January, 2018 Volume 53 - Number Ironwood Avenue, P.O. Box 537 Morro Bay CA Phone: (805) Rev. Richard Kurrasch, Pastor

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1 The ROCK HE ALONE IS MY ROCK AND MY SALVATION, I SHALL NEVER BE SHAKEN PS 62:2 January, 2018 Volume 53 - Number Ironwood Avenue, P.O. Box 537 Morro Bay CA Phone: (805) Web Site morrobayfcc@gmail.com Rev. Richard Kurrasch, Pastor

2 From the Pastor s Study First Christian Church, Morro Bay January, 2018 It may be trite to say (which makes it no less true) but the dawn of yet another New Year makes us wonder what happened to the old one. One day merges into the next and all we can do is watch, as helpless to stop the flow of time as we are to stop the flow of sand as it slips through the narrow neck of the proverbial hourglass. Well, so be it. We may not have much control over the ticking of the clock, but we can certainly control what we do with the time we have, and in that sense, and contrary to popular opinion, we really do have quite enough time, at least for the necessary things of life. We have time enough to laugh and love, to enjoy and play, to smell the flowers and count the stars. We have time enough to learn who we are and what really matters. We have time to discover our place in the order of creation and our destiny in the purposes of the Creator. Our experience may say differently, of course, as we realize how many flowers we have yet to notice and how much of God s creation we have yet to discover. Certainly, tragedy all too frequently intervenes to cut short the lives of young and old alike before the journey is properly completed, but the transitory nature of life notwithstanding, time gives us the space to construct a life for ourselves, our families, our communities, even our world. Not to mention our church. A new year dawns for that wonderful community of saints known as the Disciples of Morro Bay just as it dawns for each of us individually, and as with each of us, time gives our church the space to continue our response to God s ongoing summons to live joyfully, creatively, courageously, and hopefully in our world. Admittedly, it is a tall order, but not beyond our reach as the old year amply illustrates. A joyful, creative, courageous, hopeful 2018 to all!! Rich

3 Birthdays Anniversaries Joanne Kluczyk 10 Rollie & Sue Bigbee Izabel Stuart 15 Melanie Rivers 31 HEALING PRAYERS FOR: Richard Woods Jeanne Hoyt Nancy Hoyt Phyllis Balsano Ruth Ann Angus Jim Johnson Ed & Twyla Riley Wilda Byng Izabel Stuart Jean Johnson Joan (sister of Pat) Jack (Grandson of Margaret Yun) PRAYERS FOR: Implementation of Earth Care Ministries Military of Our Church Josh Bigbee Nathan McAdams Traveler s Pat Mangione & Miklos Refugees Kay s Sunday School Class Peace in the World Growth for our Church Opportunities to Share Our Faith Fire, Hurricane & Earthquake victims

4 Prayer Group Everyone is welcome to join us at 9:30 every Wednesday. We pray together for worldly and personal concerns. Please let us know if you have a prayer request. Food Donations Needed at Church Reminder Food donations are taken the first Sunday of each month for the Salvation Army. The board approved the budget for 2018, and we will present it to the congregational meeting on Jan. 21. We have decided to try and sell the church organ as it no longer fits in our worship plans. Earth Care ministry is planning a movie afternoon and discussion the latter part of Feb. The film will be on our threatened ecology. The next Board Meeting is January 21, Important items discussed will be the 2018 budget and upcoming events. Please remember the Board Meetings are open to everyone and we encourage your attendance Primera Iglesia Bautista Church Schedule Sun M T W Th F S 6-7 am 6-7 am 6-7 am 6-7 am 6-7 am 6-7 am 6-7 am 5:30-9:30pm 5:30-9:30pm 6-9:30pm

5 CRAFTS Crafts taking a break until February, Jan. 7 Jan. 21 Jan. 28 Earth Care Service Congregational Meeting / lunch following worship 6 pm pot luck dinner with Primera Iglesia Bautista Church SIGN-UP to Host the Fellowship Hour The church supplies cheese, crackers & cookies with coffee and juice. All you need to do is make the coffee, set out the food and clean-up. Donations are needed to pay for the Fellowship Hours. Thank you to those who have donated.

6 Salvation Army TOY DRIVE The Salvation Army was delighted to receive our large toy donation. Surely there were many happy kids and parents on Christmas Day. Thank you to all who participated. Adult Sunday School Everyone is invited to attend Adult Sunday School every Sunday from 9:30-10:30 am. We will be studying a new book on the Lord s Prayer

