Monday, June 29

Good morning people,

Another beautiful summer day…  I wanted to introduce you to a very inspirational member of our household. This is Enid, the little palm plant that Sarah bought for her college dorm. We thought for sure that Enid would be dead by now. She had stayed for over three months in Sarah’s empty college dorm without being watered or cared for. When Julia and Sarah finally went over to Ohio to clear the room, Enid looked sad, but she was still breathing. We pepped her up with some water, and over time she shed some of the leaves that had been barely hanging on, but new ones were quickly emerging. It was truly astonishing how this little plant with its tiny supply of soil and no water could have survived, but she did! Plants are different of course; some are hardier than others. And so are people…  How are you hanging on during these long months of restrictions and not so good news, the isolation from people, the uncertainties, the lack of “normal” social activities? I will give you the picture that we received from our survey later this week when we also asked that question. If you haven’t done the survey I would appreciate if you did (link below). I am also curious to hear from you how you are coping, now four months into this unusual experience. Please let me know!  Are you hanging tough like Enid?  Do you feel dried up? Have you found some things that help you cope?  Let’s look at all of this as an exercise in resiliency and faith.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/272TMP3

I want to thank Tom A. for responding to my hospitality message as part of yesterday’s service. He wrote: “Pastor, You may know this place. It is hidden among low hills/mountains in Lugo Spain. There is no far horizon to see in this place, only hills to be climbed.  But it does offer an endless night sky, filled with stars that lift your spirit. 

And just as you said, the Benedictine Monks living there offer all who pass a simple bed and a place to eat. Thank you for the lesson today on welcoming strangers.  It brought back warm memories and reminded me to welcome all who pass through my life. Tom”  No Tom, I haven’t been there. In fact I never crossed the border to Spain. But just looking at this place, I want to go (see attached). I have so much respect for the beauty of those old monasteries and their long tradition as spiritual centers and places of welcome and hospitality. Thank you for sharing, Tom!

I am very much looking forward to our next services. The July 5 service will feature summer themes and 4th of July music. The July 12 service will bring to us voices from our elderly and homebound members, including Ginny B., Herby K. (from New Hampshire), the Kelch’s (from Ohio), and several folks from Brittany Pointe. It is always a wonderful experience and a creative process to make every single service special and unique.  For July 19, we invite you to send us pictures of your pets. Please send them to Lisa Miller (secretary.stpetersnorthwales@gmail.com) for our Blessing of the Pets service. Next Sunday will be our first outdoor service with social distancing and masks in the parking lot (9:30 a.m.). I hope the weather will cooperate!     

  Today is the birthday of George L. Happy birthday, George!!!

Sunday, June 28

Good morning church!

Another popular birthday at St. Peter’s. Today Cindy M., Mia W., and Noah S. are celebrating. Happy birthday to you all! I also wanted to mention another birthday that I wasn’t aware of. Yesterday was the birthday of Jenny W. (2 years!), see the screenshot of her mom’s message with a wonderful picture. I Wonder whether Ms. Wunder still recognizes her pastor because when I saw her licking ice cream last Sunday she acted like I was a stranger. Ah, this pandemic! But these times also have some good sides. One of them is that our online directory and our birthday list are constantly updated as I discover more people who were missing on the birthday list and more phone numbers that have changed. Which also means: let us know when your contact information changes, so we can do it right away! Another advantage of this pandemic for you is that my sermons are consistently shorter. At least for now that’s our new normal because shorter messages flow better in a virtual service.    

This morning we celebrate a Sunday service with hand bells played by a selection of bell ringers from our church. We thank all musicians who are so willing to participate in these services and enrich them with their gifts. It would not be the same without you!

Next week we will begin with our outdoor services (9:30 a.m., bring your own chair). We will of course continue the recordings so people can enjoy church services from the safety of their own homes (Website; Facebook Page). I also want to reiterate that Lisa Miller is now accepting photos of your pets (just one per pet) for the July 19 “Blessing of the Pets” service. Please send them to her no later than July 12.  Secretary.stpetersnorthwales@gmail.com. Your entire staff and your council thanks you for your faithfulness!

