaf, Salad and Roll

Strawberry Shortcake

Donation: Adults $7 Children $5

There will be a quilt raffle, buy your tickets

Men, there is a sign-up sheet by the kitchen bulletin board to enlist your help serving and washing the dishes.

We are updating our Prayer Chain. Some of our pray-ers have moved or passed on and we want to keep this

prayer chain a vital service to our church people and our Lord.

The way it works is this: when you have a prayer you can call the office during the day or after 5pm, you may

call Stephanie Mills at home. The prayer is then passed on and shortly we have a continuous chain of people

praying for your concern.

If you would like to be a part of this ministry, please sign this form below and bring it or mail it to the church

office.

Next month we will publish the new Prayer Chain list in the Presbyterian Press.

We thank you for your willingness to be a prayer warrior.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

___________________________________________________ _________________________________

NAME PHONE

I preferred to be called during (please check one)

____ ____ ____

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 5 Page 5

TO START

A PRAYER REQUEST

If you have a prayer request during

the week, you may call the office

from 8:00am to 3:00pm, 925-

3149. For evening

and weekend re-

quests, call Steph-

anie Mills at 925-

1961.

Prayers for

our Military

Remember our

young men and

women in the

Military service

and ROTC:

Troy Smith, Bob

Mykleby, Andy Stedman, Andrew

McKenzie, Will McKenzie, Joe

Thomas, Tony Miles, Drew Kast-

ning, Erik Holmstrom, Jen

Holmstrom, Dave Moser, Jason

Lorraine, Brandon Taylor, Patrick

Hampton, Andrew J. Potter, Mark

Thacker, Brad Miller, Jack Barry,

Colton Carson, Shane Bowers…

Prayer Concerns and Requests

May 6 Offering for ECO

On Sunday, May 6, our church will

have a special offering for our own

ECO Relief Fund. This special of-

fering will provide life changing

funds as we share to bring people

to Christ, help people change their

lives and respond to disasters. This

year our funds will go to World

Vision for Syrian refugee relief, the

Ellensburg Christian School for

scholarships and CareNet. We are a

congregation full of compassion

and prepared to surrender our re-

sources and our time for those cry-

ing out for help. Just as Christ sac-

rificed for us, we are willing to sac-

rifice for our sisters and brothers in

need. Please pray about how you

can financially contribute to this

special offering. We invite you to

make your donation in the enclosed

envelope and join together as the

body of Christ to tangibly share the

love of God.

MAG Meeting

On March 17, six elders from our

church traveled to Naches to attend

a Mission Affinity Group (MAG)

meeting. In attendance were three

other churches: Roslyn Presbyterian

Church, Peace of Christ of Naches

and Grace of Christ of Yakima. The

purpose of the meeting was to share

what God is doing in our churches.

We also want to provide a basis for

congregations to encourage and

hold one another accountable to be

flourishing churches that make dis-

ciples of Jesus Christ. We shared

the challenges of our church and

our successes. We prayed for each

other and our churches. While we

all have different situations because

of the size of our churches, we all

share the desire to bring glory to

God through the work or our

churches to make disciples of Jesus

Christ. This second MAG meeting

was so positive, we decided to meet

in six months rather than 12! We

are looking forward to meeting on

September 22 in Ellensburg, to con-

tinue strengthening our relation-

ships and encouraging each other in

Kingdom work in our communities.

Page 6 E LLENSBURG

items soon for those of you who

can help with that and of course we

can always use volunteers for the

many positions that make it all

come together. Our theme this year

is “Shipwrecked… Rescued by Je-

sus.” It is going to be packed full of

fun, music, games and snacks for

the kids to learn how Jesus recues

us when we are lonely, when we

worry, when we struggle, when we

do wrong and when we are power-

less.

and study our caterpillars and

watch them transform into beauti-

ful butterflies that we can release

outside.

The other exciting thing is spread

out all over my office! We are

gearing up for VBS and collecting

supplies and decorations and I am

working hard to make sure nothing

is forgotten! Mark your calendars

for July 9-13. Registration is up

and running with a link on our

website. I will have a list of needed

A couple of exciting things happen-

ing down the hall in the kid’s area!

Last week we received a cup of cat-

erpillars in the mail for the kids to

study. The cup comes with a special

food inside that will be all the cater-

pillars will need to eat and grow and

eventually climb to the top and cre-

ate a chrysalis. We are learning it is

just like God providing us with eve-

rything we need (Mathew 7:31-33).

The next few weeks we will read

Luke 12:24 and 2 Corinthians 5:17

This Christmas season, our church is adopting eight families for Christmas through the local Christmas Basket

program. We share all the food for a traditional Christmas dinner and gifts for all the family. Our giving tree is

loaded with tags – opportunities to share love – listing food items, gifts or money donations for the meat.

