3380 Lonsdale Ave. North Vancouver V7N 3K2 604 985-4911 www.nluc.org office@nluc.org

Fall 2017 Newsletter

North Lonsdale United Church

The Mohamad family whom we have sponsored had their first Canadian Thanksgiving experience this Fall. Some of the things that they named as being grateful for:

“A Peaceful place to live”, “Our Church Sponsors”, “To be alive!”, “Canada is a very nice place with

great nature”,” I thank my God for the church, our sponsors and Cana-da”, “I am thankful for new life in Canada”, “I am thankful for the church for bringing my family to

Canada”.

We are so thankful to God for bringing this wonderful family safely to settle in this wonderful country of ours.

We give Thanks

Members of the board have been active over the Summer and early Fall months. All the items referred to in our last Newsletter have been completed: repaving the parking lot, new doors on Duncan Hall, new windows in the kitchen and two new stoves.

The property team developed guidelines for our gardeners led by Svetlana Evans and Cecile Wright. They identified areas scheduled for upgrades, continued with regular maintenance, produced a budget and developed a reporting reporting structure. In the last month or so, the south bed from Lonsdale to the parking lot was upgraded. A wonderful group of about 21 people came to spread bark mulch over the remediated areas. We were rewarded after the hard work by being served soup, sandwiches and sweets – thank you to Ann McBride and Darlene Beattie.

Regular upgrades will continue to be made to the church to keep it in good repair and func-tioning as well as possible. Ventilation will be put into the door of the “carefree cupboard”. The freezers used by the pie team were moved to a more suitable spot, freeing up corridor space.

Our treasurer, Shirley Wolff, has continued to update our accounting processes. Lorri Gib-bard and Ron McKellar, the financial support team, continue to input data, make suggestions and generally help the process. “Helping Hands” in collaboration with local IT company ISSI are beginning in the next few weeks to work with Linda to automate our file storage.

A huge thank you to Adri Rautenbach and her team for another spectacular ‘knock—your socks— off ‘ transformation of the auditorium into an enchanted forest and our annual fund-raising evening. Stunning! The auction items were wonderful and of such variety. All who attended had a very special time and helped to raise some $23 000.

Thomas Rautenbach is championing our annual puzzle fund raiser. It is easy and offers all a chance to watch our “church” grow.

The pie team has made 420 large pies this year. We will be celebrating our pie-makers on November 5th.

Some events coming up include:

November 26th The Christmas Fare luncheon

December 3rd Annual Congregational Meeting after church. Light lunch will be served.

From the Board Submitted by Joan Simmons

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Part of our Thanksgiving response to God for all our Blessings . We were able to provide some 26 crates of foodstuff for the Harvest Project.

From Robin’s Prayer Diary

Oh God…

It’s with a very real sense of appreciation that I write this 2017 Thanksgiving Prayer.

Thank you for relentlessly reminding us – again and again - that we actually are all so deeply loved, that we are valuable…that we matter. Thank you for never allowing our failings or over-sights to have the last word. Thank you for believing in us even when we may at times find ourselves doubting almost everything about You. Thank You that our faith is not governed by anything that we do, but that it’s all by Your grace. Your most amazing grace.

Thank you for people who make such a difference in our lives. Thank you for calling people of passion into this community – calling them to walk closer to You as they go about living and working and playing among us. Thank you for when those people bless and please us - give us joy. Thank you too for when they stretch and annoy us, test us, disrupt our peace. Thank you that You are always busy in and through our lives and that, as we allow You to work Your blind-healing miracle on our faith-eyes, so we can even get to glimpse You.

Thank you that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our participation in that jour-ney, we can know that love always wins! We thank You for that even when, perhaps especially when, we cannot yet see it properly – as if through a glass darkly…(1 Cor.13:12 KJV)

Holy God, I lift this community of NLUC to You for Your blessing. Each family, each person… I lift our agendas up to You asking that You may bless our setting of priorities – You know how quickly we tend to get these all wrong by focussing on what matters least to You and letting what matters most slip by unnoticed or worse, ignored. Help us to see as You would have us see. Help us to feel as You would have us feel, that we may be motivated and moved and equipped by You to be and do what You would have us be and do.

Please forgive us when (not ‘if’ but when, because we know it’s going to happen) … we mess up. Please protect others from having to bear the brunt of our mistakes more than is helpful or necessary. Help us to be gracious as we do the same for them. You know our hearts Dear God and You know that messing up is never our first plan. Thank You that You understand… And may it be all according to Your will and to Your glory – nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

Kind of presumptuous I know, O God, but I’m bold to pray all these things anyway because I pray not in my own name but in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ, Lord, Saviour, Mentor, Guide, Friend.

