Vacation Bible School 2019 – Monday

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This year’s Vacation Bible School looks to be one of the best!  With 50 kids registered, and some amazing adult volunteers signed on to lead and help out, our hallways and classrooms were jumping this morning!

How far does God’s love reach? All the way across the Parish Hall…and then it wraps around a couple of times!
Game time is outside, led by Nancy Calvert. The kids are competing with the adults to see who can collect the most water.
Music with Delores and Harry Baisden – learning new songs about God’s love, and singing some old favorites
Snack time included bugs (strawberries with pretzel stick legs), and fresh fruit.
Listening to the morning’s story.
Craft time with Mr. Brown-beard (AKA Adam Keiper) and Mr. James!

Day three of the Youth Mission Trip to Hurley, VA

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Breakfast on day three was courtesy of Harry’s team.  Harry and crew delighted us with biscuits and gravy and fried June apples.  Landon and MacGregor picked the apples the day before during some down time on their worksite.  Most of the kids ate cereal.

Harry’s team continued their work on the bathroom project, redoing some old plumbing and working on a shower surround.

George’s team (with Allison and Liv) began working on a wheelchair ramp and plans to have their work finished Thursday.

Meanwhile, the painting crew finished scraping (thanks to Darius’ dogged determination to get every last loose bit of paint off the house!).  Unfortunately, an afternoon downpour slowed their worked considerably.

After an hour break under the shelter of the front porch, the crew was able to put a coat of paint over the entire house but weren’t able to finish the project.

Pearl, the owner of the house, was very pleased with her freshly scraped and painted house.  Today (Thursday) may be a short work day as part of our team (Ted and MacGregor) are helping load a shipment of USDA food that they’ll be delivering to the Center around noon, and all hands will be necessary to unload the truck.

 

Day two of the Youth Mission Trip to Hurley, VA

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Team 2 started the day off for us with pancakes, ham and scrambled eggs.  Ted even got fancy and sprinkled little colorful candy sprinkles into the pancakes…not sure if they gave the exact effect he was hoping for.  But, it’s the thought that counts!  Thanks, Ted, Victor and George!
 

Our valiant team of painters returned to their project to finish scraping, and begin painting, their house. With rain threatening their work, the team worked feverishly to complete painting the front porch and one side of the house.
Battling wasps and the heat, the painting team persevered. Tomorrow is another day.
 

Harry’s team laid linoleum flooring.  MacGregor and Landon learned to cut the flooring to fit.
George’s team laid flooring and applied a coating of koolseal to the roof of a trailer
We ended the day with a brief service of compline on the front porch.

 

Nothing like a couple of happy missioners!

Day one of the Youth Mission Trip to Hurley, VA

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Day one started out with threatening skies which soon cleared, bringing a hot, humid work day.  After an amazing breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and french toast, we divided into three work teams:  one team to finish replacing a bathroom floor (led by Harry Baisden), one team to finish hanging some paneling and installing baseboards (led by George DeFilippi) and one larger team to scrape and paint an older house (led by Frs. Jeff and Paul).

After a gut-busting, starch-o-rama dinner of chicken and dumplings, we took a celebratory trip to Walmart in Grundy!  Who says we don’t know how to have fun?  We ended the day with a brief service of compline on the front porch of the bunk house.

July 1: Pauli Murray, priest, 1985

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On July 1, we honor the memory of Pauli Murray, an early and committed civil rights activist and the first African American woman priest ordained in The Episcopal Church.

Liberating God, we thank you most heartily for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from bonds of prejudice and fear, so that we show forth your reconciling love and true freedom, which you revealed through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Born in Baltimore in 1910, Murray was raised in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from Hunter College in 1933. After seeking admission to graduate school at the University of North Carolina in 1938, she was denied entry due to her race. She went on to graduate from Howard University Law School in 1944. While a student at Howard, she participated in sit-in demonstrations that challenged racial segregation in drugstores and cafeterias in Washington, DC.

Denied admission to Harvard University for an advanced law degree because of her gender, Murray received her Master of Laws degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1945.

In 1948 the Women’s Division of Christian Service of the Methodist Church hired Murray to compile information about segregation laws in the South. Her research led to a 1951 book, States’ Laws on Race and Color, that became a foundational document for Thurgood Marshall in his work on the decisive Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954.

Committed to dismantling barriers of race, Murray saw the civil rights and women’s movements as intertwined and believed that black women had a vested interest in the women’s movement.

Perceiving a call to ordained ministry, Murray began her studies at General Theological Seminary in 1973. She was ordained deacon in June 1976, and, on January 8, 1977, she was ordained priest at Washington National Cathedral. She served at Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., from 1979 to 1981 and at Holy Nativity Church in Baltimore until her death in 1985.

Murray’s books include the family memoir Proud Shoes: Story of an American Family (1956) and the personal memoir Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (1987).

(Hagiography taken from A Great Cloud of Witnesses, Church Publishing, Inc.)