What better way to honor Christ this holiday season and reach out to those for whom he came to die?

We invite you to take the tags from the Giving Tree at the church. All gifts of food and wrapped presents are

due back to the church by Sunday, December 10. Please return money gifts to Stephanie in the

church office.

On Tuesday, December 12 at 5:00 p.m., we will gather to assemble our Christmas Baskets for our adopted

families. This is a great activity for family participation as we sort the food and pack the boxes. We invite you

to join us for this evening of sharing and fellowship.

_________________________________________________

I will help assemble baskets on December 12

the hands of someone who needs

the comfort and warmth that the

quilt can bring through the “life of

that quilt.”

I chose the words “life of that quilt”

carefully, because sometimes the

quilt outlasts the life of the recipi-

ent. I recently sat at a Celebration

of Life for my Aunt Mickey

(Thayer) and as the family spoke, I

was able to gaze at a quilt that was

hanging on the wall, one that was

lovingly made by her daughter Su-

san. This quilt had been covering

Aunt Mickey’s bed for the last few

years. I wanted to go up and bury

my face in that quilt to capture the

smell that was Mickey. I am sure

Where do our quilts go?

I often share about the organiza-

tions that we make quilts for: Fos-

ter Children of Kittitas Valley, Sun-

shine House in Ukraine and The

Bridge in Seattle. We also give to

people who are ill or maybe lost

everything in a home fire. Every

spring we make quilts for our high

school graduates and for various

raffles in our valley that take place

throughout the year.

But, where do those quilts go when

the initial recipient no longer

needs/wants/uses that quilt? I like

to think that God continues to di-

rect our lovingly made quilts into

that this quilt will remain with her

children for a very long time. How-

ever, sometimes the family doesn’t

want those quilts.

I have heard stories about some of

our quilts, complete with labels,

ending up at Goodwill. We are okay

with that. For whatever reason, the

recipient no longer has a need for

that quilt. My hope is this, that if

you happen to be the one who spots

one of our quilts (labeled with Tabi-

tha’s Peaceful Piecemakers”) for

sale somewhere, that you just say a

little prayer over that quilt and we

will let God take it from there.

Please join us for quilting every

Quilters News by Dawn Helland

Children’s Ministry by Cheryl Smith

I was caught in the most amazing

storm this past week as blessings

rained down on the backpack pro-

gram. I walked into church on Sun-

day, and watched several people

dropping sacks of food into the

backpack donation box. Another

congregation member handed me a

much treasured box of protein bars.

Stephanie called to tell me there

were large boxes from Amazon

from an anonymous donor. I was

eating in a restaurant in Yakima

and saw some folks from our con-

gregation. They were on their way

to Costco and wondered what we

needed for our weekend food bags.

Thursdays we meet to fill and de-

liver the sacks to the

schools. Again,

Blessings by Mary Kraft

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 5 Page 7

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

1

9:30am Craft Group

2

6pm Mother/Daughter Banquet 6:30pm Rock

3

4

5

6

6:30pm B.A.S.I.C.

7

8:30am Prayer for EPC 5:30pm Deacons 5:30pm Women’s B. Sty

8

9:30am Craft Group

9

3pm Tabitha’s Quilters 6:30pm Rock

10

11

12

13

6:30pm B.A.S.I.C.

14 8:30am Prayer for EPC 5:30pm Women’s B. Sty 6:30pm Session prayer 7:30pm Session

15

9:30am Craft Group

16

3pm Tabitha’s Quilters 6:30pm Rock

17

18

19

20

6:30pm B.A.S.I.C.

21 8:30am Prayer for EPC 7pm Ministries Night

22

9:30am Craft Group

23

3pm Tabitha’s Quilters 6:30pm Rock

24

25

26

27

6:30pm B.A.S.I.C.

28

MEMORIAL DAY OFFICE CLOSED

29

9:30am Craft Group

30

3pm Tabitha’s Quilters 6:30pm Rock

31

Each Sunday

9:00am Worship (Nursery, Infants– 4yrs)

Sunday School after Children’s Sermon (K- 5th)

11:00am Worship (Nursery, Infants– 4yrs)

Communion

Noon Press Articles Due

May 2, 6pm

Mother/Daughter

Banquet

Upcoming Events

We’re on the web

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Organization

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Ellensburg, WA

Permit #123

1307 East Third

Ellensburg, WA 98926

MON THL Y NEW SLET TER F ROM

ELLEN SBURG P RESBYT ER IAN CHURCH

Phone: 509 925-3149

E-mail: firstpresbyterian@elltel.net

RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED

Ellensburg Pres Press

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May 18, 2018

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