From the Pastors Desk - January 07, 2022
The Advent dinner and program were amazing. It was so nice to be able to gather as a church family once again and enjoy the evening together! Special thanks go out to Sherry Robinson for the wonderful food and to everyone else for the equally wonderful desserts. Thanks also to Dee Kreisher, Lorelei Lopick, Terry Robinson, and anyone else I have failed to mention, for set up and clean up. Thank you as well to TJ the DJ for hooking up the sound system to play holiday music throughout dinner and creating a festive ambiance. Then, of course, there was Ed’s excellent and very interesting program about the history behind some of our more famous Christmas hymns. What a great, and very well attended, evening!
The week after the dinner I spent thinking about other things we could do as a congregation… perhaps a spring dinner. What could we do to invite the community? How about a car show? About the time I started thinking in terms of group get-togethers, the newspaper headlines exploded with overcrowded hospitals and the new omicron variant which hasn’t even begun to spread here. Sigh!!!! All I want is the chance to get back to normal… to normal living again!
At this point in time, we can take things as they come and plan accordingly. The car show, though, is an idea that continues to stick in my mind. It is an event that we can invite the community to, and it will take place outside! We have a large parking lot, and now is the time to do this since it hasn’t been resurfaced yet. I am thinking if we did this in May, perhaps the weekend before Memorial Day, that would give us enough time to plan. What I would need is a small group of people to head this up and run with it.
Please do some soul searching, and if you are someone who likes cars, or likes to organize events, please let me know. We can easily form a group to make this happen! My son is also planning to create an Instagram account for the church so it can be advertised on there as well.
We will also have a booth this year at the North Canton Main Street Festival in August. Thanks to Ginny Watkins for thinking of this. Thanks also to Lester Davenport for allowing us to use his coin toss game for this. Lester sets up all kinds of really nice dishes and glassware he buys inexpensively at auctions. The person playing throws a coin into the dish he/she wants and if the coin makes it into the dish they win the dish. The money we collect will be sent to a yet to be determined charity. I am so excited about this, as it gives us a community presence in a different and fun sort of way!
So here we are planning for 2022. I would love for it to be normal, but I’m not certain normal will return for a while. All we can do is make the best of it and plan around the pandemic. I think it’s time for Good Shepherd to go back out into the community and show people what a wonderful church we have.
Happy New Year! Stay safe and be at peace!
Faithfully,
Lei Fahrner
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