St. Paul Lutheran Church

Transcription

1 November 2015 Newsletter St. Paul Lutheran Church From the Heart of Your Shepherd Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Luke 21:28 N4118 Cty Rd AB Luxemburg, WI Church Office: P: F: Mission Statement The mission of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran is to strengthen and support our members in their Christian faith through God s Word, the Sacraments, education, prayer and fellowship; thereby preparing them to be witnesses of the Gospel in our community and the world, so that all who believe shall receive the gift of eternal life. Ready or not I always remember when I was a kid and we would play hide and seek. The person who was counting to the agreed upon number was always expected to say, Ready or not here I come at the end of the counting. The problem with those words was that they really didn t provide any warning. There was no longer any time to react once you heard those words. You had either prepared or you didn t. Those words only announced what was going to happen at that point. Ready or not Those words really ring true for us at this time of the year. I suspect that most people have not given any thought to the fact that Advent arrives this month. You may have thought about Thanksgiving arriving, and that is important, but November 29 is the first Sunday in Advent. You know what that means: you know that Christmas is right behind. We know Christmas is going to come every year; but yet, we often times find ourselves caught less than fully prepared. Advent is all about being prepared. It is about being prepared for Christmas and beyond. The Advent Season allows us to be able to properly prepare ourselves to celebrate our Savior s birth, and it also points us to our need to be prepared for His return. It is during the Advent Season as we wait to celebrate our Lord s first coming into this world that we are also reminded of the fact that we are waiting for Him to come once again. We don t want to be caught off guard like I often times was when I was a child and heard the announcement, Ready or not It is when we are found in faith in Jesus Christ that we are ready. We don t allow ourselves to be completely distracted by whatever it is that the world around us is celebrating. Our society will really be celebrating a love of materialism and an indulgence of worldly pleasures. We will be celebrating the birth of a Savior, and that marks our preparations. We want to focus on the strengthening of our faith. Obviously, this emphasizes for us the importance of gathering together and hearing God s Word so that the Holy Spirit might keep us constantly ready. We want to be faithful in our hearing of God s Word because it is through that hearing that we are kept ever vigilant. We know that the Holy Spirit will prepare our hearts for a truly joyful Christmas celebration and for the day when Jesus returns. It is important that we are constantly prepared, because we know that Jesus will come again. Ready or not In His service, Pastor Olson

2 St. Paul Lutheran School News Theme: Saved with Amazing Grace (SWAG). For by grace you have been saved through faith. Ephesians 2:8 Walk-a-Thon: The NEW Walk-A-Thon was a huge success again this year. The kids had a beautiful day for walking and tremendous support from those who donated. Nearly $12,000 was raised for our school. Thank you to everyone who so generously supported this event! We thank God for the many people who were moved to give a gift in support of Christian education here at St. Paul 4K Registration: 4K registration opens on November 1 st for St. Paul members for the school year. You can contact the school office for a packet. If you have any questions about the program, you can contact Mrs. Beth Cheslock at bcheslock@stpaullux.org or call the school office. St. Paul offers a full day program five days a week. Bussing is also available at the beginning and end of the day. Registration will open to the public on December 1. Please spread the word about our amazing program! Trunk or Treat: Thanks to everyone who participated in this year s trunk or treat event! Veterans Service: We will be honoring our veterans at the special Veterans Service on November 8th. The school kids will be singing at the service. This is an important opportunity for the students, as well as all of us, to learn about the sacrifices that others have made for us. Christmas Bingo and Grandparents Day: Christmas Bingo will be held on December 16 after chapel that morning. Grandparents Breakfast will be held on January 26. There were requests for the information well in advance so that grandparents and others could get these events on the calendar. The students greatly look forward to events and love to have their special family members attend. Upcoming Events: November 6: End of the 1 st Quarter November 8: Veterans Day Service November 12 & 13 No School Teachers Conference November 17 & 19: Parent Teacher Conferences November 25-27: Thanksgiving Break No School 5K with the Luxemburg Fire Department

