Tuesday 5:30pm: Qi Gong in Parish Hall

Wednesday 11am: Bible Study in Parish Hall

Wednesday 4:30pm: Children’s Choir Rehearsal

Wednesday 5:30pm: Trinity Wednesday Potluck & Discussion

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

Prayer List - to submit a prayer request click here.

Altar Flowers - if you would like to dedicate Altar Flowers click here.

Our word of the week is the Greek word for fish, ICHTHUS. Click the link to read the Episcopal Church glossary definition, and click here to read a bit more about how the fish became a symbol of Christianity. 

No Sunday School this Sunday – the adults will have the annual parish meeting in the Parish Hall, the nursery will be open for the little ones, and the rest of the children and youth will gather in the Parish Hall Annex (where the sofas and game tables are) for activities during Sunday School time so that teachers can attend the parish meeting. At the parish meeting, we’ll elect three new vestryfolk (see vestry-elect profiles at the bottom of this e-mail!), delegates to diocesan convention, hear a brief review of the major accomplishments of 2019, take a look at the parish finances and the 2020 budget, and learn more about what we hope to do in 2020, including our biggest plan for the year: our expansion and renovation project.

Join us on Wednesday evenings for a potluck supper (5:30pm-6pm) and a discussion group (6pm-7pm)! The nursery will be open for childcare, including activities for older children. For the potluck, bring whatever you want to share, and if you can’t make it to the potluck, just come for the group discussion. We’re reading Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired, and for this Wednesday read the “The Letter” and Chapter Eight: Church Stories. We have two more weeks with this book, and on February 12th, we’ll begin our next book, Benyamin Cohen’s book My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, his memoir of rediscovering his Judaism, and the good faith of other people, while attending Christian churches for a year. You can find it on Amazon here, or order it from your local independent bookseller! 

Trinity Folsom’s ECW (Episcopal Church Women) is planning on painting the town red and every other color of the rainbow on Sunday, February 9th, from 1-3:30 at the Painted Cork (726 Sutter Street). Childcare will be provided at the church for those who need it (just let Barbara know so that we will have appropriate staffing). We’ve reserved 40 spaces; the cost of the event is $35. You can reserve your spot with prepayment (cash or check) by talking to Karen Reid or Barbara Gillespy on Sundays, or put your name with payment in an envelope and put it through the mail slot in the front door of Trinity House. We’re also asking attendees to bring finger foods or beverages (non-alcoholic, beer, or wine) to share. 

Do you enjoy singing? Are you looking for a way to serve with your talents at Trinity? Trinity’s choirs invite you to attend an open house next week. Attend a rehearsal to see what the choirs do between Sunday services! Come meet other singers, learn about the choirs, and enjoy some tasty treats. There is no pressure to join the choir following the open house, and all are welcome to come and participate, even if only for one night. If you are interested in singing for Holy Week and Easter, new members are encouraged to attend the open house. To attend, please RSVP to Brett Judson so that a binder with music will be ready for you!

Here are the various choir rehearsals that you may attend. When you RSVP to Brett, please indicate which rehearsal you are interested in attending:

We’re the chartering organization for Cub Scout Pack 1855, and we’ll be celebrating Scout Sunday with them at the 11:15am service on February 2nd. We encourage all Scouts and Scouting volunteers to wear their uniforms to church that day, especially if you are coming to the 11:15am service. While Scout Sunday is a Boy Scouts of America tradition (though our pack has dens for boys or girls), I think we would welcome the support of members of other scouting organizations wearing their uniforms, too!

We’re still waiting to hear back from the city about our permit applications, but we are doing some work to prepare our campus for the beginning of construction. The project will begin with the house we own at 802 Mormon Street, behind the Parish Hall, the future home of our nursery, Children’s Chapel, and youngest Sunday School classes. Last week we took down the two giant trees in the backyard; we love trees, and will plant more, but one of these was totally rotten and was a real hazard to our building and the neighbor’s house, and both of them were too large to have been planted so close to the foundation of the house, and their roots and branches had already caused major problems with utility pipes and lines. We also removed the old patio cover and some unused utility lines that crossed the yard and would have to go before construction could begin. It pales in comparison to the transformation that will happen once our project begins, but it’s exciting that we are getting ready as we wait for our permits. Hooray!

Save the date for Bunco night on Saturday, February 15th, from 5:30pm-8:30pm in the Parish Hall. Tickets are $20, and you can buy tickets in the Parish Hall on Sunday mornings (up until February 9th) or you can reserve your seat by e-mailing Janice Freeberg or giving her a call (916.989.5551), or e-mail Barbara in the church office. Childcare will be available. Bunco is a great way to get to know people because by the end of the night, you will have played at least one round with every single person in the room (wear your nametags!). The ticket price pays for unlimited snacks and drinks, and for cash prizes for Bunco winners. While not technically a fundraiser, we donate any leftover money to one of our outreach partners or use it to fund one of our outreach projects.

Our 2020 VBS will be held July 20-24th. More information will be available soon, but we wanted you to be able to save the dates on your calendar.

