This Sunday, September 12, 2021
If you are donating food to the BBQ, especially anything that will need to be sliced or prepared, please bring it to the church kitchen as early as you can on Sunday morning.

Adult Education starts Sunday at 9:00am with Seminar meeting in the Chapel. Don Smith is presenting "War and Remembrance", looking back on the war in Afghanistan and contemplating war, in general. You can join them in person or on Zoom.
Meeting ID: 862 6888 0718 Passcode: 621765 or by phone: 1 669 900 6833

Pick up your lei and stop at our photo booth on your way into Sunday Worship. Worship begins at 10:15am in person and live streamed to YouTube. This is our Aloha/Welcome Home Worship service. Please wear your Hawaiian shirts and join our celebration!

The Aloha BBQ starts after worship. We still need volunteers to set up, would love another shade structure, and need a few more masked and gloved food servers. Sign up here.

BYOB2 will be at 5:30pm in the church parking lot. Bring your own chair and beverage.
REAL talk
Remember and Re-member
Many of us vividly remember where we were 20 years ago on tomorrow's date: September 11, 2001. I was in my college apartment with a friend visiting from Germany. We watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded and he asked questions I could not answer. In the weeks, months and years to come, I continued to learn details and stories about the courage and sacrifice of that terrible day. Just before the Covid-19 pandemic, I was in NYC with another German friend, and we visited the memorial. It stands as a striking, haunting, beautiful way to honor the heroes and victims, and to forever etch something important into our collective memory.

I picked up a painting and a coffee mug on that trip that said "Love is stronger than hate." It's a phrase I learned in the United Methodist Communion liturgy from my international church in Munich: Life is stronger than death, and love is stronger than hate. You'll often hear me repeating it, because we all need a reminder. With so much division, anger, violence and "othering" in our society these days, we cannot succumb to our lowest base instincts. It also reminds me of an inscription at the Dachau concentration camp just outside of Munich: Nie wieder (never again). If we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.    
So this weekend, we will remember - we remember the tragedies in our nation's history, ancient to modern. We remember violent acts so that we are not doomed to repeat them. But we also re-member or rejoin ourselves to the Body of Christ and to a community of faith, through our participation in an Aloha homecoming worship service and BBQ. This will be a celebration of God's joy, even in hardship. As Covid mutates and rages on, we pause to dance with faith in a future filled with blessings and joy. We mourn those whom we've lost, and welcome those who will arrive, as we all attempt to reflect a bit of God's sunshine and light through our own journeys. Mahalo (thank you) for joining us - in spirit or in body.

I can't wait to celebrate with you! Pastor Emily

Note: the Bourgeois family is taking a well-deserved Sunday OFF on Sept. 26th to visit Selah at college in Iowa. If you could help set up the cameras, run slides or our livestreaming equipment, or be at the Welcome Table to greet and register everyone, we'd be GRATEFUL to you! Cross-training available next Sunday. Please click here to volunteer or here to email Pastor Emily directly.