Let’s celebrate! Join us this Sunday, July 18 at 11:30 a.m. in Fellowship Hall for a Birthday Celebration for Pastor Sarah. We’ll serve cupcakes and coffee and lemonade. It will be a great way to meet Pastor Sarah if you haven’t already.

Please let the church office know if you are going into the hospital, having a procedure done, etc. so we can pray for you or if you would like a visit from Pastor Sarah. Please let us know what prayer concerns you have.

On TODAY at 3pm there will be a Memorial Service for longtime UMCE member, Sharon Hayward Sturm (10/9/1940-2/17/2020). 

Dr. Scott Schiesswohl will be officiating. All are welcome to come and share your memories of Sharon and condolences with her family.

Plans are underway for UMCE’s 50^th Anniversary celebration on Sunday, August 1. Won’t you join us?! Please consider donating to help fund the festivities, which will include a delicious lunch prepared by our own Clyde Sacks. You can put your cash or check marked “50^th Anniversary” in the offering plate the next three Sundays.

This summer's worship series is called "Inspired: Finding Ourselves in the Story." It is based on the book Inspired by Rachel Held Evans. The writer Joan Didian famously wrote "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Scripture is the story of God and us, of God with us. It is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding story that unfolds through the lives and experiences of many faithful people who were seeking to know God, to know themselves, and to understand the world around them. In other words, people much like us. This summer, we will tell and retell some familiar and not-so-familiar stories from our sacred scriptures as we reflect on our own stories of faith. We will find ourselves in the stories, and discover the invitation from God to join in the unfolding story of grace, love, and redemption that is at the heart of our faith.

Where have we met God in the midst of our lives? What is a moment where God showed up and brought grace or hope or peace or freedom? Those moments are part of the way we mark our story of faith – our story with God. In today’s scripture, Hagar, Sarah’s slave, the mother of Ishmael, encounters God in a moment of pain and desperation, and gives God a name of her own – El Roi, the God Who Sees. This week's story comes from Genesis 21:1-2; 8-21. You can find a link to the scripture here.

Good news from UMCE’s Fundraising committee: we’re selling Colorado western slope fruit again this year! Watch Happenings for updates on when we’ll take orders for peaches, pears and apples, which will be delivered to UMCE after Labor Day. Get your recipes ready, as the fruit is coming soon!

The Barefoot Mile walk and fundraiser is happening again this year on Saturday, AUGUST 21ST and we are organizing an UMCE team! Join our team and receive a special team shirt!

Please register by THIS SUNDAY as I need a few weeks to have the shirts made! Register here today!

If you would like to donate to this cause, you can do that here. Thank you!

Remember reading in Happenings about the Evergreen Public Access Defibrillation (EPAD) Golf Tournament, held at Hiwan Golf Club on June 7^th? With the help of UMCE’s sponsorship of a hole, the tournament raised $12,236.40! That money goes straight to the EPAD program, which facilitates access to AEDs and teaches CPR in the Evergreen community. UMCE’s own Maureen Sullivan and Debby Humphrey volunteered at the tournament. Don’t forget that UMCE is home to one of EPAD’s AEDs. It’s located on the wall outside the double kitchen doors.

An estimated 2 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade every year (The US Dept. of State, 2008).

In 2019, JOY International's Tactical Operations Team trained over 120 police officers in Cambodia and Belize - the first step to freedom! The cost to JOY is $12,000 - $15,000 for each training. Since the 1990’s, JOY International, in cooperation with their law enforcement partners, empowered over 2,500 rescues. A rescue can involve a single victim or multiple victims. Every dollar raised by JOY International helps fight trafficking through the rescue, restoration, and reintegration of children, teens, and young adults that have been trafficked. There is no cost to SIGN UP TODAY TO WALK THE BAREFOOT MILE! The Mountain Community BFM will be held at Marshdale Park in Evergreen, CO, on August 21, 2021. Please visit www.joy.org for more information about the work of JOY International.