Be safe and be well, and please don’t forget to support your church during these times.

Pastor Andreas Wagner

Saturday, June 27

Dear church,

I am going to keep it really brief today. I know I have said that before and then sent you a lengthy email.  But I overslept this morning and our crew just emailed me that they have decided to cancel the carwash for today because of the thunderstorms. I assume that we will try again for another date. Stay tuned.  But today is not a good day for an outdoor car wash. The car was for today is cancelled!

We are looking forward to tomorrow’s service, which has been in the recording process all week.  It is our bell service with various contributions from young and more seasoned bell ringers. The spoken parts of the service were recorded on Tuesday with many of the St. Peter’s Belles participating. Lisa Miller is gradually breaking in two helpers for all the editing work that’s necessary. Sam W. and Jackson S. are learning the tricks of our video editing program, which probably seems like an easy task to them. But the help is appreciated!  Lisa also told me that you can now start sending her pictures of your favorite pets (yes, that’s you Winter in our home!).  Please send them directly to Lisa Miller no later than July 12. The July 19 blessing of the pets service will include a huge picture show of our people’s favorite animal friends and we invite your furry friends to watch the service with you at that time! More tomorrow morning…

Be blessed and be safe!

Pastor Andreas Wagner

Friday, June 26

Good morning church,

Steve W. asked me to extend his heartfelt thanks for the many cards and well-wishes he has received.  He is doing well, but recovery after open-heart surgery will take some time, and he has to find new sleeping positions to get the rest he needs. Overall though, he is doing very well. I was also happy to be invited to a wedding in Michigan next year. Maggie H. is planning to get married on July 31, 2021, and even asked me to officiate. That’s a wonderful honor and one that I hope the situation next year will allow me to fulfill. Maggie was in my first St. Peter’s confirmation class, a very small group of just four young people. I remember that we studied a lot of deeper and more difficult subjects because it was possible in that small, intimate group. Maggie went back to her roots as it were; both of her parents hail from Michigan and that’s where she went to college. These days she works as a software engineer for a good German company in the Ann Arbor area. She writes this: “I’m doing well! I’m currently working as a software engineer at Bosch programming radar systems for semi-autonomous driving. The pandemic has hit the auto industry hard but I’m lucky to still be unaffected by budget cuts and layoffs. In my department, our German sister office is in Leonberg (just outside of Stuttgart). I was hoping to have an all-expenses-paid trip to southern Germany for work sometime this year, but it will have to wait. 🙂 My fiancé Ryan is also a software engineer, so we’ve both been working from home since March, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. We also just recently purchased our first home together, and we close on Monday! We will be living in Northville, MI (20 mins north of Ann Arbor). The next few weeks will be busy with moving, but we are very much happy to have a real house to call our own.”  I also wonder whether Maggie still plays the violin and whether she would record and send us a piece… Maggie, do you hear me? Of course, we will first let you move into your new home, but later this summer maybe???

So what are we going to do with the re-opening? While we covered a lot of safety territory in our re-opening document, the situation is clearly still volatile. After a number of conversations and a lot of thinking and agonizing (mostly agonizing!), I have come to the decision to offer strictly outdoor services this summer for the months of July and August and perhaps September as well. There are several advantages to that, not the least of which is the fresh air surrounding us in that setting. You don’t need to make a reservation for those services; you can just come and bring your own chair. (The crowd restriction is irrelevant, in the green phase it’s 250.) We will set up a sound system on top of the stairs that lead to the church. Whenever possible we will have an instrumentalist and also some recorded music from our growing bank of recordings, as well as a live message and an opportunity for us to see one another. We will ask everyone to wear masks and keep the recommended safe distance. We don’t ask people who have medical conditions or are concerned about their health to join us. But for everyone else, I hope this is something that we CAN DO at a time when we have been asked not to do so many things. The services will be at 9:30 a.m. and if the weather is bad we will cancel via email. We are purchasing individual pre-packaged communion kits for these services. They will be set up on a different table. As I wrote yesterday, I am concerned about the situation later in the fall getting worse again and would like to use the summer months to give as at least some opportunity to congregate in smaller and safe groups. The outdoor services will begin on July 5.

