The Blawenburg Beacon

The Heifer Gift Ark offers hope worldwide to families who are poor and hungry. You'll help families start on a journey to fulfill a seemingly impossible dream - to secure food and a source of dependable income.

Each family who receives livestock will pass on one or more of the animal's offspring to other families who are in need in their community. Every gift will multiply for years to come.

Imagine how your gift could change the world. Two cows bring milk and income to a Russian village. Two sheep help families in Arizona produce wool. Two camels help families in Tanzania earn income by transporting agricultural and industrial materials. Two oxen pull plows and carts in Uganda. Two water buffalo help Cambodian families increase rice production through animal draft power. And that's just the first five sets of animals ... your ark provides 15 pairs of animals to change lives. What a wonderful way to bring joy to the world!

Preservation Fund

Thanks to all who have been working hard to help us reach our goal of $500,000. We’re well on our way with over $300,000 in pledges and cash.

At a congregational meeting, the congregation agreed with a Consistory recommendation to make the church roof a new priority for the BRC Fund. It will cost around $100,000 depending upon the type of roofing material used.

Consistory approved a recommendation from Administration and Finance to consolidate and move money from the Money Market account to the BRC Preservation Fund account. Included in this amount was $6,377.36 from the Classis Jubilee Fund, which was dispersed to all classis churches. $13, 255.17 was transferred.

Other funds that had not previously been placed in the BRC Fund were transferred. These were from previous yard sales, Tentoonstelling, etc. This added over $15,000 to the fund.

Consistory approved moving a gift from the Dora Verbeyst Estate into the BRC Fund when it is received.

Additional funds have been raised though the Pancake Breakfast, Spaghetti Dinner, and Sinterklaas events. Thanks to all who pitched in for these fundraisers. In addition to raising money, these events provide great fellowship.

We sent letters about the BRC Fund to former members and to the community at large. This has resulted in some additional donations - $175 so far.

We had nice publicity about our fundraising needs in the Courier News and the Montgomery News. These were based on a press release we sent out in November.

If you have made a pledge to the BRC Fund, we would appreciate receiving the 2008 portion of that pledge by December 31.

As we near the end of our first year of our three year campaign, we can be very thankful for the contributions that so many have made toward preserving our historic church.

Please come and join us for our first pot luck luncheon. Bring a casserole, salad or veggie to share with 8 others. The committee will provide the drinks, dessert and paper products.

We are extremely fortunate to have a dedicated and enthusiastic team of teachers for our Sunday School this year: Sue Perkins, Sally Hume and DeeDee Gebhardt, with Bernice Van Nostrand and Vicky Hug substituting when needed, and many helpers, including congregants, parents and members of our youth group. We are continuing our journey through the life of Jesus with the Faith Alive curriculum which was so successful last year.

Our children are nurtured spiritually at church in many ways: by the children's sermon, through Sunday School and by fellowship with other church members. Your attention to them and sharing of your stories mean a great deal to the children – knowing that you care about them creates an environment where they can learn about Jesus and his work in our lives.

We want to continue to find ways to help the children think about others, about service, about loving the least among us, as Jesus instructed us. Moved by the Holy Spirit and recognizing the depth and breadth of so much need in the world, we are including a focus on mission in our Sunday School time. We used the gifts collected from the children’s offerings last year for an emergency clean-up bucket which will be shipped to a disaster area to help people whose homes and possessions have been destroyed. In November, the Sunday School children also helped to assemble Gifts of the Heart Kits, including hygiene kits, school kits and baby kits, which will be distributed by Church World Service to disaster areas in the USA and around the world. We are going to have the children talk in the spring about who will receive their offerings this year. We want to help them to be active members in missions.

Special Announcement: On Sunday, December 14, the children will be singing several songs from around the world during the worship service, including songs from Brazil, Cameroon, the Caribbean and the American South. Come and clap your hands along with the children, as we celebrate the coming of the Christ child! Thank you to Chi Yi Chen, our choir director, and Barbara Antoniewicz (soprano extraordinaire) for rehearsing with the children for this special musical offering to God and to the congregation. We hope you will make a special effort to be with us!

Sunday School children respond to a story about the history and meaning of the hymn, "Amazing Grace."

The Mary and Marthas will meet 7:30 AM on Dec 13 to choose their next book. Good conversation, prayers, coffee cake, fruit, and a hot breakfast dish are some of the many reasons to join us.

