THIS WEEK At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring January 4, 2018
Worship Services
This Sunday’s Service
THIS Sunday, January 7, 2018, Guest Speaker Gita Zember joins Rev. Evan Keely to lead a session of Kirtan in a service entitled: “Hari Om!” UUCSS will be alive with devotional chanting! Please Join Us!
Worship Services Time Change December 24, 2017 – March 25, 2018
PLEASE NOTE: Regarding UPCOMING Worship Services, from December 24, 2017 through March 25, 2018 (inclusive), UUCSS will have ONE Sunday worship service at 10:30am. Coffee Hour will take place after the service.
Sunday Service Flowers Needed January 7, 2018
UUCSS needs flowers for the Worship Service on Sunday, January 7, 2018. We ask that you bring flowers around 10 am for the service at 10:30am. You will receive a reminder call in the week before. Please call or email Pat Hulsebosch at 240-643-2976 or Pathuls@icloud.com
Religious Education
Hello!
Welcome to the new Religious Education school year! We are traveling back in time this year to learn about Unitarian Universalist history. This coincides perfectly with the celebration of the 65th Anniversary of UUCSS!
Registration: Still need to register for RE or OWL? No problem! Register here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QGJ59NF
Young Religious Unitarian Universalists
Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) is a group for youth in grades 10-12. All youth in these grades are welcome. We meet during the second service in the Fellowship House on church grounds (If there is only one service, check the RE board in the Sanctuary building entrance to see if we are meeting; announcements will also be made in the church newsletter and Facebook group). Adult advisers and the RE assistant facilitate meetings. Email REAssistant@UUCSS.org for more details about this program or to add your youth’s email to the YRUU email list.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
Please reach out to the DRE Catherine at dre@uucss.org
Announcements
Format Guidelines for Submissions to the Uniter
Text must be in a form that it can be edited, either in a Microsoft Word file or in the body of an email that can be copied and pasted. Graphics must be in a format in which they can be repositioned and resized—jpeg is greatly preferred.
SOME Donations Due January 7th
Happy New Year to all UUCSS’ers and kind SOME donors.
As most of you know, UUCSS supports So Others Might Eat (SOME) monthly by donations of food and other items. SOME is an interfaith, community-based organization that exists to help the poor and homeless of our nation’s capital. SOME meets the immediate daily needs of the people they serve with food, clothing, and health care.
Donations of foods and other items for SOME are due at church on Sunday, January 7.
To make it easier to donate, try keeping a grocery bag or small box near your kitchen or front door, and add a few items each time you shop for groceries. Then bring it to church on the designated Sunday.
Please place your donations in the sanctuary kitchen in bags or boxes clearly marked for SOME. Please see their website at http://some.org/give/ways-to-give/donate-goods for wish lists and suggested items.
Food Wish List
- Fresh fruits and vegetables
- Canned fruit (in their own juice or water)
- Canned vegetables (no or low sodium)
- Whole grains (Quinoa, brown rice, farro)
- Pasta (Whole wheat pastas and couscous)
- Low sugar cereal and oatmeal Healthy Snacks
- Nuts Oils and Vinegars Canned or frozen turkey, chicken, salmon
Please note SOME cannot accept any opened food products or products with expired dates–we will have to throw them away.
All kinds of non-perishable foods are needed for the food pantry. They also need certain types of clothing, household items, and toiletries.
Thanks for helping our neighbors in need.
Olivia Pickett 301-452-5230
Photo Directories
The Membership Committee has about 50 copies of the updated Photo Directory for members and friends who would like a hard copy. They’ll be available on Sunday mornings, as long as they last. We’re asking a $4 donation to cover the cost of printing. If there’s a big demand, we’ll print 50 more.
Daytime Inreach Group
Are you new to the Church and wanting to get acquainted with other UUCSSers in a small group setting? If so, the Daytime Inreach Group has a few openings. If you’re free on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, you might give us a try. Contact Bev McGaughy, coordinator, for details (phone: 301-565-0895 or email: bnbmcgaughy@verizon.net).
Attention Planners of Church Events
The Green Sanctuary Committee, in conjunction with the Property Committee, and the Program Council, has posted helpful resources on the Green Sanctuary page of the UUCSS web site to ensure our events follow our values by being green! Click on https://uucss.org/green/ for guidelines on greening events, recycling, and composting. You just may learn something new!