Gail T. wrote about Eileen J. who has been in our prayers: “Thank you for your inquiry about Eileen J. After being in the hospital since February, she finally got to go home on June 7 for the first time. She is still very weak and had her last chemo treatment last Thursday. I can’t thank the St. Peter’s community enough for all the prayers. She has a long way to go, but she is at least home with loved ones. She stays in touch with my son in law and daughter through skype, they are grateful for that. Thank You Again. Gail”  Eileen is the mother of Gail’s son-in-law and she had COVID earlier in March on top of it all. The Turners started coming to church a few years ago and Gail’s daughter-in-law Vicky is a member of our choir. Her granddaughter Lilian is usually one of our Spark kids. Thanks for sharing, Gail!    

Today are the birthdays of Julia W. and Taelyn G. Happy birthday!!!

Be blessed and be safe! Pastor Andreas Wagner

Thursday, June 25

Good morning church,

Hard to believe it is the end of June already. Four years ago we celebrated this day with my nephew and godson Lukas who got married in Germany on that day to his wife Simona (Mona).  Four years later they are having their hands full, but they would never let you know. Their daughter and first child Charlotte was born in January, and it was later discovered that she can’t hear on either ear. She is deaf, and the young couple is now working with a clinic to explore whether their baby daughter might qualify for implants, with the help of which she could learn to hear. It’s all pretty tough, but little Charlotte is much loved and both of her parents are mature and responsible young people.  I am sending them my prayers today on their wedding day and I wouldn’t mind if you joined me in prayers that their little girl may get the pleasure of hearing sounds (because she literally hasn’t responded to ANY noise) in her lifetime. At one point, we had a church in our synod with a ministry to the deaf community. I don’t know whether it still exists, but cases like this make you think what a blessing it is to have and use our senses and how marvelous are the people who help others live with disabilities. May God bless them all!

Meet someone who is working with his senses all the time, and in creative ways. Wayne S. joined us for our virtual new member orientation in the beginning of May. He and his partner in life Margaret A. have art studios in their home and their outfit is called “Nutmeg Designs.”  You can easily look it up online. They live in Lansdale. Wayne was formerly a member of a local Episcopal Church that closed its doors a few years ago, but he grew up a Lutheran in the greater Bethlehem area. I hope he doesn’t mind that I show him on this picture with Margaret. In my humble opinion, he looks better with her at his side!  Earlier this year and before the virus struck, they exhibited some of their work on our art wall, and it was easily one of my favorite displays. I attached two pictures of artifacts that are simply beautiful. Wayne is a quiet and introspective soul. For years he has gone on spiritual retreats, many times to the Jesuit center in Wernersville PA.  He joined the Stephen Ministry Training Class earlier this year, and in his professional life, he also teaches science in a private school. I know he was very, very happy when the Zoom sessions for the school year were finally over! I hope you get to meet him or maybe find a piece of art for your home through his website. (He didn’t ask me to advertise, but I really like their work!)

Our Oktoberfest Planning Team met last night and decided not to run this popular event in 2020. The main reason is quite obvious, but there are many “assisting” reasons for this decision. The Oktoberfest has always been a fundraiser for the church and an opportunity to connect with our town and community. We did it for 12 years in a row and plan to resume in 2021. But this year it would have been exceedingly difficult. A socially distanced Oktoberfest is just not the same and would likely be more of a temptation for people to neglect safety rules. And we don’t want to set a bad example.  What’s more, much of the fundraising relies on donations from businesses and individuals. The West Pointe Deli in particular has always been exceedingly generous with food donations. We usually get all of our beer donated from local breweries. But all of those businesses are hurting this year and we would find it highly inappropriate to even ask for donations in a time like this. I really want to thank Doug and Jenn Mahan for leading the team. The team is not done for the year. They are planning to run two or three alternative fundraisers with some virtual components to help us make up for some of the loss of revenue. They came up with some nice ideas and you will hear more about it when these ideas are fully developed.