Because most meet at times when parishioners aren’t normally on our campus, you may not know that Trinity Folsom hosts more recovery groups than anywhere else in town. Just as an example, there are nineteen AA meetings each week in Folsom, and nine of them are here on our campus. The Episcopal Church has a long history of supporting recovery groups: one of the co-founders of AA, Bill Wilson, credited the Rev’d Sam Shoemaker, an Episcopal priest, as one of the major influences on the group’s philosophy (Sam Shoemaker is also commemorated on our liturgical calendar on January 31st). We have twelve groups that meet on our campus, ranging from traditional Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon (for family and friends of alcoholics) groups to a group for sex and porn addicts in recovery. These groups make a very modest donation to the parish for the use of the space, but ultimately it doesn’t cover the cost of utilities and wear-and-tear, and we consider hosting these groups part of our outreach to neighbors in need. Space in Folsom is difficult to find and very expensive, and not everyone wants to host addicts in recovery; it really is a service we provide to open our doors to these people who are working so hard to transform their lives and maintain their hard-won sobriety. Most of the people who attend are not members of the parish, but some of our parishioners attend recovery groups here and some of our parishioners have joined the parish because they first came here to attend a recovery group or because a relative or friend attended a group here. If you or someone you know is thinking about seeking help for an addiction or is already in recovery and looking for a group, you can contact the parish office for our schedule or look at the relevant group’s website (for example, http://aasacramento.org/meetings/ lists all the AA meetings in metro Sacramento, and you can search by meeting time or location). And all of us can keep in our prayers the hundreds of people in recovery attending meetings on our campus.  

The vestry met again last Tuesday, 1/21, and we are already off to a busy 2020. We reviewed the final budget numbers for 2019, which closed out with a surplus of $101,777! We've allocated 10% of that money to be distributed by our Outreach Committee, donated $1000 each to Father Todd & Father Charlie's seminaries, and are putting the rest into our Capital Improvement fund that helps fund new projects around the church, including our expansion and renovation. We approved recommendations from the Outreach Committee to use the money from the budget surplus to put on another event for Rise Against Hunger on February 28th and to work with a non-profit called RIP Medical Debt that helps people resolve outstanding medical debts.

We also heard updates from the Building Committee, who have been hard at work starting projects around our new children's building, and are actively working on getting bids in the next few weeks so we can begin the larger work on that building. The front and backyards are already both looking much improved! As we look more closely at the building, we are of course finding things that we didn't know we would have to fix that we will have to incorporate into the project. We are continuing, though, to find the most cost-effective way that will allow us to do a thorough job & save us on our costs & maintenance in the future.

We look forward to seeing you all at the Annual Meeting this Sunday, where we'll be electing the new slate of candidates to serve on vestry for the upcoming year! ~ Shannon Dillon, Senior Warden

This week we received a check from Merrill Lynch, probably an IRA distribution, but nothing on it tells us who had it sent to us, and Merrill Lynch can’t tell us either. The date on it is 1.17.2020. Did you recently have some money sent to us? Call Barbara in the office (916.985.2495) to verify the amount and see if it is yours so that we can properly credit it as a donation from you. Thanks!

Interested in attending diocesan convention as one of our delegates? We have three open delegate positions and two alternate positions. The 2020 diocesan convention will be held November 6th-7th. If you’re interested, e-mail Fr. Todd. 

Graham, who grew up in The Episcopal Church in West Virginia, first attended Trinity Folsom in the late 1970s, when he and his wife Karin moved to the Sacramento area. They moved away, but have been members of Trinity Folsom since they returned to California in 1994. Graham and Karin, a native of Germany, met when Graham was in the Air Force and stationed in Pakistan, and were married in the Church of England parish in Lahore. They’ve been involved in Episcopal churches throughout their lives wherever they’ve moved. Graham is retired from the Air Force and the State of California. Graham and Karin attend the 7:30am service, at which Graham serves as a lector and Karin on the Altar Guild; they are also coffee hour hosts and regular participants in Trinity Wednesdays. Graham has previously served the parish as a member of the vestry, the rector search committee, and last year’s capital campaign committee. Fr. Todd asked Graham to serve on the vestry because of his profound sense of duty and strong and deep commitment to this parish and serving our neighbors in need.  

Judy grew up at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Petaluma, and has been worshipping Trinity Folsom since 1986. She has been involved with The Episcopal Church throughout her life; her career in ag/chem and pharmaceutical sales took her to Delaware and the San Joaquin Valley here in California, and she was active in Episcopal parishes in both locations. Judy and her husband Scott attend the 9am service, at which they serve as ushers and Judy serves as a lector. You’ll recognize Scott as one of the folks who is always setting up chairs for overflow crowds in church and in the Sunday School for Adults. Scott and Judy taught our Financial Peace University class in the fall of 2018 and hope to offer it again in the future. Judy volunteers in the Thrift Shop and as part of the work group that looks after our buildings and grounds, and often leads the Trinity Trekkers in Fr. Charlie’s absence. She has previously served the parish as a member of the vestry, the rector search committee, and last year’s capital campaign committee. Fr. Todd asked Judy to serve on the vestry because of her dedication to this parish, her proven leadership in so many aspects of our parish life, and her tireless enthusiasm for this parish to follow God’s call for us into the future.   

Asia was born in Portland, Oregon, but grew up in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan where their parents served as missionaries. After almost ten years in Kyrgyzstan, their family moved to New Zealand, and then finally landed here in Folsom, where they graduated from Vista del Lago in 2012. Asia got their degree in graphic design from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2016, and is a freelance graphic designer. When they moved back to Folsom, they knew they wanted to start going to church again, but wanted to try something different than the evangelical tradition in which they were raised. Asia values Trinity Folsom’s commitment to traditional liturgy and greater inclusivity. Asia attends the 11:15am service, is a regular at Trinity Wednesdays, and is involved in the newly forming young adults group. Fr. Todd asked Asia to serve on the vestry because he values their thoughtfulness, their appreciation of the Episcopal expression of liturgical worship, and their perspective as a young and relatively new Episcopalian.  

Trinity Episcopal Church

 801 Figueroa Street

Folsom, CA 95630

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