HEIFER INTERNATIONAL: This will be our mission focus for Advent and Christmas again this year. We have proudly raised over $5,000 for an Ark each of the last two years. Heifer alleviates hunger, poverty and environmental degradation through gifts of livestock and training. These animals provide food, draft power and generate income for families. Since 1944, Heifer has helped more than 4.5 million families in 125 countries (including the U.S.) become self-reliant. Each family “passes on the gift” by giving one or more of its animal’s offspring to another family in need, and they also, and so on. It is the ‘gift that keeps on giving’!

In Cook Hall, you will see options for purchasing a gift of different animals: cows, sheep, llamas, water buffalo, goats, pigs, ducks, geese, chickens, rabbits, and honeybees. If you would like to do this in honor or memory of someone, there will be gift cards for you to take and use for this purpose. It is the perfect gift! (If you can’t get to Cook Hall, you may leave a check in the basket on the back table of the sanctuary where there is a price list for the different animals. Please make checks payable to BRC, noting “Heifer” (and the animal) on the ‘memo’ line and we will get the handsome honor/gift card to you to give to a loved one.

Whether we give enough for an ‘Ark’, changing the world two by two, or not, we can be assured that these are truly Christmas (or Birthday, etc.) gifts that will “keep on giving”!

CROPWALK: Final totals for BRC were $1947, half again as much as we raised last year!

Operation Christmas Child: We delivered 7 shoeboxes to be sent to Samaritan’s Purse. This comes so early and this overlapped too much with our long-term collecting project for our CWS Kits this year. It IS a good family project and we hope to get the pre-school back on board with us next year and try to not conflict…

Gift of the Heart Kits: Thank you to the donors, sewers, crocheters, and adults and children who helped pack up our kits last month. Thanks to you we packed up

as you’ve probably been reading: the food banks are lower than ever and there are more homeless in need. We will be collecting non-perishable foods, always, but particularly right now through Christmas for local food banks and we will be collecting warm hats, coats, scarves, shoes and mittens – especially men’s – which we will deliver over the holidays to the Bessie Green Center at North Reformed Church in Newark. There will be a sign-up sheet on the Mission Board if you and any children would like to visit this Center and learn about their ministries (as well as see this beautiful old church with Tiffany mosaic apse and Tiffany windows!). We’ll decide on a mutually convenient date after Christmas.

In addition to raising money, we need to think about ways to use our resources more frugally. This is especially important because our investments, which we rely on each month to meet our budget, have declined.

Send us a note or email us (brc2001@msn.com) to suggest some ways we could cut expenses and save money. The A&F Committee has already started a brainstorming list and we'd like to enact some cost savings in the early months of the coming year. No ideas are too trivial, so send us your thoughts.

Consistory met on Wednesday, December 3^rd, and it proved to be a busy night. Here are the highlights…

An interesting look at the Christmas story. Pastor Rich opened the meeting with an interesting, thought-provoking view of the Christmas story. These highlights wouldn’t do it justice, but we hope he does a reprise in a sermon one of these Sundays in Advent.

The Roof is falling! Mark Fritzinger from the Properties Committee presented us with some disturbing news. We’ve known for some time that our aging slate roof is in need of attention, but Properties has done a specific and thorough assessment and informed us that it must be replaced…quickly. We’ve all seen the signs: Pieces of broken slate along the ground near the sanctuary; clearly visible spaces on the roof where slates – or pieces of slates – should be. It turns out that our 176-year-old roof (145 years in the case of the 1860s addition) is crumbling fast. Old nails that hold the slates are rusting off, and the slates themselves are brittle. A sense of urgency is exacerbated by the need to protect our recently restored $90,000 ceiling. We authorized Properties to get 3 specific bids, and we anticipate holding a special mid-month meeting to accept one of them and get the work started. The anticipated cost: 80-to-100 thousand dollars! Get your checkbooks ready, folks. The Preservation Fund has something approaching half of that on hand (after paying for the recent painting of the sanctuary), and we’ll be looking for funding sources far and wide, but we will have to raise money ourselves to make this necessary improvement happen.

A new Vice President of Consistory. Elder Grace Terhune stepped down as vice president, after more than a year in that often tough post, and we elected elder Bob Bradsell to take her place. When you talk to Grace, be sure to thank her for a job well done…and go easy on Bob for a while as he gets his feet wet.

Our new Pre-School director. New BVS director Karen Hill met with us and presented a status report on the current state of our pre-school. Issues ranging from slow computers to state regulations on bathrooms were discussed. Karen feels very positive about the school, and will work with us as we tackle the challenges inherent in offering such a service to the community. Watch this space for developments as we work to improve BVS, and keep it a strong outreach service of our church.

A busy Christmas Eve. Pastor Rich presented plans for our two Christmas Eve services…5:30 (kid-friendly and fun) and 11:00 (traditional candle-light and hymns). This year we hope to see crowds at both, in a return to the tradition of two distinct services. And in a bid to save some money, we’ll try to do it without the help of expensive newspaper ads. You may be asked for some help with email distribution of information, and other outreach tools.

