Greetings from Africa!
I'm sitting under a tree in Malawi, burnt to a crisp (I forgot to bring sunscreen and you can't buy it in rural Malawi!), writing this e-note. This has been an amazing week, as we've travelled throughout Malawi seeing first-hand how Church of the Resurrection is helping to change lives and transform communities through our partnerships with the Malawi United Methodist Church and with Zoe Ministries! I was speechless at several points this week (this does not happen often to me!) as I heard the stories of what is happening here. I personally met 300 to 400 of the 40,000+ people whose lives have been affected by our partnership and investment in Malawi. This is no exaggeration - it is really staggering. I can't wait to take you all to Malawi this weekend! I've posted a few pictures on Facebook today - check them out at Pastor Adam Hamilton.
This weekend my sermon will come to you from Malawi. This is one of the least developed countries in the world and most of you will never visit here, but this weekend I'll take you there in the sermon we've been recording throughout the week. Don't miss this!
In conjunction with this weekend's sermon we're organizing an effort to pack 10,000 care kits on Saturday, February 14. These kits will be distributed worldwide through Heart to Heart, after a natural disaster or in areas of widespread illness including the Ebola epidemic in east Africa. We'll work in 2-hour shifts to pack these kits - anyone including children over 5 can help with this project. We also have a number of other cool opportunities coming up on that day that I think you'll be interested in. For more information on all that's going on or to sign up for a shift for packing the health kits, click here.
Thank you to everyone who donated to our annual Souper Bowl Food Drive. Your generosity this year was incredible - so incredible that our Hunger Ministry volunteers have been working all week to unpack bags, sort and box the donations, and they are not done yet! Significantly more food came in this year from all of our campuses, and the Hunger Ministry will need another week to give an accurate total of what was received. Your generosity will ensure that thousands of individuals and families in our community will have the food they need this winter. Thank you!
I'm excited to announce that Courtney Felzke has been named the new Director of the Silver Link Ministry. To give you a little background, Courtney is in her last semester of seminary at Saint Paul, and will be graduating with a Masters of Divinity in May. She worked at Sweet Life at Brookdale Place, a senior living and assisted living center for two years, serving in the activities department and then the admissions/marketing office. She left Sweet Life in 2012 to enter Seminary and follow her call to ministry. During her first year of seminary she had the opportunity to serve as a Resurrection Scholar and was able to work alongside Pastor Karla Woodard and the Silver Link team for a year. During her second year of seminary she served as the Director of Student Ministries at Monticello UMC and during her third and final year of seminary she has served as a Pastoral Intern with Pastor Cheryl Bell and is now stepping into this new role. We are excited to have Courtney join our staff as the director of this very vital ministry at Church of the Resurrection. Welcome, Courtney!
Last weekend we had a small token of appreciation for those who had 90-100% attendance for 2014. Thank you to those who picked up their mugs. If your name appeared in my eNote on January 9 or January 16 for having 90-100% attendance for 2014 and you have not yet picked up your mug, you can do so this weekend at the Connection Point in Building B, before or after worship. Thank you for your faithful commitment to be in worship!Tuesday, February 10 will be an historic night for Resurrection West. We'll hold an All-Church Conference from 7-8:15 pm at Resurrection West. Mike Chamberlain, our District Superintendent for the United Methodist Church, will lead the conference as they present the latest plans for building expansion, share in discussion and vote to move forward. Childcare is available with registration at rezwest.org/churchconferencewest. All Resurrection West congregants are encouraged to attend and all Resurrection members of any campus are welcome.
This week Saint Paul School of Theology announced four full-ride scholarships to seminary students commencing study in the fall of 2015. The awards will be granted to two students in the Fellows program at each Saint Paul campus (Leawood and Oklahoma City) and will cover tuition, books and fees for three years. Through the three-year Fellows program at Resurrection, students will serve on our team, learning from our lead staff and exploring nearly every dimension of Resurrection's ministry. They will graduate with experiences and tools few seminary students have when beginning their full-time ministry. The application deadline for prospective students interested in the Saint Paul Fellows at Church of the Resurrection or the Saint Paul Fellows at Oklahoma City University-Oklahoma Conference is March 15, 2015. A total of eight finalists will be invited for on-site interviews in March, and Saint Paul will announce scholarship recipients on April 15, 2015. If you know someone who might be interested, please share this website with them: www.spst.edu/fellows.
We still have a few spots open for the trip I am leading to England this summer, retracing the life of John Wesley and the emergence of Methodism. The dates are July 25 to August 2 and the cost is $4,098 per person based upon double occupancy. This is a unique and pretty amazing trip. We'll retrace Wesley's life - if you love history or Methodism you'll love this. We'll also enjoy great times of fellowship and a free evening, and a free day in London. This is the trip I took in the summer of 2013 that resulted in my book, Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It. We'll have 100 people on the trip including several of our pastors and staff. Here's the website where you can read more about the trip. If you are interested in joining us please email Sue Thompson at sue.thompson@cor.org. For those of you pastors who receive my e-note, if we've got space left after Resurrection members sign up today, we'd love to have you join us.
Thanks for your prayers! I look forward to being with you from Malawi this weekend in worship!
Adam
The Church of the Resurrection
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, Kansas 66224 United States
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