Wednesday 4:30pm: Children’s Choir Rehearsal

Wednesday 5:30pm: Lenten Soup Supper

Wednesday 6pm: Lenten Book Group

Wednesday 7pm: Bible Study

Wednesday 7pm: 11:15am Choir Rehearsal

Thursday 5:30pm: Contemplative Prayer 

Thursday 7:30pm: 9am Choir Rehearsal

Thrift Shop: Monday 10am-Noon, Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-1pm

Our word of the week from The Episcopal Church glossary is red-letter day. In prayer books with single-color printing, the red-letter days are printed in boldface type. We’re beginning to observe the red-letter days with Eucharist in the church, and there’s a red-letter day coming up on Monday the 25th: the Annunciation (see below!).

Sunday School classes for children and adults are from 10:30am-11:10am. This Sunday, the class for adults will be learning about building the Temple in Jerusalem and surprisingly wise ways to settle disputes.

We’ll be celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel tells the Blessed Virgin Mary that she will bear the Son of God, on Monday, March 25th, with a Eucharist at noon in the church. Monday’s celebration will be especially brief, but if you’re available, we hope you will join us to remember this special day.

After a Lenten season without flowers, our Flower Guild goes all out to decorate the church for Easter. If you would like to make a gift and a dedication for the Easter altar flowers, use the online flower dedication form here and for the date, choose April 21st. The suggested donation is $50, but if you don’t have it, don’t worry about it, make the gift that you can to help defray the cost of the Easter altar flowers. Easter is a particularly appropriate day on which to dedicate the altar flowers in memory of those who have died in “the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.”

There’s a new scam making the rounds in which someone pretending to be your priest e-mails you and asks you to do a favor, most often to purchase a gift card for them to use to help someone. Don’t fall for it! Neither Fr. Charlie nor I would ever ask you to do this, and we would never e-mail you asking you to do it (also, if you don’t already, learn to look at the sender’s address – if it isn’t one of the addresses we normally use at trinityfolsom.org, it probably isn’t us!). And if you ever receive an e-mail from one of us that seems a little strange and you want to verify that it is really us, call us or the church office (916.985.2495) to verify, we won’t mind a bit!

Four of our friends at Powerhouse Ministries are graduating from the Transformation Center, a two-year residential program for which our parishioners make dinners one week a month. They were recently interviewed for the podcast “Humans With Faith,” and you can listen to part one here, part two here, and part three here. And if you’re interested in volunteering in our ministry with Powerhouse, call or e-mail Fr. Charlie for more information! 

Nadia Bolz-Weber’s new book on Christianity, gender, and sexuality is out, and we’re reading it for a special Lenten book group this year. The book is called Shameless, and you can pick it up at your local bookstore or order it online. We meet on Wednesdays, beginning with a soup supper at 5:30 (kids are welcome to join us for supper!), and then meet to discuss the book from 6pm-7pm. Here’s a link to sign up to bring a soup:  https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0c4caaab23a6ff2-lenten. The nursery will be open and fully staffed so that parents (infants and up to age 12) can attend.

If you missed the second meeting this week, you can still join us next week! We’re reading chapters 6 & 7 for Wednesday, March 27th.

Biola University’s Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts has created an online daily Lenten devotional that includes a lesson from Scripture paired with art, music, poetry, and a reflection. You can find it here, and you can also subscribe and they will deliver it to you each day by e-mail. Thanks for the tip, Deanna!

Any children or youth of the parish looking for good karma or service hours are invited to help out in the Thrift Shop this Sunday (March 24th) after the 11:15 service. The staff needs to restock after the Bag Sale, and would be happy to have some help moving items from the shed to the store. About two hours of strong muscles, enthusiasm, and energy are needed and will be rewarded with pizza and “first dibs” on new merchandise.

Many of the children and youth from Trinity Folsom attend one of the local Episcopal summer camps, and it’s the time of year to begin looking at the various offerings and to sign up. Between the two of them, Fr. Todd and Fr. Charlie have been to all the summer camps, and Fr. Charlie will be serving as guest chaplain for a week at Galilee this summer. Feel free to ask them questions. The majority of Trinitarians head to Camp Galilee on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe (and it just so happens that the chaplain at Camp Galilee, the Rev’d Mikayla Dunfee, is the fiancée of our Fr. Charlie!). You can read more about Camp Galilee and its programs here.

Our older youth (finishing grades 7-12 in 2019) may be interested in attending the diocesan pilgrimage program, Pathways. This year’s focus will be on social and ecological justice, and home base will be Humboldt State University. Read more about it here.

Two summer camps owned and operated by the Episcopal Diocese of California (San Francisco and the East Bay) are within our diocesan boundaries and are happy to accept children and youth from the Diocese of Northern California. St. Dorothy’s Rest is in the redwoods near Occidental, and you can read more about it here, and Bishop’s Ranch is just outside Healdsburg and offers the BREAD camp for children and youth, and you can read more about it here. 

Last year, the Diocese of Northern California offered a $200 “campership” per camper; we don’t know yet if they will be offering a campership program this year. Fr. Todd is able to help those needing some financial assistance (camp is expensive!), and does not want the cost to stand in the way of any child who wishes to attend camp, so just let him know and he will see what he can do. And even if you aren’t applying for a campership, if you sign up for any of the camps, let Fr. Todd and Fr. Charlie know so we can know where our kids are this summer!

For the second year in a row, Trinity will be offering a full week of Vacation Bible School free-of-charge. The theme will be “Who is my neighbor?” and the program will help kids understand how to better love God and neighbor by learning about neighbors from all over the globe. VBS will run from Monday, July 22nd thru Friday July 26th, from 9-noon. Our time together will be filled with interactive storytelling, music, games, and creative art experiences. Though VBS is geared towards grades K-5, all are welcome, and we will have volunteer opportunities for older children, youth, and adults. We will also have nursery care available for the parents of young children who would like to volunteer to help out with VBS. 

Note: Since many neighboring churches will not be offering VBS this summer, we anticipate that our roster will be much larger than last year. To help us plan ahead, please email Karen van Winkle if your children are planning on attending. 

During Lent, we don’t have flowers on the altar, so if you wish to make a donation to celebrate an important life event, give thanks for someone or something, or to remember a loved one who has died, you can instead give the six candles that we have on the altar for this season. The suggested donation is $50, but you can donate any amount. These donations go directly to the Altar Guild to support their work in honoring God by making our altar a beautiful focus of our worship. You can donate altar candles on the website.

If you have a request to add to the parish prayer list, e-mail prayers@trinityfolsom.org. Prayer request will be kept confidential within the intercessory prayer group. If you’re interested in joining this prayer group, e-mail Fr. Charlie. 

Trinity Episcopal Church

 801 Figueroa Street

Folsom, CA 95630

(916) 985-2495 ~ www.trinityfolsom.org