I am attaching again the flier for this Saturday’s car-wash fundraiser with the Rauchut kids (adults), Brynne G., Robin A., and others. All the proceeds will benefit the Innocence Project.  If you want to support the event you can not only bring your car for a new shine, you can also post this flier on your FaceBook or Social Media site.  I think it’s a wonderful activity and I will personally support it.

Today is the birthday of Lilly T., Carol and Gary L.’s granddaughter. Happy birthday!!!

Be blessed and be safe! Pastor Andreas Wagner

Wednesday, June 24

“There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.” — Thomas Merton

Good morning, church,

I think little Aiden Coover is coming home from the hospital today. We wish him well on his continued recovery from the emergency appendicitis. It can be such a shock for young people to discover that your health is vulnerable. I remember spending two weeks in a hospital one lousy summer when all my classmates from 11th grade went on a class trip to Italy!!! During that summer I had somehow developed the beginnings of shingles and meningitis at the same time. It began with some headaches and milder symptoms that only my mother recognized, which was a huge blessing because it got caught early. The shingles were treated right away and never became a problem. The meningitis, even though it was also caught and treated in the beginning stages, continued to cause headaches that stayed with me for quite some time and into 12th grade.  Needless to say, it was not my favorite summer. But at some point the headaches disappeared, thanks be to God! Many of us have witnessed children who are sick, some of them very severely so, and it always makes you sad since you feel that our bodies should “work” when we are young. But life is not perfect, has never been perfect, and our bodies are vulnerable to disease and injury. Sometimes it hits little guys. Let us pray today for all children who are fighting health battles. I know that my wife has come into contact with more than a few parents with very sick and chronically ill children through her work with Lyme disease. When children are sick it is always heartbreaking. All of you little guys, may the Lord bring healing and hope to you!

In Montgomery County, we are supposed to enter the Green phase on Friday. It will not grant us permission to let our guards down. We have seen too many countries and states experiencing a resurgence of cases, often triggered by careless gatherings. So, we will be very careful even as we plan to do a few more in-person meetings as a church, starting with a small service on July 5.  Some of you might wonder and say: ”Why do it at all at this time?” It’s a good question, but I think in some ways the summer season is an opportunity to refuel our very human need for community a little bit. I saw it last Sunday at our ice cream social in the parking lot. People were appropriately careful but I could also sense that they were happy to see some of their friends from church.  Someone said, “I needed this.”  It also convinced me to gather for in-person church services outdoors whenever the weather allows this summer. (Bring your own chair). It is without any doubt the safest option. I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I could see that we might experience a bigger resurgence in the fall and winter and won’t be able to see much of one another. And that could be a mighty long time of isolation. That’s why I am in favor of doing a few more things in-person this summer. More about the July 5th service later this week…  We will also offer another pop-up summer night gathering via our Adult Faith Formation Team.  Please stay tuned.

We have received a good number of responses to our survey, but would like to get a few more to get a good picture of where people are. Here is the survey link.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/272TMP3

Please do not forget the Car Wash on Saturday, which will benefit the Innocence Project. (See attached flier.)  

Or the Food Drive today (Wednesday) from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

We are taking a little break with Bible Studies. To be continued in a few weeks!

We are adding this virtual mini-series to our summer calendar had come out of my conversations with Rabbi Parmenter from Tiferet Bet Israel (TBI) in Blue Bell. It is called “Tender shoots of Righteousness: Re-discovering religious Civil Rights Leaders – A Jewish/Protestant conversation in the Black Lives Matter Era. We will offer the following three sessions via Zoom. A flier and the invitations to the sessions will be shared very soon.    