3 4K: We had a fun and busy month in 4 K! We are about Fall and the Farm in our class! We have read some fun stories about farm animals and will continue to learn about all the blessings we receive from the farm. This month we had our first Mystery Reader come visit - Elisha Fager! The class was excited as I gave clues daily and they tried to figure out who it was! The 4 K program is blessed with wonderful parents that volunteer! We also had a great time learning about Fire Safety and how to keep ourselves safe. We concluded our unit with a visit from the Luxemburg Fire Department. We continue to learn our alphabet in so many ways! The class loves meeting their new Alphafriend each week! This past month we met Benny Bear and celebrated letter Bb by making brown bears, and had a balloon bash. For Letter Cc we met Callie Cow and made our own cow puppet, learned what cows give us, and enjoyed some of the foods they bless us with. In Bible we learned stories in the Old Testament including: The Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph. We learned many things from these stories about God and His love and promises to us as His children as we acted them out, created project, and sang fun songs. My favorite time in class is our Jesus Time as this group loves to sing to Jesus! This month s favorite songs include, Father Abraham, I ll Do My Best, and He Hung Upon a Cross! There is nothing sweeter than seeing children get excited about their faith! This group is great at sharing their faith, asking insightful questions, and leading our end of the day prayer with a prayer straight from his/her heart! Each day is 4 K is an adventure and I feel blessed daily to work with adorable and loveable children! 5K: October has been full of counting, reading, and lots of fun. We are working on shape recognition, patterns, and writing our numbers in math. We have added 6 sight words to our list and learning our Alphafriends in reading. During Bible time, we have been learning the Old Testament stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. We went to a great field trip to Hillside Orchards and learned about Apples and pumpkins. We also had a visit to our school from the Luxemburg Fire Department and they brought their fire truck to the parking lot. We finished up the month with Red Ribbon Week, where we talk about staying drug free. We had some fun dress up days and ended the week with our fall party in the classroom. The children looked great in their costumes and the parents did a great job helping with games and food. Also a big thank you goes out to all the families that helped make the Walk-A-Thon another successful year, with over $11,000 raised! 1st and 2nd grade: It's hard to believe that we are already heading into the month of November. Time is passing so quickly and we are having so much fun in 1st and 2nd Grade! In religion we are learning about the Israelites in the wilderness, as well as starting to memorize the 10 Commandments. Our class has found it so reassuring to know that just like the Israelites, God will always take care of us. This group has also really taken off in reading! We are mastering our short and long vowel sounds, working with the q and u, consonant blends, and many other reading strategies. Science will also be another exciting adventure as we learn about creation, fossils, and of course dinosaurs! 3 rd, 4 th, and 5 th Grade: Wow! Hard to believe October is over! The 3 rd -5 th grade have done well with all of their subjects and work. They continue to work hard and grow in knowledge. We have been talking about how God s law helps us and what the Gospel is. We have also discussed how important it is to share the Gospel with others! The month ended with a very exciting week! We had Red Ribbon Week to help us to remember to keep our bodies drug free. We were able to have a fun dress up theme each day and end with a fall party. We are thankful to God for all of the blessings He has showered on us! 6 th, 7 th, and 8 th Grade: The Lord has blessed us with a beautiful October to get outside. We have enjoyed our Phy. Ed classes outside and doing activities with our 4K buddies. The 7 th and 8 th grade has started reading the book Where the Red Fern Grows. It is fun seeing how excited they are about reading it and not wanting to read only the chapters assigned. They also just finished writing their own narratives. We are working on our oral presentation skills as well. In Science, the 6 th grade is learning about rocks, soil and erosion. We explored the cemetery and looked for examples of weathering. We then were soil detectives and tried to figure out the types of soil that we found in our yards. Finally, we created our own soil that would be best for growing crops. Thank you for your continued prayers and support!

