March 2016

P2
Scout Sunday
The Scouting program at Faith Lutheran Church is
more than just an activity for our youth to learn
about the outdoors.
P3
Refugee Committee
Sero Family re-settled in U.K.
Ibrahim Ahmad family from Sudan have arrived
in Brantford.
P4
Commentary
Kicking the Samaritan: Christianity and the AntiMuslim Backlash.
ECHOES NEWSLETTER 03/2016
Refugee Family
2016
GOOD NEWS - THEY HAVE
ARRIVED!
In thankfulness to God, we
welcome the Ibrahim Ahmad
Family from Sudan to Brantford.
They arrived safely at Pearson
airport on March 10 and
were met by a group of our
parishoners.
The family had been living in
Lebanon for the past 10 years
and are looking forward to their
new beginnings in Canada.
Thanks to the Congregation of
Faith for your support.
Easter Breakfast
Sunday, March 27, 2016
9 am to 10:15 am
Easter Sunday Eucharists
MARCH 27 AT 9 AM AND 10:30 AM
Easter Breakfast is available from 9 am to 10:15 am in Luther Hall. Prepared and
served by the youth of our congregation. Gifts to the Youth Gathering Fund will be
gratefully and joyfully received at the Breakfast.
CLAY is an incredible gathering of Anglican and Lutheran youth from across Canada. The
Gathering takes place every two years at different locations across Canada. Our Gathering in
2016 will take place in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, from August 17-21!
At CLAY we’ll encounter scripture in meaningful ways, experience ancient and modern ways
of worship, learn together in special interest forums, enjoy fantastic social events, explore
Charlottetown, make connections with youth from all over Canada and celebrate our life
together. Visit http://claygathering.ca for more details.
Scouting Sunday
Refugee Committee
Eastern Synod News
Alive in the Moment: Growing in God
2016 Lay Spiritual Retreat
Scouting Sunday,
February 2016
Sero Family re-located
to UK.
Lay Spiritual Retreat
Host:
Bishop Michael Pryse
Spiritual Director:
Sister Anne Keffer, M.Ed, D.Min
Worship Leaders:
Rev. Douglas Reble and Jamie Courtney
Retreat Director:
Dorothy Frook
Telephone: 519-881-2798
Email: dbfrook@wightman.ca
Registrar:
Prijna Gingrich
Telephone: 519-208-5652
Email: anp.gingrich@rogers.com
Sister Anne Keffer is a diaconal minister of the ELCIC and a deaconess in the Deaconess Community, ELCA/ELCIC. Her
Doctor of Ministry is in Spiritual Direction, and her desire is to help foster a deeper relationship with God, who has
always been a real Presence in her life. Humour, stories, smiles and holy tears characterize her leadership.
Bringing Youth to Christ
Through a Scouting
Ministry - Scout Sunday
THE SCOUTING PROGRAM AT FAITH LUTHERAN
CHURCH IS MORE THAN JUST AN ACTIVITY FOR OUR
YOUTH TO LEARN ABOUT THE OUTDOORS.
lining up for Church Parade
Jane Redin
Coffee Hour
Scouting
Information Wall
Scouting provides fun, fellowship, and training to our youth as
well as youth in our community. It emphasizes honesty, selfreliance, and respect. Through a year-round program, it affects
character, citizenship, and personal fitness.
Scouter Prayer
Dear Lord, from your judgment seat on high,
Look down on a Scoutmaster such as I.
Search me through and find me whole,
Then help me, Lord, to reach my goal.
Help me, Lord, to work for Thee,
Guard my homeland—keep it free.
Help me to work with others and be kind,
Helpful with my hands and mind.
Keep me, Lord, both well and strong,
To help growing boys along.
Control my thoughts, keep them right,
Sound, clean weapons for life's fight.
Protect my morals, keep them high,
Grant this to a Scouter such as I.
—Author Unknown
THANKS
THANK YOU
Feeling extremely blessed from sandra arndt
Our grateful appreciation and thanks to Bill
and Isabel Neeb for their caring concern and
friendship during the time I was at Brierwood
Gardens. Bill and Isabel are unique examples
of Christian Love and Kindness personified.
