Wednesday 11am: Bible Study

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 Agnus Dei. During the season of Lent, we will be using the Agnus Dei as the Fraction Anthem, the part of the liturgy we say or sing immediately after the breaking of the bread.  

It’s Fr. Todd’s least favorite day of the year: don’t forget to set your clocks an hour ahead this Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Sunday School classes for children and adults are from 10:30am-11:10am. This Sunday, the class for adults will study the stories of two mothers who would do anything for their children.

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 first meeting this week, you can still join us next week! We’re reading chapters 4 & 5 for Wednesday, March 20th.

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!

If you are a wearer of lipstick, the Altar Guild requests that you blot your lips before you take Communion. Lipstick on the chalice ends up on the linen purificators, and it can be quite the task to get it out. Thanks!

Have you ever been interested in serving as a reader or a chalice during the Sunday morning liturgy, or would you like to help usher so that people feel warmly welcomed here? We’re always recruiting readers, chalices, and ushers! If you have any interest in these ministries, e-mail Fr. Todd. You’re welcome to try it out to see if it is a fit for you, and if it’s not, that’s okay, you don’t have to keep doing it. 

The Trinity Thrift Shop Spring Sale begins tomorrow, Saturday, March 16th with the Half Price Sale, and continues throughout the following week, culminating in the $10 Bag Sale on March 22nd! The Thrift Shop is also looking for volunteers to help empty the shop on the 22nd after the sale ends, contact the church office if you would like to volunteer, or contact Sue Mack directly. And most of all, we’ll need new items to restock the shop for the re-opening on March 28th, so if you’re watching the Marie Kondo series or just doing your spring cleaning, donate those gently used treasures to the Thrift Shop so that they can spark joy for someone else!

If you have brown paper grocery bags at home, the Thrift Shop would love to have them – we’ll need a lot of them for the Bag Sale on March 22nd. Bring them with you to church on Sunday, or drop them by the Thrift Shop or the church office this week. Thanks so much!

Any children or youth of the parish looking for good karma or service hours are invited to help out in the Thrift Shop on 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.

If you have a middle-school or high-school aged youth who might enjoy meeting other kids, growing spiritually, and serving others by working on construction projects in an undeserved community, please consider joining Karen and Emma Harvey the week of July 14-19 as they head to Chiloquin, Oregon with the Sierra Service Project! Karen has participated in three of these trips, and our own Emma Harvey will be one of the construction supervisors. Cost is about $450 each, but the church should be able to offset that cost if a young person wants to go. If you have any questions or are interested, please contact  Karen Harvey or 916-849-1693.

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. 

We have several families with children with special needs, and our new vestry member Deb Goldsmith and Fr. Todd met to begin a discussion about how we can better serve these families. We’re wondering if there aren’t other children with special needs we don’t know about, too. We’re wondering what might be helpful for the church to provide to make attending church and Sunday School a better experience for these children. If you have a child with special needs, we would love it, if you’re comfortable doing so, identifying yourself to  Deb or Fr. Todd in order to join the conversation. Thanks so much!

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