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St. John's Lutheran Church News

We've been excited to bring you this year's Vacation Bible School program; ROAR! Life is Wild, God is Good!

This year's VBS ran from July 22nd to July 26th and was a tremendous success! Thanks to all the families who attended and to all the volunteers who made it happen!! See you next year if not sooner!

God's Kids

With a New Year we have a New God’s Kids. Our education program for kids will be geared for children aged 3 – 8 and will be run during regular service at 4:00 pm.

We will continue to use the new video based curriculum, which will allow us to send the video link to parents if requested.

If you would like any further information about our God’s Kids Program or the new curriculum, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Loretta

Our New Temporary Location:

We held our final worship service in our building on Alain Road on Sunday, April 8th, 2018. We are in the midst of 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. We have been in CBC since April 15 and are very thankful for this partnership. Please find us at Community Baptist at 4 PM for worship on Sundays or any weekday for pastoral care and support.

Blair House

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

St. John's Eagles

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

Sanctuary Update

Building Update: June 17, 2017

St. John's leadership met on Tuesday, June 13 and has decided to form 3 Working Groups to help the congregation determine the next step in our building considerations. Our goal continues to be one of gathering information and providing options so that the congregation can make informed decisions on how to proceed.

As a broad statement, our choices are to Stay, Sell, or Develop. The three Working Groups will be:

Working Group 1 (Stay) will look at tearing down the existing sanctuary and rebuilding a simpler sanctuary trying to incorporate the bell tower in the new structure. This group will also look at the additional work on the rest of the building that Task Force #1 addressed in its report to the congregation last month.

Working Group 2 (Sell) will look at the opportunity to sell our property “as is” and ascertain as best they can an appropriate value. This group will also look at possibilities for properties for worship and office space.

Working Group 3 (Develop) will investigate the possibility of having our property annexed into the city and the costs associated with that. They will also look at the opportunities of partnering with a developer and the types of building structures that might fit with our needs.