Amen.

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Proud parents, Mike & Sandie Leask

The summer seemed to have come and gone in a blink of an eye. This summer was a lot of fun for the youth and preteens. The youth and preteen programs ran until the end of June when they were on break until September. Some highlights from the summer were Alex being bap-tized, seeing so many faces at camp, and all the ice cream that was consumed.

Since being back the preteens and youth have been ex-tremely busy. As a welcome back party, we had a preteen and youth movie night where we watched Nacho Libre. This night also contained a lot of junk food, so much that we had to play games after the movie to burn off the sug-ar and energy. We have also done a ‘Starbucks take over’ where the youth and preteens literally went into the Star-bucks and just took over! Everyone got to have drinks,

snacks and be in the community- it was awesome. Finally, we also helped run the Food Bank drive over Thanksgiving, which was super-successful! Thank you, everyone, for bringing in so many goodies!

Preteens:

The preteens have a lot of exciting things coming up in the near future. We are participating in our 3rd annual Operation Christ-mas Child Shoeboxes, so stay tuned for the fundraiser that the preteens choose to do every year. The preteens have also just finished a series called Thank Full, were we looked at different stories in the Old and New Testament of people who were ex-tremely thankful for what God did in their lives, and hopefully taught the kids that no matter circumstance we face always to be thankful for what God has given us. The kids also took part in the most intense day of competition in the spirit of the Halloween season, called ghoulish games! The games were intense and the competition was even more so.

The kids are about to dive into a Bible Study where we are going to look at one of the minor prophets Amos, before we start up the Christmas activities.

Youth:

Youth has officially started up meeting on a new day and at a new time. Youth now occurs on Monday Nights at 7. The first couple of weeks have been awesome! It’s been great to see new and old faces and get into the swing of things. The youth are currently in the middle of a series which is focusing on the Parables that Jesus taught throughout the different Gospels. I’m excited to see what is in store as we are going to continue to look at some of the important lessons in the Bible until Christmas when the Youth program really starts to get busy.

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Youth Ministry: Submitted by Morgan Spence

The Gardening Committee has had a busy season. Bur-Han came in the earlier part of the year to give us a hand with the NW corner of the garden. Later on we had Great Cana-dian Landscaping Co. lend us their expertise with the South side. They were also invaluable when it came to planting for Geoff Wilkins garden. Both companies’ professional input will be a big help going forward in the upkeep and weeding for years to come. Time spent in the gardens, shopping, talking to landscaping companies, emailing, planning etc….we were able to put in 80+ hours. Then there was Dave cutting down trees and shrubs. Richard trimming hedges. Bob cutting back what Hazel instructed him to do. The endless weeding by so many people…. Lost track. Our grand finale… the mulching party, followed by a wonderful lunch put on by Ann and Darlene. There are so many peo-ple to mention and thank. We cannot do it without you. Many hands make for light work.

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The Garden: Submitted by Svetlana Evans

Tools and gardening gloves have been put away for the season…. However, Spring is coming! There is talk of a Spring clean up before Easter! And then we start again. I will be stepping aside as the head of the committee as I find my time takes me more to the Island and Cecile and Cathy Wright have happily come forward to take over. It has been a wonderful journey in seeing the trans-formation on our church garden and especially meeting so many incredible people. (Many thanks to Svetlana for all that she and Richard –have done to make our garden beautiful—Ed)

September 13th marked the 6 months since landing for our Newcomer families, or to put it another way we are already ½ way through our sponsorships.

Schools returned last week and all of the children are now enthusiastically engaged in learning, play-ing catch up for lost years of education. Asma the eldest at 19 is now attending Coquitlam College on a full scholarship to re-sit her high school diploma, which could take up to 3 years to gain sufficient credits for university entrance. Lava will likely have to follow her there as she will get insufficient credits from only Grade 12. Mava and Yousif have moved school closer to home which allows mum Slama to attend English classes she is improving greatly, Badran makes good progress in his English.

We hope all of the other children will graduate from High School with their peers, but it will take hard work and perseverance to make up for 2+ years of lost schooling.

Parents are once more engaged in attending their own English classes and are slowly becoming more confident in speaking short simple sentences. As yet their English is inadequate for job searching or taking courses to help secure better paid work.

