Tomes for October

Parson Tom's Tomes

At the September Vestry Meeting  we started, as we always do, with two items; the first being a time for Prayer/Meditation led by one of the vestry persons, and the second being time for reflection on “How will what we do today affect the poor?”, Some might say that this is what we do before we get down to business, but I would say that these two actions are our business and everything else, the budget, the committee reports and the rest of the agenda flow out of those moments.

The real business of All Saints is listening to God and loving our neighbor; everything else is just taking care of the religious institution of All Saints. During the reflection time some offered how we had touched lives of relative strangers in Dare County who have come into our path as we walked with God's Spirit: Pastoral Care and Memorial Services done for people who were not members of this parish, participating in “Room At The Inn”, “OBX Pridefest”, “Ruthie's Kitchen”, the Food Pantry, Interfaith Community Outreach,  and  the “Food For Thought” program where Dare County school children are able to take some food home for the weekend so they would be ready for school after the break. During the discussion we talked about going outside of Dare County and Jarvisburg Elementary School 12 miles across the bridge from us in Currituck County came up and how many of these children's parents were struggling to make ends meet in these tough economic times. We decided that we would ask the congregation to help get these children ready for school by seeing if we can provide them with school supplies. We asked Steve Blackstock, the principal of the school  (and our Music Director) if he would get a list of supplies that are needed. He told us that they had enough paper, but there are many more other things and he will get a list for us.  (See that list in this month's “Trumpeter”).

During the month of October we do the annual Stewardship Program which will officially Kick Off at the combined service on October 6^th and will wrap it up on as we concentrate on finding how much money we will have for the  running of the religious institution on the Sunday after All Saints Day, our patronal festival. This seems a good time for us to include our outreach as our stewardship as the work of the church as we listen to God's Spirit leading us.

Please join us.

SHALOM