URC Weekly 11/14/10: Pilgrims and Indians
Hi Family,
I looked up the first Thanksgiving, fully expecting the story to be a fairy tale that never happened, with the real story involving betrayal and massacre, but it the traditional story really took place! (Cue URC History Channel…) The traditional first Thanksgiving meal was in 1621 @ Plymouth, when 53 pilgrims and 90 Native Americans feasted for three days. Squanto taught the pilgrims how to grow corn and catch eel, and Massasoit opened food stores to help the under-supplied pilgrims survive their first brutal winter in New England. At the feast, they ate turkey, pumpkin, berries and squash, but they also had venison, fish, lobster and clams!
This weekend, like in 1621, we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving with groups from a different culture (KM Young Adults, as well as the entire mother church). As the natives of this country, with maybe more resources than others, let’s take the role of the Native Americans and bless our “pilgrim” brothers and sisters from other ministries…
1) THANKSGIVING DINNER WITH KM YOUNG ADULTS: THIS SATURDAY @ 11 AM @ CHURCH (DINNER @ 6 PM). Our Korean counterparts at church, the KM Young Adults, have had a hard year, struggling through discouragement and Rev. Ahn leaving at the end of this month. We’ll cook and serve them our patented AYCE Thanksgiving feast, the KM will prep some fun games, and we might go bowling afterward. HYONROH/SAM will contact you this week about your responsibilities, so let’s do this!!!
2) JOINT THANKSGIVING WORSHIP: THIS SUNDAY @ 10:45 AM @ KM SANCTUARY (across the street). We only gather twice a year for a full joint worship, @ Thanksgiving and Easter. Please come early, with hearts of gratitude and worship, and I ask for your prayers, as I’ll be preaching. Thanksgiving lunch feast afterward.
3) CG: THIS FRIDAY @ TAE/SARA’S @ 7 PM. It’s a full-on weekend of the Family and feasting. We’ll study God’s missionary heart, cook/eat anything but turkey, and have a historic pool tournament #10,000.
4) 2010 WINTER RETREAT: 12/19-21 (Sun-Tue). Save the dates, and try to plan ahead for school/work to join us for what I believe will be our greatest retreat ever.
5) CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER: TAE KIM
6) DEVOTIONS: Hosea 1-6. The prophet Hosea marries a prostitute named Gomer as a symbol of God’s relationship with an adulterous Israel, who worships Canaanite idols. What are the ways in which we leave God to pursue other lovers? With whom or what? Some convicting statements in the first six chapters:
Chapter 1: 2 When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the LORD.” 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Chapter 2: 13 …she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,” declares the LORD.
Chapter 4: 7 …they exchanged[c] their[d] Glory for something disgraceful.
10 “They will eat but not have enough;
they will engage in prostitution but not increase,
because they have deserted the LORD
to give themselves 11 to prostitution;
12 …They consult a wooden idol
and are answered by a stick of wood.
Let’s be wholly faithful to our God, and with hearts filled with thanksgiving, gather this weekend for a time of Family…