On Saturday 9th September a mini-bus was hired from West Vancouver Community and we picked up the Ali Fandi family (sponsored solely by West Vancouver United) then the Kawa Mohammad family and finally the Badran Mohamad family, despite one of the little girls feeling motion sick, the trip was a fun one to Fort Langley. The drizzly weather ensured that we had the place almost to ourselves and the children enjoyed the freedom to run around and play. Fort Langley has lots of display items but also many interactive things to play with and the boys enjoyed opening all of the hatches in the guard towers, watching the blacksmith make a hook in the fire, ‘trading’ their salmon and furs and cranber-ries for salt, flour and boots etc. They enjoyed feeding the sheep and goats, panning for gold, build-ing a new cabin and trying to make barrels in the cooperage.

New friendships were born as the children interacted and young Mohamad (Mohamad is both first and last name for Badran’s eldest son – his teachers call him “Mohamad squared”) and Alexander, son of John and Victoria Mendes of WVUC, two lovely young gentlemen reaching out to each other. We all enjoyed our packed lunches in the warmth and shelter of the café kindly arranged by Lea Borlick and the young first nations gentleman running the café was most hospitable to the party. A lovely day all round.

While budgets are reasonably healthy we did, at the outset decide that we wished to ensure that nei-ther family were burdened with the debt of their travel loans. Both family’s loans amount to $10,000 each. We still have several thousands of dollars to raise which was the reason behind the Celtic Music & Dance Event at Highlands Church on November 4th.

From a paperwork perspective, I have succeeded in getting Badran’s family onto the BC Housing Registry as they are deemed to be ‘overcrowded’ with the children all being older and the 4 girls squished into one bedroom. Rule of occupancy for BC are 2 children of one sex per bedroom, if the elder children are 19 or older. Asma is ap-proaching 20 and Lava nearly 19. We will have a long wait for a 4 bedroom low cost apartment for them as they are like gold dust!

We continue to pray for this family as they adapt to their new life in Canada. We are so grateful for all the support from our North Lonsdale United Church family.

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Update on our Newcomer Family Submitted by Ingeborg Brown

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Spotted by our camera...

...At the Enchanted evening

NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS 1st – Pat Baker 2nd – Jean Sidey, Karen Wille, 3rd – Dianne McKellar, Jill Guerin 4th – Sarah Nowland 5th – Claire Wolff 6th - Khim Goh, Paul Cowley 7th – Linda Jacobson 10th – Karen Millard 11th --- Kate Evans, Jurgens Bosman 17th – Tony Dawson 22nd – Amanda Aikenhead, Nancy Meers 23rd – Sheila Doyle / Eric Roundhill, Nicole Gossman. 26th—Sam Heraclides

OCTOBER BIRTHDAYS 1st—Lyndon Davies 3rd - Alex Olyait 4th – Bill Keen, Thomas Ter-blanche 6th – Cindy Stock, Fred Goss-man 7th – Anja Rautenbach 8th—Oliver Onukwube 10th – Dave Crawley Angelo Senoner 16th – Anne McBride 20th – Jill Elliott, Len Tye 21st—Garth Phillips 24th – Jean Wiebe, Ron Stein 26th – Erica Hardie, Barb Porter 28th – Tessa Ainge 29th—Daryl Dickson

Our Fall Birthdays DECEMBER BIRTHDAYS 2nd –Nathan Evetts, Valerie Belcher Reg Lightfoot 3rd—Emma de Jong 5th – Mariki Bosman 7th – Richard Stott, Chris Hall 12th – Verna Mossop, Winnifred Onukwube 13th – Clare Stedman 16th— Gladys Rantz 22nd—Holly Kilborn, Skyla Counihan 23rd Ron McKellar, Magdalena Terblanche 24th - Lynda Hutchenson 26th—Duane Scott 28th –Ted Stedman, Sue Ansell 31st – Darlene Grunder,

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Notice Board

Once again, my thanks to those members of the congregation who are helping to raise money for the support of our Syrian families by bringing and buying books.

I have had requests from 2 members of the congregation who would appreciate having LARGE PRINT books to read, since they can no longer cope with "normal" print.

Please continue to bring me soft covered novels in very good condition. If

you bring the books to me then I am able to thank you there and then. Remember, NO hard cover books, since I'm told they are too cumbersome for older people to hold.

If we do not have your birthday on the list—

please let us know.

BOOKS

We celebrate the marriage of Pat and Michelle McTaggart and pray God’s Blessing on them always.