July 7:  Abraham Heschel: “When I marched in Selma my feet were praying.”  – A Jewish mystic on a journey toward justice – what he can teach us and what we can learn while our feet are praying. With Rabbi Danielle Parmenter.

July 21: The Civil Rights Movement in our front yard: Black leaders in Philadelphia from 1963 to 1985 and the Move Bombing.  With Assistant Prof. Emeritus for African American Studies, Dr. Richard Stewart.

August 4:  Lessons learned? Reinhold Niebuhr and the Civil Rights Movement. With excerpts from 1954 until late 1968 written by one of the best-known Civil Rights Ethicists of the time. With Pastor Andreas Wagner.

Today are the birthdays of Lara H., Pastor Shin, and Shane W. Happy birthday!!!

Be blessed and be safe! Pastor Andreas Wagner

Tuesday, June 23

Good morning church,

I am sharing a few more memories from our special church trip two years ago. On June 23, 2018, we arrived in Wittenberg – the town that is forever linked with the name of the reformer Martin Luther. Located in north-eastern Germany, this is the place where he taught and preached for most of his life. Students who wanted to learn about his thinking and theology flocked to Wittenberg and often stayed in his house where his wife Katie worked hard to feed many mouths. It was an exciting time – it always is when people feel that something new is born, when old truths are re-discovered, when crusty systems are taken down in favor of something more vital and meaningful, when the truth is freed from the chains of useless dogmas. That’s what happens in every reformation movement, that’s what happened in the 16th century, that’s what may happen today… Our group arrived in town on a pretty cool day followed by rain. In fact, it was so surprisingly cold that I had to go buy a sweater. I was in such a rush to do so that I didn’t realize the sweater featured a skull on its back – so your pastor was running around in Wittenberg with a skull, like all good pastors reminding people of the mortality of life. I think God was having a good time watching me (not for the first time). Local people were exceedingly happy about  the cool weather and the rain. They had endured a heat wave and a long drought, pretty new phenomena that many experts link to the changing global weather patterns. After a tour of the city and a choir rehearsal in the beautiful acoustics of the Castle Church, we were sent to the families where we’d spent the next two nights. And we were looking forward to being part of a church service in that majestic church the next day. It was a connection with our Lutheran past that we marked with the hope that God’s way of waking people up and re-forming their faith would come our way as well. Is this such a time? Often, out of the dark womb of difficult times something new and beautiful is born. Let us remember that. We may not see what is being formed spiritually at this time, but it may turn out to be a huge blessing.    

I would like to introduce you to another one of our confirmation students who completed instruction this year. It is his birthday today. I believe he is only turning 15! Zach B. is one of the students with the longest commute to church, but since his mom is our Family Ministry Director, he always had a ride. He was “voluntold” into service often by his mom and he rarely ever complained about all the little jobs. Maybe that was partially due to bribery  (food!), but I also think it’s because Zach is a good kid. He has grown tall over the last two years. I think he is taller than I am right now and he is certainly not done growing yet. Zach has always been a very active kid, playing lots of sports and working jobs to make extra money. It was a pleasure having him with us on our first Puerto Rico Mission trip in 2018. He felt special being the only youth on that trip, making friends fast with Pastor Sharon’s older son Felix (see the attached picture from two years ago). Everybody could see what a good worker he was.  Here are his reflections on his confirmation time and the speech he recorded:   

Please do not forget the Car Wash on Saturday, which will benefit the Innocence Project.   

Or the Food Drive tomorrow (Wednesday) from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

We are taking a little break with Bible Studies. To be continued in a few weeks!

Today are the birthdays of Zach B. and Kelsey R. Happy birthday!!!

Be blessed and be safe!