7 Earth Care Ministry Report - January 2018 Submitted by Ruth Ann Angus Morro Bay National Estuary Program Jennifer Ruesink has been a faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle, since Her expertise is in the ecology of estuarine ecosystems, especially structure-forming species such as seagrass and oysters. For her sabbatical in , she is visiting as many estuaries as possible along the Northeast Pacific coast, starting in Washington, as far south as Baja California, and finally around to Alaska before coming back down the coast. All these estuaries contain the same species of eelgrass, and many have commercial oyster culture. The twist of this biogeographic survey is it all being done aboard a 42 foot catamaran sailboat. There s been no shortage of evidence recently that the world is full of extreme events, from fires to floods. But it s not just the weather that can be a sudden surprise. Sometimes we get to witness booms or busts of living creatures, and Morro Bay has had its share recently. Maybe you ve looked down through shallow water over the mud and seen this? Bulla gouldiana, known commonly as a bubble snail, and its yellowish egg sac. Bulla gouldiana is a large gastropod, called a bubble snail. It has a thin, neatly-rolled, oblong shell, which its soft body can almost completely cover when it s out crawling around. For decades, Bulla was so rare in Morro Bay that few people even recognized it. But over the past couple of years, these large snails (their shells can be 2 inches in diameter) became quite a phenomenon. Oyster growers from the two local farms, Grassy Bar Oyster Company and Morro Bay Oyster Company, wondered if these snails were harming stock when they coated the oyster bags with their soft bodies oozing through the mesh. Scientists from Cal Poly and the Estuary Program found their eelgrass found their eelgrass transplants festooned with yellow strands of egg cases, like a blonde s bad-hair day, gluing leaves together. This bulla snail moves across the sediment on the floor of the bay.

8 Beachcombers picked up an unusual brown mottled shell, fragile and smooth. Serendipitously, when we were out measuring eelgrass on a low tide, just after dusk, we witnessed swarms of Bulla emerging from the sandy bottom and crawling to the canopy of the eelgrass bed at least 80 snails visible in a square meter! The thin, yellow, squiggly tubes that resemble clumps of blonde hair or even egg noodles are Bulla snail egg cases. The Bulla phenomenon truly piqued the natural history interest of my traveling family science team, and we set out to learn what we could about how it came to be in Morro Bay, and what it might be doing here. We were sure glad that the Estuary Program staff brought up Bulla on the first day we visited to introduce ourselves, in response to our question of what has changed in the bay? Otherwise, we would have started with the Bulla snails gathered in numbers on this eelgrass plot. Bulla are not always found in such challenge of simply determining dense clusters, and they tend to show up in different areas of the bay at different times the snail s species name. A quick check on the internet and in the scientific literature turned up pretty sparse information on Bulla gouldiana. It s native to the California coast and reportedly can be abundant in bays. A few divers have taken pictures of it in pretty deep water. Larvae hatch out of those long yellow egg cases and float around in the plankton for a while. It feeds on attached microalgae, which is frequently mistaken for brown scum in estuaries, but is really a productive milieu of microscopic photosynthesizing creatures.

9 During the day, Bulla hides out in the sediment, apparently traveling around by way of mucus tubes, but as we witnessed, it emerges to the surface at night. Most of the science done on the species has been behavioral. Despite little in the way of quantitative ecological study, this information about the snail s life cycle and diet helps us understand that Bulla are probably not consuming oysters through the mesh bags, and they are more likely to clean the epiphytes off of eelgrass than to eat the eelgrass itself. The science tools that we carry on our boat include The brown furry-looking substance on and around the blades of eelgrass plankton nets and microscopes. We have a special in this photograph is microalgae. inverted microscope (light from the top, view from the bottom) with polarized light, which spotlights larval mollusk shells as silver or gold glowing shapes, making them easy to distinguish from the vast array of other swimming creatures and drifting particles that get captured by a 60-micron net. Everywhere we sampled in the bay, but especially in the back-bay, tiny snail larvae were abundant. Imagine a microscopic snail shell, flying through the water on two round wings of transparent tissue, fringed by hairs (technically, velar lobes with cilia). From the dark pigment spots on many of the larvae, we could tell that they were ready to settle out of the plankton. At metamorphosis, as the snails mature, they find a spot to shed those velar lobes and begin crawling around on a tiny snail foot. We don t know for sure that these snail larvae are Bulla. But Bulla is the most abundant snail around, and the timing is right, since the egg cases have been disappearing as larvae hatch out of them. These plankton samples help us understand that the Bulla in Morro Bay probably live their whole lives here hatching, reproducing, and eventually dying in the bay. These are snail larvae in a sample taken from Morro Bay, as seen illuminated through an inverse microscope The forebay from above. The harbor mouth is just to the left of Morro Rock This on-going spigot of larval delivery suggests that Bulla are here to stay, but that s hard to say without information on how fast they grow or how long they live. For a while it seemed like there were just two phases present in Morro Bay larvae and large adult. Then we started noticing smaller snails, just a half-inch long. Keep an eye out when you are watching birds or sea otters have you seen anything eat Bulla? Or spit it out? You have an opportunity to help fill in a missing link, discovering whether Bulla is a tasty part of the larger food web in Morro Bay.

10 Arise and Go Forth and Inherit the Earth! Earth Care Worship January 7, 2018 To help our congregation focus on our earth care/ environmental commitment, an "Earth Care Worship" service is planned for every 6 weeks. The committee to oversee this consists of Kay Pinniger, Ethel Girard, Gayle Woods and Pat Mangione. Please let them know if you have any suggestions, programs or themes you would like them to consider.

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13 January, 2018 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Prayer 9: Birthday Sunday Food Collection Prayer 9:30 Earth Care Service Prayer 9: Congregational Mtg. Prayer 9:30 Elders Mtg. 2 pm Choir Rehearsal 3:00 pm Choir Performance Pot-luck dinner with Primera Iglesia Bautista Church Prayer 9:

14 DECEMBER Birthday

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21 Blessing of the Animals

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28 Prado Meal Crew

29 Christmas Talent Show

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36 Board Meeting

37 Decorations Crew Visitations

38 Primera Iglesia BautistaChurch