Let us know how we’re doing…and if you have questions, ask. Corner one of us over coffee – or call – or put a note in the collection box. We’ll do our best to respond.

The month of November was really busy at BVS. The focus was on food and nutrition which culminated with Thanksgiving. We are very lucky to have several businesses in our area that eagerly welcomed our students and provided amazing learning experiences. Our Sprouts visited Antimo’s Italian Kitchen in Hopewell, where they each made their very own personal pizza! Our Blossoms class visited McCaffrey’s in Princeton, and enjoyed a fabulous morning. They toured the store and even learned what goes on behind the scenes. Of course the snacks were the best part of the field trip! Our Berry Patch visited Whole Foods which is also located in Princeton and ate their way through the store. They shook hands with a crab and left the store with a “goody bag”. We truly appreciate the warm welcome these businesses gave to our students and their generous donation of time and materials. Please help us thank them by visiting their establishments.

The Christmas Concert – A Journey to Bethlehem will be held on Saturday, December 13^th at 3:00 in the Church. The students and teachers have been busy preparing so feel free to join us for this wonderful event. We warmly welcome anyone interested in volunteering at BVS. Reading a story, assisting with a craft, or just “playing” are always fun ways to spend an hour. Give us a call if you’d like to join the fun, 609-466-6600.

In January we will be jumping into Spanish with a class from Salta and meandering into music with a class from Kids’ MusicRound. These are afternoon enrichment classes held once a week at BVS. Please pass the word – flyers and registration forms can be picked up at the school office.

Croatia Update - Medical class reminds of stark Croatian realities By Nancy Titus

Of course, I know where I live as every day I have to cope with doing things in quite a different way than I did in the United States. Plus there is the language difference that keeps me just a bit further on the edge of life here than I’d like to be. But I have students and friends who know English, so I am still able to get glimpses into their world as they describe it to me in my language.

A friend of mine had invited me to be a guest in her English class at the medical school down the street. The students are at what we would call the pre-med level. Here they go to medical school straight from high school and study for about six years, then do a year of volunteer work in a rotation of different types of medical environments. Then, if they are lucky, they are chosen to study a specialty, which would take another four to six years or so.

I asked the students if they knew what type of specialization they wanted to enter. They replied that they didn’t but then showed me how little I understood their world by matter-of-factly declaring that they don’t get to choose. They don’t choose either the specialization or even that they can continue their studies. Only those specially selected are offered the chance at advanced study.

Would I want to go to a doctor for my problem if that doctor didn’t choose to be there? Not an inspiring idea.

Then my friend added under her breath that women are hardly ever chosen. I noticed about half the students in the room were women.

I have seen the Croatian medicine up close, as I have taken members of my family to specialists in an environment that doesn’t exactly engender confidence. When I described to an American nurse and pediatrician one procedure my 10-year-old Valerie had to endure, their first response was “voo-doo medicine.”

On the other hand, doctors here are very anxious to order a barrage of tests on all kinds of fancy equipment, and familiar advanced medicines are readily obtained. But the practice of medicine is not very personal or gentle. I have walked through exam rooms past doctors and other patients doing who knows what to get to the place I needed to be. And then there is the fact that anesthesia is generally not used, not for root canals, not for colonoscopies.

We have found some very caring doctors, nurses and technicians but many more support people are not very kind to the throngs of people standing outside their doors waiting to get in (quite often there is not even a waiting room, people just have to stand near the door or miss their chance).

And even I have had to rely on my translator using a personal connection with her neighbor in order to even get an appointment for a test for my other daughter.

Okay, now back to the English class. Since I was there in November, we talked a bit about Thanksgiving, which is familiar to most locals because of movies and television. I described what we planned to do for the holiday – which included hosting our American contingency at our house for the feast of traditional favorites.

Then my friend, who was born and raised right here in Osijek, talked about holidays in general, and described how it was before the fall of communism. Then they were not allowed to celebrate Christmas. She said the administrator at her school would always schedule a staff meeting for 1 p.m. (in addition to the regular shift) on Christmas Day, so there would be little free time for any celebration of Christmas.

So, as you scurry to get ready for the big celebration of Christmas, pause to pray for those for whom even time to prepare and eat a special meal is denied them. And rejoice that now in Croatia it is a holiday once again.

Eric and Nancy Titus are RCA missionaries in Osijek, Croatia, where they work at the Evangelical Theological Seminary and with the Reformed Christian Church in Croatia. They have three children: Samuel, Valerie and Penny.