Thanks to everyone who visited, sent cards
and flowers and prayed for me before, during
and after my surgery. It is greatly appreciated
and has helped me heal so much quicker than
expected. Thanks everyone!
God's Blessings from Lance and Marlene Sams
Louise Pickering at
her 90th Birthday
Celebration, Luther
Hall, Faith Lutheran
Church
Thank You from the
Pickering Family
SHE IS MISSED
T
A
T
he family of the late Louise Pickering wish to thank
everyone who sent cards, flowers, donation cards in
memory of our Mom.
lso a big thanks to everyone who helped the day of the
funeral. It sure was lovely and befitting a lady who
was a faithful member.
hanks again.
Dammee pictured in May 2014 as
she joined the Sewing Group for
a tour of the Ontario Christian
Gleaners facility.
Canada, my home
far from home!
BY DAMMEE SERO
Three years ago,
You welcomed me warmly.
Here, I felt safer than where I was,
You are what I hoped my country could be,
Sero Family re-settled in U.K.
BY LIZ MONGEON, SEWING GROUP, REFUGEE COMMITTEE
Dammee Sero wishes to express her feelings of thankfulness to Faith
Lutheran Church for its intent to sponsor her family out of the Kakuma
Refugee Camp. The Sero family was miraculously selected in August
by the UNHCR to resettle in the UK. So, although, in the end, we were
not her family’s sponsor, Dammee has been deeply touched by the
effort and generosity of many members and friends of Faith. She was
inspired to write the following poem by her new friends, professors,
and the government of Canada (World University of Service of Canada
scholarship) who gave her the opportunity to study and live here since
September 2012.
You have become my home, far from home,
In you, I believe,
To thrive and achieve,
To see beyond the impossible dream,
Seen your values and sense of care,
Humanity at work everywhere,
Amazed at your work,
Humbled by your kindness and generosity,
Your actions restored my faith in humanity,
Strengthened the bond of humanhood,
The connection, we all had,
The respect and dignity of mankind!...
Alive in the Moment: Growing in God
WE CARE MILESTONE!
2016 Lay Spiritual Retreat
Host:
Bishop Michael Pryse
Spiritual Director:
Sister Anne Keffer, M.Ed, D.Min
Worship Leaders:
Rev. Douglas Reble and Jamie Courtney
Retreat Director:
Dorothy Frook
Telephone: 519-881-2798
Email: dbfrook@wightman.ca
Registrar:
Prijna Gingrich
Telephone: 519-208-5652
Email: anp.gingrich@rogers.com
Sister Anne Keffer is a diaconal minister of the ELCIC and a deaconess in the Deaconess Community, ELCA/ELCIC. Her
Doctor of Ministry is in Spiritual Direction, and her desire is to help foster a deeper relationship with God, who has
always been a real Presence in her life. Humour, stories, smiles and holy tears characterize her leadership.
She provides safe space for participants to learn, to grow and to ‘hear’ God’s voice.
Please join us for community, conversation, contemplation, worship and renewal.
*Please note this is a fragrance free event!
Information and registration forms also available on the Eastern Synod website at:
www.easternsynod.org
THE WE CARE PROGRAM IS APPROACHING A BIG MILESTONE!
OUR FAITHFUL SUPPORTERS HAVE ORDERED A STAGGERING
99,136 WE CARE BAGS AND QUILT TAGS SINCE 2005.
The bags and tags accompany We Care kits and quilts around the world.
These practical gifts of love have helped people experiencing great need
in Mauritania, Liberia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Zambia, Jordan, Mozambique and
many other countries. Your dedication has made this program a huge
success.
We would love to reach 100,000 bag and tag orders before the end of
March. We invite you to help us reach our goal!
Visit clwr.org/WeCare to review quilt and kit instructions, and contact
wecare@clwr.mb.ca or 1.800.661.2597 to order your bags and tags.
Ordering our new items will also help us reach our goal! A durable
plastic bucket is an alternative way to ship Hygiene Kits, and a We
Care Bear T-shirt is a great way to dress a handmade teddy bear for a
Learning and Living Kit.
A $5 suggested donation applies for all bags, tags, buckets and T-shirts.
We will announce an event to celebrate this great accomplishment in
the near future!