4 Do you shop online? If so, there is a way for you to earn money for St. Paul Lutheran School. Any time you are going to purchase something online, search if the company is listed in Goodshop.com. When you access a company through Goodshop, they will donate a percentage of your sale to St. Paul Lutheran School. Below are just some companies that you may shop online with followed by the percent of a sale they will donate to St. Paul Lutheran School if you access their website via Goodshop.com. Some online retailers will let you use gift cards (i.e. Scrip) to purchase gift cards, so utilizing Scrip to make a purchase online can earn even more money for St. Paul! Kohl s (2%) o Remember, you can use Scrip to pay your credit card bill in-store at a Kohl s store too! Amazon (up to 1.5%) Walmart (up to 2%) Target (up to 2.5%) Barnes & Noble (up to 3%) GAP (2.5%) Old Navy (3.5%) You might be familiar with Goodsearch.com, where each time you search the internet using Goodsearch.com (which actually utilizes Yahoo!) $.01 is donated to St. Paul Lutheran School. Goodshop is a subsidiary of Goodsearch. One only has to create a login to utilize both Goodsearch & Goodshop and start earning money for St. Paul Lutheran School. Thus far, over $550 has been raised by utilizing this website. If you have questions on how to utilize Goodshop or Goodsearch, feel free to contact Steve Doell at (920) or sjdoell71@gmail.com If you are interested in purchasing a historical book celebrating the 150th Anniversary of St. Paul please contact Steve Doell at The book consists of 167 pages of our church's history and contains color photographs, and the births, deaths, marriages, and confirmations of St. Paul over the past 150 years Welcome Kammerchor! St. Paul will be hosting Concordia University Wisconsin's Kammerchor (chamber choir) on November 2nd. We will be blessed to have them adding their voices to our All Saints' Day service that day. Concordia's Kammerchor is an auditioned mixed voice ensemble of 42 singers. As a touring ensemble, Kammerchor has sung in worship and concert virtually all over the continental USA, several times to Canada, and overseas to locations as varied as Brazil, Great Britain, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. And now, we are pleased to have them come to St. Paul. Charlie Russell, one of St. Paul's organist, is a student at CUW and has been practicing with Kammerchor. He will be accompanying Kammerchor that day.

5 The youth have the Veteran's Service coming up on Sunday, November 8th. We are looking for youth to volunteer in making sandwiches, drinks, serving, and washing dishes. Please help us in this special event, come to the kitchen anytime after 8:30am on Sunday, November 8th. December is right around the corner and the youth will be putting together Fruit Baskets for our Prime-Timers of our congregation. Please join us on Sunday, December 6th, 11AM in the St. Paul gym, to assemble the fruit baskets and deliver them to our members. Just a warning to our Prime-Timers, we will be delivering those fruit baskets on that Sunday afternoon. Thank you to the youth and parents that helped with roadside clean-up on Sunday, October 18th. We had beautiful weather to clean up the ditches. And a big thank you to our mysterious benefactor who paid for our lunches at Janda's after clean-up!(thank you Roger and Candy) Lakeshore Lutherans for Life News for you Lakeshore LFL held the first Crafting to Care morning In October.We were able to decorate 15 picture frames that will be donated to two Life clinics in our area that provide free ultrasounds to women trying to decide to keep their unborn baby. The frames will be given out to each mom to take home of their baby s first picture. Please join us for our next Crafting to Care on Saturday Nov 14 th at 8:15-10:15 am at St Paul Lutheran School. Please bring a scissor and glue gun if possible.

6 Our annual Veteran's service will be held on Sunday, November 8 at 9:30 a.m. It will be held in the school gym. All of the Veteran's Organizations in Kewaunee County have been invited. The Luxemburg-Casco Community Band will again be joining the St. Paul Band to play special patriotic music. There will also be special music by St. Paul Choir and St. Paul School Children. Following the service, there will be a lunch of chicken booyah, sandwiches, and dessert for $6.00. Veterans will receive a free meal. If you are a veteran and want to march in with all the veterans, please meet in the hall outside of the gym Stewardship News & Views PRAISE BE TO GOD! Our church, celebrating 150 years. Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. So what brings us back here week after week to worship? We come to church because it s good for us. We hear His word preached and we receive His sacraments for the forgiveness of our sins. We comfort and encourage one another as we gather around Christ. Our ancestors built this church---worked together as Christian stewards serving the Lord. May we continue to follow in their footsteps---being good stewards and using our time, talents, and treasures. There are many opportunities to serve the Lord here at St. Paul s. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever, His faithfulness continues thru all generations. Psalm 105:8 Thanks be to God for this beautiful church we have to worship in. Yours in Christ, The Board of Stewardship Paul Janda, Sue Heim, Don Mullen Christian Service Guild News: Our November Bible Study and meeting will be held on, November 4 th at 7:30pm in the church meeting room. During this Bible Study, Sanctuary, we will see why our personal sanctuaries are broken and that only our Savior Jesus can restore our brokenness. We will also reflect on What Comforts Us. Please join us! Bring your bibles. Change Challenge for Veterans The Christian Service Guild will hold a fun change challenge during the month of November. Here is how it works: Two large containers will be placed in the Narthex. One will be marked Women and Girls and the other Men and Boys. At each church service during the month of November the congregation can place their change in the appropriate container and at the end of the month will see who wins Men and Boys or Women and Girls! All money collected will be donated to the Veteran Services of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

