April 01, Asbury United Methodist Church

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1 Asbury United Methodist Church Asbury Hours 9-12 Tuesday-Wednesday Asbury UMC All donations are welcome! Our food is ordered monthly from The Oklahoma Food Bank We help families per month. Happy Elders Monthly Luncheon April 4, :15 p.m. Come & bring your favorite dish! (and your favorite food too) WORK DAY SCHEDULED! April 7, 2012 All hands on deck! We will be getting our Church and Family Life Center ready for Celebration! Everyone can help from sharpening pencils to cleaning tables or refreshing with paint and cleaning! April 01, 2012 CELEBRATION WEEKEND APRIL 14-15, 2012 Burn the Mortgage Our Family Life Center is now PAID IN FULL and we are going to celebrate! You will be receiving more Information in the coming weeks POTLUCK SUNDAY! April 22, 2012 Immediately following worship Come join us for worship, fellowship & food! If you can, bring a covered dish and share! All are welcome to join us for Good food and Good fellowship! FINANCES A copy of the budget for 2012 and a copy of the current financial statement for the church will be available in the church office if you would like to see it. 5th Sunday Sing-a-long April 29th 10:30 a.m. Asbury United Methodist Church

2 PASTOR S CORNER, Pastor Temple Diehl I love a good celebration and in April, Asbury is full of them! We will come together during Holy Week and mark many important events in the life of Jesus. We will gather and CELEBRATE the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior on Easter! Then, because one celebration is simply not enough, on April 14 th and 15 th, we will CELE- BRATE the Family Life Center being PAID IN FULL! In many places in the Bible, God tells the people to celebrate. God tells us that we are to mark important life events with celebrations. So, join in with us as we celebrate the resurrection, the building being paid in full, and the blessings that God gives each of us every day through His Son! Join in! It won t be the same without you! Assurance In my darkest hour God gave me hope, When my mind seemed to say, It s the end of the rope I dwell on my failures, asking God, why? Tears rush down unbidden, I can only kneel and cry, Yet a voice seems to whisper, For your tears I was slain, Give me all your troubles, I bore all your pain, Arise and feel my presence, I am never far away, call, I will listen, Then wipe your tears away Ruth Smith Timmons

3 BISHOP S CORNER: Show me your proof of ID Uncovenanted, full and free, the love of God amazes me That love which once upon the Cross nailed the dark record of my loss. The record of my sinful past, the stain that o er my soul was cast, Is wiped away, nor can be seen tis gone as though it ne er had been. Amazing mercy, boundless grace, no longer need I hide my face; Tis cancelled all, and I am free, my sins were cleansed on Calvary. H.E.S. Doyle By Bishop Robert Hayes Jr. In this age of heightened security and safety measures, I marvel at the ways technology is used to confirm our identities. When you travel beyond the borders of this country, you must have a passport, which informs customs agents about you, including where you re going and where you ve been. Coded on a thin black strip of that travel document is your age, your gender, your race, your height, your place of birth the vital information necessary to confirm that you are who you say you are. In other settings, more sophisticated equipment distinguishes fingerprints in a matter of seconds. Even more astounding are retina scanning and iris recognition. These newest technologies enable unmistakable, instant identification of an individual because every person s eyes are unique. Utterly amazing! As impressive as these are, there is yet another way our identity is confirmed, and it has nothing to do with computers and biometrics. There is a symbol so universally known that it immediately designates identity wherever we may be in the world. The Cross proclaims our citizenship in God s Kingdom. Worn on clothing lapels and around our necks, the Cross identifies our allegiance as followers of Jesus Christ. It proclaims to all that we believe in both the man and his message, and that we are committed to fostering his theme of love for one another. A few years ago, I noticed a sign on property at the edge of Enid. The sign announced the construction of a new Korean church. In my travels as bishop, I frequently passed the site, and I wondered what type of church that would become. Would their theology or creeds be different from mine? Who or what would they worship in the new edifice? Then one day as I passed by, I saw workmen erecting a Cross at the front of the building. These Korean Americans were Christians! In an instant, I knew they believe as I do, and an immediate bond connected us. That s what the Cross does. It breaks down barriers of creed and race; it builds bridges of love and hope. Most of all, it grafts us to the One who died upon the Cross for us. As a follower of Christ, I am asked to be a servant like him, and not to expect to be served. I am asked to give up all claim on myself, to lose myself for his sake and for others. Further, I am called to be willing to give up personal advantage in order to bear witness to the faith I hold so dear. Because Jesus willingly took upon himself the heavy Cross of my sins, then I, too, must be willing to pick up my own Cross and follow him. As you journey to Calvary during this Lenten season, what Cross have you willingly taken upon yourself? What sacrifices have you made that demonstrate your resolve to expose the inner recesses of your soul to the bright light of God s scrutiny? Have you denied yourself something meaningful, as a reminder that our Lord gave himself for God s world? The word Lent comes from a root word meaning "spring." The late Rev. Robert MacAskill wrote: "Spring does not start with bursting seeds and buds. Seeds and buds are the result of spring. Spring starts with a new adjustment between the earth and the heavens. The month of April would come in vain unless the yearly adjustment between earth and heaven took place. Our human personalities are planted with innumerable hidden, buried possibilities. The Gospel of John, using another figure of speech, speaks of the Light, which lightens every person that comes into the world. When a person s life comes into the right adjustment with the Source of Light and Life God then possibilities become realities. Lent can be springtime for your soul if you make the readjustment of your life with God." I began by considering the ways the world identifies us. I close with this thought: Will you look the same and be the same at the end of this Lenten journey, or will the experience of these 40 days sprout into a new identity for you? For Christ s sake, I hope so!

