Once we were no people, but now we are God s people. A Word From Our Coordinator. A Community of Disciples on Mission!

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1 Volume 1, Issue 1 February 2016 A Community of Disciples on Mission! Volume 1, Issue 1 February 2016 Once we were no people, but now we are God s people A Word From Our Coordinator I Kings 8: There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the Israelites after they came out of Egypt. 10 When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. 11 And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple. 12 Then Solomon said, The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud. immanent, closer to us And yet He is beyond all. Our hearts are the Holy Spirit, the Father manner far surpassing how tained only the Command- Holy Spirit has written hearts. Our Heavenly Father is than we are to ourselves. transcendent, above and the temple where, through and Son dwell in us. In a the Ark of the Covenant conments, the Ten Words, the God s Law of Love on our And yet the Lord has said He would dwell in a dark cloud, and sometimes we ex- perience the impenetrability of that. Sometimes we long to see through that cloud but do not. It is right that we long to see to the heart of that cloud, and we do so in- sofar as we can, by faith and by faithfulness. We also peer through the dark cloud by looking into the face of our brother or sister "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.' (Mt. 25:40). Pillar of cloud by day, or pillar of fire by night, we are privileged to have a share in the Mystery of our God. As we love, serve and worship Him, may we too be overwhelmed by His glory as He dwells in a dark cloud. May we worship before Him Who dwells in unapproachable light (I Tim. 6:16). Milo Milburn

2 Update from the Senior Women Always at the start of the year we start seriously planning for the upcoming Women s Retreat. Our theme for this year s retreat (scheduled for April 15th-17th) is RENEWED DAY BY DAY and was inspired by Mary Doyle, our retreat director for the first time. Our time on the mountain is a powerful and beautiful weekend of hearing the Lord together and strengthening our sisterhood. Let s pray for each other; for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our retreat and the grace to hear the Lord as we prepare. Page 2 Some other things on our agenda: Women s breakfast March 5th, 9:00am, Embassy Suites, Moon Township, Speaker: Helene Paharik Cleaning of the Office: 4 times/year Rotation Upcoming Women s Leaders Meeting: March 12 Service Opportunities for POG women Senior woman input: Youth bridge Next Pastoral topic : Living in the Light North/Butler District Christmas Party The annual North Butler district Christmas Party was a rousing good time! We began our time together with singing worship Christmas tunes (O Holy Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem) then switched into party mode with some more silly Christmas tunes! A few of us reminisced about why particular Christmas songs hold a by: Angela Gross special place in our hearts and of how songs spark special memories of Christmas past! As always, there was no shortage of delicious food in our buffet line! We feasted until we were all full and then shifted gears into our entertainment portion. Joe Doyle never disappoints in his terrible jokes and was even assisted by Maddie Gross in hilariously bad jokes this year! The Pepmeyer boys + Mark McIntyre were fantastic in a mimeesque bit, Annie Doyle shared a short story West District Christmas Party by: Jim & Chris Hilts The west district Christmas party was held at the Methodist church in Coraopolis with most of the brothers and sisters attending. Ken and Sharon Dorman were in charge and had plenty of help from the brothers and sisters. John and Mary Alice Farren provided the music. The sisters provided a wonderful buffet meal, which had a number of delicious dishes. The tables were beautifully decorated for Christmas and Santa Marge brought little toys, puzzles and treats for the kids. Ken gave us a brief exhortation about the love of Christ and John led us in singing Christmas carols. The majority of the afternoon was spent in joyful fellowship. on the truth behind Grandmas Got Run Over by a Reindeer and Noah Pepmeyer thrilled us all with an a cappella rendition of White Christmas! Overall, the North Butler Christmas party is one of my favorite holiday parties. The kids are running around having a blast and the adults enjoy catching up. What a blessing to be able to share the time together!

3 South District Christmas Party The south district Christmas party was a beautiful time of food, fellowship, prayer and pageantry. It was held at Mt. Lebanon Evangelical Presbyterian Church, for the first UCO Update by: Katie Grella time! We were blessed to have Pat Smith s pastor join us for the event, as well as several other guests. We began with the opening of the closing of the Lord s Day prayer followed by a festive fiesta dinner everything from chicken mole to rice pudding! Following dinner we had a time of praise and worship. Tim Nath gave a short Advent sharing. We sang O Come, O Come Emmanuel (all 7 verses!) as well as many other favorite carols & hymns. The children presented a short pageant of Scripture, vignettes & song; we were all touched by their sweet performance. The time spent was encouraging for us as we continued to prepare our hearts for Christmas. by: Ben Wulpi UCO has started off the second semester of the school year strong! We had a truly excellent regional Winter Retreat called "Into the Deep", where we joined with all of the other UCO chapters around North America to explore God's great invitation for us. Many of our students who went had a really profound and fun time, especially those who had never been to any regional events before who got to see the bigger picture of what UCO actually is. On top of that, halfway through January, we started a Life in the Spirit seminar, and really laid out the challenge for our students to be Jesus to their friends and invite them. And they came through! We've had several new people come to the sessions, hear the Gospel, and build relationships with people in our community. Our prayer session for that seminar is February 18th, so we pray that the Lord will work powerfully through that. Through all of this we have seen God working in great ways through our UCO community life. Friendships have been built and strengthened, lots of fun has been had, and we are learning more and more what it means to be a community of disciples on mission. Page 3