7 150 th Anniversary Congratulations: Members of St. Paul: I am unable to attend your celebration in person, but join with you in celebrating God's blessings of 150 years! That is amazing, and so is our God! I count it a true privilege that I was able to begin my teaching career at St. Paul and taught there for 4 1/2 years from I feel so blessed whenever I see former students at Pilgrim, NEWLHS events, teacher's conferences or around the community. Thank you for the opportunity you gave me to share the love of Jesus with your families. Continued blessings as you continue to grow in God's love within your congregation and throughout your community! Praise God for your founding fathers, and the faith that they had to begin your congregation. Sharing in His love and grace, Eileen Bordeleau

8 Join us for Bible study: On November 1, we will begin a new study in adult Bible study. The title of the study will be "A Man Named Martin." This study will look at the history of the Lutheran Church and how God worked through the life of Martin Luther Sermon Texts and Themes this Month November 1: This is the day in the year when the church celebrates All Saints Day. We remember those who have died with faith in Jesus and have gone on to eternal treasures in heaven. We will also have the Kammerchor from Concordia University Wisconsin joining us that day. November 8: This is the service when we remember and honor our veterans. It is also the day when we are reminded of God s gift of good government and the blessings that we receive as citizens of this country. Our sermon text will be Romans 13:1-7 under the theme of Honor to Whom Honor is Owed. November 15: This Sunday is the 25 th Sunday after Pentecost. It is also the second to the last Sunday in the church year. It is during the final Sundays of the church year that our attention is directed to our Lord s return on the last day. Our sermon text will be Mark 13:1-13 under the theme of Built to Last! We hear the reminder of Jesus about the temporary nature of the things of this world while being given the assurance that His Word and promises will last forever. November 22: This is the Last Sunday of the Church Year. The next Sunday will mark the beginning of a new church year. Our focus continues to be on the end times and our Lord s certain return into this world. Our text on this day will be 2 Peter 3:10 under the theme of What will happen on the Last Day? The sermon will focus on seven specific things that will happen on the last day when Jesus returns. November 25: We will prepare out hearts and minds for the national day of Thanksgiving by gathering together to recognize the giver of all good gifts. The text for our Thanksgiving sermon will be Luke 17:11-19 with a theme of Giving Thanks where Thanks is Due. As our nation gathers to give thanks, we focus on the greatest of gifts that we have received from God s hand. November 29: This day marks the beginning of a new church year. We will observe the first Sunday in Advent. Our church year begins a little differently than we might expect. We begin, not by focusing on Mary riding a donkey to Bethlehem, but by focusing on Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem. Our text will be Luke 19:28-40 with the theme of A Peace of Advent. We will focus on how the church s celebration in the month of December is different from what is being celebrated in the world around us. We will focus on a proper preparation for Christmas.

9 Holy Humor Kevin and Ryan, ages five and three, were waiting for breakfast one Saturday morning. As their mother was preparing some pancakes, the boys began to argue loudly over who would get the first one from the griddle. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.'" she explained. Kevin immediately turned to his younger brother and said, "Okay, Ryan, you be Jesus!" Faculty/Staff Contact Info Pastor & Principal: Rev. Dr. Daniel Olson: pastorolson@stpaullux.org 4K Teacher: Beth Cheslock: bcheslock@stpaullux.org 5K Teacher: Sherry Byrne: sbyrne@stpaullux. org 1 st & 2 nd Grade: Heidi Pahnke: hpahnke@stpaullux.org 3 rd & 4 th Grade: Laura McClellan: lmclellan@stpaullux.org 6 th, 7 th, & 8 th Grade: Sarah Ludwig: sludwig@stpaullux.org Secretary: Jenny Tenor: jtenor@stpaullux.org Newsletter: Angie Peterson: apeterson0727@yahoo.com Funerals: Tina Peterson Arlene Gruetzmacher Prayer Chain: Tina Peterson Sunday School Early Childhood DVD s are available of the church service. Call the church office at and one of our volunteers will deliver it to you. Need a ride to church? Please notify the church office for a ride to and from church services. Newsletter Deadline: the 21 st of the month. Join us on Facebook: Search for St. Paul Lutheran Church and School and LIKE us today!