4 OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIVING or VOLUNTEERING ABOVE AND BEYOND Native American Awareness Sunday, April, 2012 A special offering in addition to regular tithes will be taken on one Sunday in April to be sent to help Native American Ministries. Proceeds from this offering are used to provide scholarships for Native Americans attending United Methodist schools of theology and other schools approved by the University Senate of The United Methodist Church. They also will go to strengthen existing native ministries and to create programs on behalf of Native Americans. Criminal Justice and Mercy Ministries New Day Camps 2012 Fund Raiser Scholarships for children to attend camp. Any amount of donation is gladly accepted. CASA-Court Appointed Special Advocates Contact the CASA office at or stop by 514 E. 10th St. for more information. Application forms are located in the church office also. Destination Cross Point Camp Cross Point s goal is to add two 40-bed youth camping dormitories with meeting facilities. Build Cross Point Lodge & Retreat Center, remodel and expand the tabernacle as the Cross Point Worship & Retreat Training Center, build an indoor multipurpose activity center for year-round programming & events, expanded programming and staffing for leadership events and camping. More information is available in the church office. The Importance of Missional Mindedness In campus ministry we only have a short time with our congregation. The very nature of being in college means that I have at most 4-5 years with each student and in reality that only equates out to 2-3 years. This means that we have to be very upfront about what is important and we have to cut out the things that aren t. One of the things that I consider crucial to Christian development and one of the things that I love to focus on is having a mindset towards other, a missional mindedness. We had a great example of this happen at UCM in February. First let me give you a little back story. Last fall we had a student named Ally that went to Haiti to serve on a two month mission. She went to serve an orphanage but also traveled around the small country learning and helping wherever she could. One day she visited another orphanage that was run by one woman named Tabitha. The reason that she ran an orphanage was that she kept finding children that had no home, no family, and how could she just let them die? The problem with Tabitha s orphanage is that she was getting no help or assistance so the children were starving and they weren t getting the help that they needed. This affected Ally deeply, here is a woman who is willing to help but does not have the resources to do what is needed. Ally lives in the USA, the richest country in the world when it comes to resources. Surely she could help. Ally and the UCM partnered up in February to host what was called PB&J Fridays on the campus of ECU. Every Friday we would go out on campus with a huge stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and asked students, staff, and faculty to give up their lunch money and instead enjoy a simple PB&J. In four weeks we raised over $500 for Tabitha s Orphanage. This money will go to buy food and much needed supplies. To put it into perspective a 110lb bag of rice costs around $45 in Haiti right now. So they will have enough money to feed all the kids for quite some time. Not only are we helping orphans but we are also raising awareness on campus. The ECU Journal caught wind of what we were doing and we ended up on the front page. Having a missional mindset not only goes to help out people across the world, but it can also impact people right here at home. Kel Penny UCM Director

5 HAPPY BIRTHDAY APRIL BABIES! Laura Smith Burl Webb Earl Platt Merle Ballard Glen Haney Tom Landrith Ethel Jones Karin Nuner Sherri Ward Shorty Murphy Jacob Whelchel Wade Miller Dru Webb Keith Wilkerson Paul Landrith HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Jodie & Joyce Hared 04/29 We are in the process of updating our information For birthdays & anniversaries. Please call the office and let us know if yours was missed or incorrect. If we missed yours, we wish you a Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary!

6 April, 2012 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Maundy Thursday Service 6pm 6 Good Friday Service 6pm 7 Work Day No Choir 8 Communion Sunday 9 10 ECU Gospel 11 Happy Elders 12:15pm Choir 6pm Church Celebration BURN the MORTGAGE 6PM 15 UCM-lead worship Guy-preaching Cake & Punch after church Pick up Food order Chickasaw Nation Fundraiser In FLC 21 Fried Chicken FUMC fundraiser No Choir 22 Potluck Sunday Choir 6pm 29 Native American Awareness Sunday 30 5th Sunday Sing-a-long

7 Asbury United Methodist Church 508 West Sixth PO Box 2342 Ada, OK NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION PAID PERMIT # 278 ADA, OK Return Service Requested ASBURY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH P.O. BOX WEST 6TH ADA, OKLAHOMA Sunday Morning Schedule Sunday School: 9:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m. Morning Worship: 10:30 a.m. Church: Parsonage: Pastor: Temple Diehl Administrative Asst. Angel Davis Pianist: Kristen Stecklein Elizabeth Blanchard Nursery Attendants: Kristina Jones UCM Director: Kel Penny Website: asburyada.org asburyada@sbcglobal.net