4 High School Youth Group Update This 2015/2016 season of youth group has been an absolute blessing so far. Friendships are flourishing, worship times are overflowing with zeal for the Lord, the talks are powerful, and our snack game has been out of this world (definitely an important fact when you feed a lot of high school students). Our Spring semester has been focused on the book of Matthew, chapters 5-7. We're hoping these talks lead us right into the YES (Youth Equipped to Stand) Retreat in April with grace. The YES Retreat is the high school aged retreat that takes place for a weekend in the Spring semester every year, and is our best attended event! by: Katie Dorman We cannot wait to see where the Lord takes us in our semester, and to see the work He has in store for our hearts on the YES Retreat this year! Please pray for us as we prepare for this retreat and as we make our way through the rest of this semester! We look forward to everything else that the Lord has in store for us in Koinonia Update This past September, Koinonia experienced growth in numbers for our men's and women's groups. We currently have two men's and two women's groups that are meeting twice a month. We gather as a group at a Koinonia member's home (Betancourts, Porterfields or Nath Jr.) and spend time praising the Lord before we meet in our respective groups. Gathering together as a large group has also allowed us to renew and pray with one another regarding our commitment levels. Following small groups, we have a time of fellowship. In addition, we have monthly Lord's Day dinners together, along with our families and guests. Several of our members are also attending the foundation courses. As a group we are focusing on growing in the Fruits of the Holy by: Chris Grella Spirit. Each month we focus on a different fruit: A member of Koinonia delivers an exhortation and then discussion takes place in small groups. We are open to having guests join us, both in our Lord's Day dinners Go to all the nations. Please pray for the young men and women of our community who are serving the SOS around the world. Sandy Cahalan Rachel Pepmeyer Bruce Dorman

5 Rejoice with me! So many good and wonderful reasons to rejoice with one another - here are just a few: New members of POG: Zachary Grella (born October 14, 2015) & Samuel Wulpi (born October 20, 2015) Steve and Tressa (Dorman) Denninger were united in marriage on January 16, 2016 Jack Noah received the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic Church on February 7, 2016 We continue to pray for our families who have recently lost loved ones: Jim & Sandy DiCostanzo - Jim s brother, Andy Jim & Chris Hilts - Chris brother, Mike Steve & Michele Pepmeyer - Michele s mom, Cathy Pat & Pam Smith - Pam s mom, Mary So why the newsletter? When I was in UCO at Pitt and coming to community gatherings, I remember so clearly how flabbergasted I was when people would ask me so what s going on (or) how are things in UCO? Being that I hadn t grown up in the community, I had a hard time understanding how people didn t know the amazing things that were happening in the center of my universe! I remember thinking to myself, Isn t UCO sponsored by the POG? Why wouldn t you know what s going on?!?! Well fast forward almost 18 years: I m married, have 4 kids, am a publicly committed member of the POG and half the time I have no idea what s going on in UCO, or Youth Group; and staff members of both are in my small group! It s so easy to become consumed with what s in front of us that we fail to remember that we are part of an intricately designed and beautifully-working Body. My hope in re-launching the POG newsletter is two-fold. One: I hope that through this (which my goal is to publish 3 times a year), we as a community will be better informed and more able to support one another in our efforts to grow and live in the Kingdom of God here on by: Katie Grella earth. Two: I pray that we can use the newsletter in evangelistic ways. In the past I have given members of my own extended family copies of the SOS newsletters, so that they can better appreciate to what Chris and I have committed our lives. If we all printed a copy of this and kept it in our purse, briefcase, diaper bag etc. we could be better prepared to share with others around us the incredible gift of community. I am going to apologize here and now; I m certain I will forget someone s good news, I will fail to include a prayer request or put in too many pictures of my kids. Please forgive me, it is not now nor will it ever be intentional. To that end - you can help! If you have something (a photo, good news to share, prayer request), it to me and I ll include it if I can. The goal is to have a newsletter in January, May and October. I hope that you enjoy this (and all of the pictures Paul takes that we never get to see!). Thank you Connie Maletta for all the years you did this work! And thank you, POG, in advance for your help!

6 Our 42nd Birthday Celebration!

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8 Upcoming Events Sunday, February 21st - General Community Gathering 3:30 (Publicly Committed Members meeting 2:30pm), Hiland Presbyterian Social Hall, Ross Township Saturday, February 27th - Men of Purpose Breakfast, 8:00am, Embassy Suites, Moon Township Saturday, March 5th - Women s Breakfast, 9:00am, Embassy Suites, Moon Township Sunday, March 6th - General Community Gathering, 3:00pm, Coraopolis United Methodist Church Tuesday, March 15th - Community Forum (Topic: The Dangers of Pornography), 7:30pm, Coraopolis United Methodist Church Sunday, March 20th - General Community Gathering, 3:00pm Hiland Presbyterian Social Hall, Ross Township Friday, April 1st-Sunday April 3rd - YES Retreat (High School students) Friday, April 15th-Sunday, April 17th - Women s Retreat (open to women high school age and older) Friday, June 3rd-Sunday, June 5th - Community Retreat People of God Community Covenant Community in Pittsburgh since Ridge Avenue Coraopolis, PA Phone Fax #51 pogoffice@pogpgh.org A member community of the Sword of the Spirit A community of disciples on mission Like us on Facebook