Pastor Andreas Wagner

Monday, June 22

Dear church,

It was nice to see some people yesterday for the ice cream social in the church parking lot, probably the first time some of us have seen each other in person.  The day was beautiful, and we had plenty of space to keep the appropriate distance. We counted 71 people over the course of the hour. The ice cream, I can officially attest, was delicious. We thank our generous donors who made this possible!!! I hope you also enjoyed the Father’s Day service with all those contributions from different dads; it was another great team effort. I also received our Steeple Views newsletter on Saturday already. Lisa and her crew must have gotten it out at lightning speed and for once the postal service upped its game! She was still working on it on Thursday and less than two days later it was in my mail box. I was so pleased how it came together.  Our staff is doing a tremendous job and I want to thank them all for their creativity, work and innovative ideas!

I was recently thinking that exactly two years ago, at a time when international travel was as normal as eating ice cream, our St. Peter’s Travel Group stayed in eastern Germany, walking in the footsteps of Martin Luther. We arrived in the city of Erfurt on June 21, on summer solstice day. What we didn’t not know but would soon discover was that the city was hosting a summer music festival on that very day. It was such a wonderful surprise! After checking into our hotel in the old city, our people wandered all over the place. Erfurt is a small city and its historic center is highly walkable. There were food stands and music bands, performers and street artists all over the place. The entire town was in a cheery, festive mood and we were drawn into it. What a start to a wonderful trip!  The next day we visited the Wartburg castle were some 500 years ago Luther was kept under a different name for a full year for his own protection, a time that he used to translate the New Testament into German. Later that afternoon on June 22 we had a walking tour through the city of Erfurt and concluded the day with a medieval dinner in a restaurant that specializes on that. Our people were in a very good mood and started dancing to the lute player’s tunes, also singing some of our choral repertoire carefully chosen by Kirsten with some serious and some lighter pieces. The German people in the place were delighted and our medieval musicians told us afterwards that they had never had such a good crowd. Wonderful memories!  I included two pictures from that trip.

Bethany C. gave me an update on Aiden yesterday after the emergency removal of his appendix. “Dear Pastor, Thank you so much for your thoughtful gesture on behalf of Aidan. The more prayers the better and we appreciate the love and support! Last night was difficult but today has been so much better! He is much more like himself, physically and emotionally, and has been motivated to move more on his own. His temperature is staying down and his white blood count has further decreased, which makes us hopeful that he won’t develop an infection from the perforation. 

Thank you, again, for thinking of us!”   The last attached picture shows “Super Aiden” going for a walk! We wish you a good recovery, Aiden! 

Please do not forget the Car Wash on Saturday, which will benefit the Innocence Project.   

June 22 is another popular birthday. Celebrating are Patrick O., Nathan B., and Jean M..

Happy birthday to all of you!

Be blessed and be safe!

Pastor Andreas Wagner

Sunday, June 21

Good morning church!

Happy Father’s Day to all dads.

The longest day of the year is upon us and we hope you enjoy it and find some time to watch the beautiful Father’s Day service that we put together with a number of our church dads – some of them singing, some of them speaking. We had fun with it and we hope you do as well. The musical contributions include two pieces from out of state: our old friend Dick Stover sent us a sax piece from North Carolina and a wonderful Father’s Day Song was recorded by one of Kirsten’s out-of-state relatives. Bob and Carol finish it out with Bob’s nephew Brendan Sellers. As always, the service is posted on the website and on our Face Book page.

An ice cream truck from Sweet Pea Ice Cream in Doylestown will hang out at church from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Come and get a treat!  It will be drive-through style. Enter from Church street. The ice cream is free of charge, and for that we thank the generous donors!  You can also drop of your church donation/envelope in a basket.     

Be safe and be well, and please don’t forget to support your church during these times.

Today is the birthday of another one of my confirmation graduates for this year: Jaiden M., a happy birthday!