Hello there Mean Street family! We have wonderful news to announce: our newly renovated showers are now up and running! Will, one of our volunteers, donated considerable time and skills over many months to repair showers that had been sitting dormant above our café for years.  With the help of Ilya, a plumber also volunteering his time, they replaced the old, leaking drainage lines and installed a new hot water system. Generous donors Megan and Kerry provided the funds for a new tankless water heater which provides hot water to the showers, café kitchen, and a new washer.  Another volunteer, Barb, graciously donated the new washer along with a new dryer for the many towels and washcloths that we will be using. Several other donors have given us funds to purchase needed toiletries and underwear. God’s blessings in this endeavor are overwhelming. We have been offering showers and haircuts for the past two weeks and the difference in our clients is marked; giving the homeless a measure of dignity that they rarely experience and that, until now, we could not provide.

All of this has been made possible by our donors, volunteers and prayer partners. Thank you all for your support in these troubled times. We are truly blessed to serve God with you. If you would like to become more involved in this ministry, consider volunteering and giving.

Dearly Beloved,

As I write this, I’m beginning to dig my worldly possessions out of the boxes they traveled to Colorado in and thinking about where to put pictures on the walls. It is moving time for the United Methodist Church. Churches across the connection have been experiencing goodbyes and looking forward to new possibilities for ministry and relationship. This year, that includes us!

Transitions and changes always come with some excitement, some sadness, some nervousness, and a whole lot of questions. I know that I am experiencing all of those things right now, and I suspect some of you are too. Over the next weeks and months, I look forward to getting to know each other and discovering some of the ways we can be in ministry together, sharing the love of Jesus with our community in Evergreen and beyond. For now though, I thought I’d let you know a little bit about me.

I’m a shoe-loving, reality-tv-watching, book-loving, curious, enthusiastic, hopefully-on-most-days-following-Jesus-and-loving-her-neighbor kind of a person. I’m also an ordained elder in the Mountain Sky Conference. I graduated with a Master of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary in 2011. In my spare time I’m relearning to play the piano (something that I started during COVID), and enjoy playing board games and watching movies with my family, and practicing yoga. Now that we’re in Evergreen, I’m looking forward to exploring the trails and really want to try kayaking! If you come to my office, you’re likely to find me listening to the Beatles, Prince, or Beyonce.

I met my husband Jerry in 2015 when we both joined the Board of Directors for Not In Our Town Billings, an organization that seeks to bring the community together to stop hate and learn to promote justice. Jerry and I were married in 2019. Our son, (Jerry’s son, my stepson), Zion turns 15 this month and will be a sophomore in high school. Zion is spending the summer with his mom and will be joining us here in Evergreen in August. Our family also includes a very adorable dog named Wesley. Wesley and I first met each other at the Bitterroot Humane Society in Montana in 2011.

For the past seven years, I have served with the people of Grace United Methodist Church in Billings, Montana as their pastor. Prior to serving there, I was the pastor of the United Methodist-American Baptist Church in Hamilton, Montana. My passion for ministry lies in preaching and crafting worship, teaching, and social justice ministries. I believe that we are at our best as church when we are nurturing each other in faith through worship, prayer, and learning and then going into the world to live out that faith as witnesses to and carriers of God’s justice, mercy, and hope. I see my role as pastor as one of equipping disciples by nurturing, teaching, praying, empowering, accompanying, and leading.

I am very excited to be joining you in ministry at UMCE. I have heard excellent things about you all as a church from folks in the conference as well as others in the Evergreen community. Your reputation as a welcoming church committed to caring for the community proceeds you!

Jerry and I have been so blessed by your warm welcome, kind notes, and emails during this transition time. Thank you so much for the joy-filled, caring reception that you have given us. I can’t wait to know you more and to work with you. As we take steps out in faith together, may we sense God’s ever-present grace encouraging us, comforting us, and calling us to new relationships, new experiences, and new possibilities.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Sarah

Visit us on the web:  www.evergreenumc.org