Greetings, Brothers and Sisters in Christ!
I pray that this month’s newsletter finds everyone healthy and snow free. It was great to see so many of you at the January Gathering at Macedonia UMC. At the Gathering we discussed two issues that your Board is addressing. Since only so many of us can attend any given Gathering I feet it is important to reiterate this information for those who missed it.
First, the Board approved the conversion of our current database to an Emmaus approved database. At the request of numerous communities Emmaus HQ commissioned the development of a database to assist communities in managing their information resources. While we will not be the first to make use of this database I am excited about the empowerment that each community member will receive from the functionality of this program. The program will be online… each of us will have a user name and
password. With this access each of us can make sure our LOVE experiences are correct, sign up for support activities, make known our availability to team, sponsor new pilgrims, etc. The Weekend Lay Directors will have access to the proposed team members as they make their calls… this will give them
greater access to accurate and up to date contact information. These are only a sampling of the ways that the new database will help us to manage our information resources with greater stewardship.
Next, I believe that most of us are aware that we are looking seriously at alternative sites to host our weekends. The costs and conditions at the 4-H Center have been discussed in the past. We have negotiated with them at different times with mixed results. This recent discussion arose out of the summer Chrysalis weekends. Faced with similar issues, our Chrysalis community located a new facility which met their needs in terms of lower costs and up to date facilities. As a member of that Board, I was privy to the discussion which let to using that facility for our summer weekends. The discussion was driven mainly by financial stewardship needs. The newness of the facility was an ancillary benefit to choosing Meadowkirk as the site for last summer’s weekends. Due to the savings experienced by our Chrysalis community, your Board has chosen to investigate whether or not Meadowkirk might be a fit for our weekends.
The dynamics of this site are somewhat different for Emmaus than for Chrysalis and therefore our discussions have been somewhat different. The thrust of this search has been based upon financial stewardship; however, there are many other areas that are equally important in making a decision to change locations. Some of the other factors which the Facility Support Committee is considering are location and ease of access to the community members, the logistics of supply storage and access, the ability of the site to accommodate a large candlelight and closing, etc.
Nicholas Doner and Rick McMaster are the cochairs of this committee and they do continue to need the assistance of interested community members. They are continuing to collect data, analyze the options, and develop scenarios of how a weekend would be executed, logistically speaking. Please give them your opinions and assistance as they attempt to complete their report for the Board.
A third item was discussed in January as well. It concerns the February Gathering. I hope you will be as excited to attend this as I am. We will be doing Sponsorship Training. There are a number of us who have not attended a DDU but still desire to sponsor friends and family members on a weekend. Attending this training will qualify you to be able to sponsor. For those of us who have attended a DDU, this training will be a refresher for our sponsoring activities as well as provide us up to date procedures that we can use to educate those newer community members who may be a little nervous about sponsoring.
I pray that everyone will survive this weather pattern we are experiencing and I look forward to seeing you at the next Gathering on February 20 at Manassas St. Thomas UMC.
De Colores !
Dale
Dale Turner
Community Lay Director
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the Next Gatheringthe Pilgrim or Team Lists? Now located at the walks page. Click here to go to the walks page.
Sponsor or Team Applications?Click here to go to the walks page to download the latest applications.
the LV Emmaus facebook Group?a way to share your fourth day?Will you share your testimony and what you have learned on your 4th Day in written form with our Community through our newsletter? Please send articles to Sandy Hendershot at lvfourthday@gmail.com
Chrysalis information?
Something else? |