O
Kicking the Samaritan: Christianity
and the Anti-Muslim Backlash
NOVEMBER 17, 2015 BY DON M BURROWS
By now, the anti-Muslim backlash we
Need it even be said in this day and age?
witness after every fresh terror attack
To turn one’s back on refugees is the
is not all that surprising. Bigots will be
epitome of anti-Christian action.
bigots, and they are not known for comWhen Jesus was asked what one must do
plexity or nuance in the face of … well,
to attain eternal life in the Gospel of Luke,
anything.
he affirmed the answer that includes to
What makes it more unsettling this time
“love your neighbor as yourself.” When
is that while in decades past the top Reasked who is one’s neighbor, he recountpublican in the country has denounced
ed the famous parable of the Good SaIslamophobia, this time around Republimaritan.
can candidates for the presidency have
The Good Samaritan story is so famous
fallen over themselves to be ever more
that the weight of its original telling is ofhateful toward Muslims.
ten overlooked. We talk about someone
A full 23 governors (most of them Rewho stops to help a stranded motorist fix
publicans) announced on Monday that
a flat as a “good Samaritan.” Or we say
they would not welcome Syrian refusomeone is a “Samaritan driver” if they’re
gees into their borders, while Jeb Bush
particularly passive (i.e., a decent person)
noticeably departed from his brother’s
and allow people to pull out in front of
more measured words and declared
them in busy traffic.
that we should screen people by religion
But forgotten is the fact that this para– accepting only Christian refugees and
ble was so poignant specifically because
not Muslim ones into America.
it suggested that a Samaritan could be
As if that weren’t bad enough,
“good” at all. Samaritans were
the Republican front-runner,
outsiders whose religion and
Donald Trump, then mused
ethnicity were anathema to
on national television
Jesus’s audience. Not only
that we should look at
does Jesus paint the Salove
your
"
shutting down mosques.
maritan as a “true neighbor” in conjunction with
All of this from the party
neighbour as
the question of who can
of “religious freedom.”
attain eternal life, he also
We could wax on about
yourself "
adds to the punch of such
how hypocritical they
a notion by painting two preare for thinking religious
sumably “good” people – a Levfreedom means actively disite and a priest – as not so good
criminating against gays or deafter all, for they felt no charity for the
nying your employees birth control, as
bruised and beaten bystander and took
opposed to, you know, shutting down
no pity upon him.
houses of worship. But their mentality
There is also a political element to the
seems far darker than mere hypocrisy.
story: the man who is beaten and
robbed is attacked by lestai. As I’ve written about before, this was a common
term for a robber, but it also was used to
refer to a violent revolutionary – it had
many of the extreme political overtones
that we might equate with “terrorist”
today. So there’s a very real possibility
that the violence in the Good Samaritan
story could have been politically motivated, though the story doesn’t depend
on that interpretation.
Regardless, even if you aren’t swayed by
basic Christian (or just human) charity,
then at least look at the math: there are
1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. Among
the tiny fraction who carried out the
nightmarish assault on Paris, only one
of them has even (possibly) been connected with the recent wave of refugees.
Like the man attacked in the Good Samaritan story, these refugees are the
frontline victims of fanatical terrorism.
As many before me have pointed out,
they are fleeing precisely because their
homeland has been devastated by war.
When refugees fled Europe in World War
II, we romanticized their escape into one
of the most renowned films of all time.
But then, they were mostly white and
Christian.
One can speculate about “what Jesus
would do” with respect to contraceptives, gays, abortion, or sex education,
but when it comes to relating to our
Muslim neighbors — wherever they may
be in the world — one need only read
the Gospels and start acting like Jesus
explicitly commanded us to.
ECHOES
is published quarterly by
Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church
Publisher
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Contact us at:
Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church
57 Brant Avenue
Brantford, Ontario N3T 3G9
Phone: 519-753-3833
www.faithlutheranbrantford.com
email: faithlutheran1@bellnet.ca
Pastor: The Rev. Stephen Scheidt
Pastor Emeritus: Rev. Calvin Diegel
Parish Musician: E. Shawn Lemp
Office Manager: Judy Clarke
Council Chair: Gigi Todd
COMING SOON
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