Blessings,

Pastor Andreas Wagner

Saturday, June 20

Good morning church,

I am going to keep it brief today.  I learned that we are going to enter the green phase in the Philadelphia suburbs next Friday. It means that many of us can finally get a decent haircut if we so choose. (God knows, I need one!)  More businesses and establishments will be cleared to open up for services. I also hope that some of our members can finally then see their loved ones who have been isolated in special care units. Green phase does not mean, however, that we go back to “business as usual.”  Especially at church, when we start offering crowd-limited services on July 5 and after, we will adhere to the social distancing rules described in our document. But it does mean, based on the seating chart that John L. devised, that we can accommodate up to about 36 people instead of 25 in the sanctuary with appropriate social distancing. We could also have an even larger outdoor service. These are all baby steps and we are not rushing it. We try to keep a balance between sensible precautions and not being ruled by fear. 

Another aspect of the church re-opening not described in detail in our document is the handling of AA groups.  I have had several conversations with AA leadership. They have been managing o.k., doing recovery work via zoom. But just like our church community, they don’t reach everyone and there are aspects of their ministry that can’t be as effective through a screen. They would like to offer both virtual AA meetings and some in-person meetings.  Our document outlines that we, the church community, will not use the Fellowship Hall and kitchen area until such a time that people can be safely together in larger crowds. I expect that in the beginning (July) there may be one or two AA meetings per week in the Fellowship Hall, and over time up to four meetings opening up, but no Saturday gatherings. Saturday is cleaning day, and the double doors separating the Fellowship Hall area and the sanctuary/parlor area will remain locked throughout the week to avoid crossover.

Please join me in prayers for Aiden C. who had an emergency appendicitis done. This is what his mom (Bethany) wrote yesterday on her FaceBook page: “Well, our brave guy is out of the ER and settled into his own hospital room on the (very familiar) Peds Unit. The scan and bloodwork all point to appendicitis but they’re giving him antibiotics and want to check him in the morning to decide about surgery. It’s hard to wait but, for now, we try to rest.
Highlight for mom: fitting into the bed to cuddle my buddy and watch a movie. 💕
Highlight for Aidan: discovering his new room has a personal, touchscreen tv with on-demand. 😂
Highlight for both of us: FaceTiming the other half of the Coover Clan! We miss them!
Thank you to all of our amazing friends and family for your support! We appreciate it so much!”

Get ready for Father’s Day and Father’s Day service!        

The Sweat Pea Ice Cream truck from Doylestown will make a stop in our church parking lot on Sunday/Father’s Day between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. The ice cream will be served drive through style and is free of charge, thanks to a generous sponsor. We invite our members and friends to come and enjoy, especially all dads and their children. The ice cream is home-made, all-natural and they use only compostable containers. Do something nice for dad! We will also have a basket for church offerings on site. Come and enjoy!

I want to thank you for many early responses to our survey, see link below. We really welcome and appreciate your input!

Another mini-series that we are adding to our summer calendar had come out of my conversations with Rabbi Parmenter from Tiferet Bet Israel (TBI) in Blue Bell. It is called “Tender shoots of Righteousness: Re-discovering religious Civil Rights Leaders – A Jewish/Protestant conversation in the Black Lives Matter Era. We will offer the following three sessions via Zoom:   

July 7:  Abraham Heschel: “When I marched in Selma my feet were praying.”  – A Jewish mystic on a journey toward justice – what he can teach us and what we can learn while our feet are praying. With Rabbi Danielle Parmenter.

July 21: The Civil Rights Movement in our front yard: Black leaders in Philadelphia from 1963 to 1985 and the Move Bombing.  With Assistant Prof. Emeritus for African American Studies, Dr. Richard Stewart.

August 4:  Lessons learned? Reinhold Niebuhr and the Civil Rights Movement. With excerpts from 1954 until late 1968 written by one of the best-known Civil Rights Ethicists of the time. With Pastor Andreas Wagner.

Today is the birthday of Mitch N. Happy birthday, Mitch!

Be blessed and be safe! Pastor Andreas Wagner