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Our New Temporary Location:

We held our final worship service in our building on Alain Road on Sunday, April 8th, 2018. We will be decommissioning our present facility due to deterioration of the building. As part of this, we are putting up perimeter fencing around the Sanctuary, and the entry by Alain Road is being permanently closed.

While we consider our next steps, Community Baptist Church, located at 4911 Silver Star Road, has graciously offered us the opportunity to share their facilities for our services and activities.

 

 

 

 

An Affordable Housing Option in Vernon - A St. John's Connection

An older motel in Vernon has been purchased and set up as affordable housing to assist people to move off the street. Under the umbrella of the John Howard Society, the Blair House has been up and running in Vernon for almost a year. There are 38 rooms, 36 of which are single and 2 have a bedroom and living room (accommodating two people.) All rooms have a small kitchen with a full size fridge, micro wave, cupboards and a sink. Each person is to furnish their kitchen. Bed are supplied as well as a table and chairs. The bathroom has a tub with shower, sink and toilet.

A community kitchen has been installed in the manager's living quarters. St John's Lutheran church had the privilege to furnish this kitchen with the necessary items to be a full-service unit. This was accomplished with donations from the congregation. The John Howard Society was able to receive government grants to buy new appliances which included a stove, dishwasher, a fridge and deep freeze. A washer and dryer are also available for the residents.

Each resident pays $475/month rent.  Among other things, this accommodation gives the residents an address which is necessary when applying for a job. The long-term goal is to have the kitchen functioning by the residents to cook their three meals each day.  The goal is to form a family community and to take some of the pressure off other local agencies, including The Upper Room Mission. At this time a charitable organization is cooking twice a week with enough left overs to be taken back to the residents' rooms.

There are some on-going needs for the Blair House, including coffee mugs, forks and containers to store the reheat-able food. These items are often not returned to the kitchen.  Donations of old cottage cheese containers, yogurt containers and margarine  containers are greatly appreciated.

Folks can bring any needed supplies to the Church, care of Blair House, and Irene can take it from there. They can also be dropped off at the Blair House, located in the former Travelodge behind the Fruit Union Plaza.

November 23, 2017  

August 14, 2017

Hi everyone, just a quick update on the tournament this past weekend in Golden.  There were 10 teams this year split into 2 divisions of 5.  So on Saturday we played each team in our division (4 games).  We lost our first one to Cloverdale by 1 run.  Played Bethel B and won handily.  Then we played Riverbend (Edmonton) and got beat by a lot (won't say how many) but they were eventually the winners of the tournament (very good team).  Our 4th game was against our good friends Drumheller who we beat handily.  So two and two for round robin.  With our record, we were placed in the 2nd division, playing for 5th place.  On Sunday, we lost by 1 run to Drumheller  in our 1st game and then beat Medicine Hat by 3 in our final game.  The combination of wins/losses, and runs for/against saw us winning the B division (5th place overall).  So our overall record was 3 wins-3 losses  (with 2 of the losses by 1 run)


FYI, this was the 30th year of the  tournament and St. John's Vernon has been attending for the last 27 years straight. Congratulations all around.

We went up to Golden a little light for  players ( 6 guys and 4 girls).  For a few of the  games we had a 7th guy  from Golden and for the rest  we played with 6 guys and 4 girls.  Hard to pick out highlights because there were a lot.  We had great hitting from everyone.  Good defense even in our bad loss... they just kept hitting the holes or over the fence.  We moved everyone around quite a bit so we played some different positions than normal.  Devin is recovering from appendix surgery 2 1/2 weeks ago, so he was supposed to be a spare but ended up playing most of the time. Even hit one out of the park.  Rebecca  (first tournament) also went up as a spare and ended up playing most all of the games and did great - thanks Rebecca (by the way easily the fastest person on our team).  Joel and Aaron roved the outfield all weekend and did a great job (and were clutch hitters every game), but more importantly let me play shortstop all weekend LOL.  Jeff covered third and catcher all weekend and hit well. Ali, Grace and Loretta were great... not only played great.. but went wherever in the field that we needed depending on who was available. The girls really hit well this weekend which by the way makes all the difference to the outcome of the games.  Cam...got off work Friday night in Kelowna at around 11 pm, grabbed a few hours of sleep and then drove up to Golden... got there halfway through the first game and then pitched all weekend long.. excellent job of pitching and hitting for him as well.

And lest we forget, the future St. John's team participated in the skills competition on Saturday afternoon.  Isaac and Sam came away with a multitude of 1sts and 2nds in their age group for a number of categories... base running, throwing, hitting, etc.  Congratulations to them .  And as you might guess with a bench that had no spares, we had some issues with

 

score keeping, so Isaac stepped up and kept score for us.  Did such a good job that the Drumheller team named him MVP in one of our games!

So yeah... we had a good time with good results.. met a lot of old friends again in good Christian fellowship.. Joel and Gary from Kelowna handled the church service extremely well.   Just all good stuff.... Looking forward to next year already (except for the aches and pains this morning from 6 games).  It's been a great year both league play and the tournament... Thanks to you all.

Barry

 

Freedom Session is a healing journey designed to help us move from areas in our lives where we feel stuck, to greater levels of freedom and hope.  Among other areas, Freedom Session can help in the areas of co-dependency, excessive guilt feelings, need for control, depression, addictions, and perfectionism. We use a revised version of the 12 steps along with Biblical teaching to give real hope and a clear future.   

This past year a new 2016 Freedom Session curriculum was introduced.  It is broken up into 20 weeks of Freedom Session, including 2 workbooks -Facing the Truth, and Finding Freedom.  There is also a followup course, Authentic Living. We are  beginning Freedom Session on Thursday, January 11, 2018.  Registrations are still being accepted. This video will also give you a feel for what to expect: http://freedomsession.com/about/what-is-freedom-session

For further information or to register for this winter's course, please call St. John’s Lutheran at 250-549-2244, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  Don't delay.  Freedom is coming!