Parking During Church Services & Events
In an effort to be as welcoming to visitors as possible, we encourage UUCSS members who are able to not park in the UUCSS lot for Sunday services or large events so that we can keep spots open for visitors. Good alternative parking spots include the side streets near UUCSS and the CHI lot just north of the church on New Hampshire Avenue. Thank you in advance for your help.
Financial Contributions to UUCSS
We appreciate your financial contributions to UUCSS and want to provide accurate records for you. To help us do this, please put “Auction,” “Capital Campaign,” or “2017-18 Pledge” in the memo line of your check. If you want to donate stock, please email collector@uucss.org for easy instructions on how to move the stock into the church’s Etrade account. Thank you!
Silver Spring Nursery School Enrollment
Dear UUCSS Families,
It’s that time of year again! Silver Spring Nursery School is preparing for its annual Open House to welcome interested families to the school. As a UUCSS member, you have priority in enrollment. The following is how to apply to enroll your 2, 3, or 4 year old with SSNS for the 2018-2019 school year:
The Enrollment Agreement form and the Membership Application form are attached. Please fill out and mail the application form with a $65 non-refundable application fee as well as the enrollment agreement form and a $50 partial tuition deposit so that we can receive it by Friday, January 5, 2018 to the SSNS P.O. Box on the application form. If there is availability in the class, receiving these items will hold the opening for your family for school year 2018-2019 and allow the Open House Committee to know how many openings we have at the time of our Open House on January 10 and 11, 2018. If you have a question about whether there is an opening in a class next year, please contact Kelly Doordan, Membership Chair, at membership@silverspringnurseryschool.org. Due to our high retention rate with current families, this question may be most applicable to families new to the school that wish to join the 3s or 4s/5s classes next year.
The non-refundable partial tuition deposit will go towards your June 2019 tuition if you are offered a spot. The remainder of the nonrefundable June 2019 tuition deposit will be due on Friday, May 18, 2018. Reminders will go out for this closer to the deadline date.
This is TIME SENSITIVE so please don’t delay. Turn in your forms and checks ASAP. The Open House committee is working hard to have each classroom next year at capacity so that our SSNS community will continue to thrive. Please do not hesitate to contact Kelly Doordan at membership@silverspringnurseryschool.org with any questions.
Thank you,
Kelly Doordan (Membership Committee Chair & Mom to Kiran, 3’s class) and Heidi Remick (Open House Coordinator & Mom to Lena, 3’s class)
Deadlines for Next Week’s Announcements
Weekly Announcement Deadlines: All OOS Information, Written & Oral Announcements and All-Church Email Announcements for Sunday Services are due in the Admin Office by 9am every Wednesday.
Events
Memorial Service Notices
Carol Hamilton’s father, William G. Hamilton, died peacefully in his sleep on December 8, 2017 at 92. A retired foreign service officer, Bill spent several years helping out with Carol’s daughter, Yassi, including being her ‘homework coach.’ There will be a memorial service for Bill in the UUCSS sanctuary at 2pm on Saturday January 6th. A reception will follow. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the ARC of Montgomery County, MD.
Women’s Book Group
The Women’s Book Group has been in existence since 2000 and we welcome interested readers. No long-term obligation required. We meet on the fourth Monday of the month; contact dweiner04@gmail.com for more information. We will not meet in December but will be reading A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin for our January 22, 2018 gathering.
Men’s Book Reading Group
We are reading Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, the winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. The next meeting will be at 7:00 on Sunday, January 21, at the home of Jerry Herbers. If you are interested in joining the group, contact Richard Lorr (rlorr4@gmail.com), get the book, and come to the next meeting. Hope to see you there!
Opportunities!
There is a place for you in the UUCSS Sanctuary Singers!!
If you love music, love singing, and love community, come join the choir! The UUCSS Sanctuary Singers perform a diverse array of styles of music, including contemporary UU, classical, gospel, chant, jazz, and early music, normally two Sundays per month during the regular church year, with the summers off. Past choir and/or other musical experience is helpful but not required. Sight singing and ear training classes can be arranged with the music director to provide individual attention and assistance with the music. The choir is open to all generations. Rehearsals are Thursday nights 7:30pm- 9:30pm in the UUCSS sanctuary. For more information contact musicdirector@uucss.org.
Volunteer with the UUCSS RE Program!
Sages and seekers, wanderers and wonderers, RE is searching for volunteer teachers for the new school year! Please contact Catherine at dre@UUCSS.org.
The UUCSS RE program could not function without the help of many UUCSS community members who serve the program with their time and energy. There are a number of volunteer roles for people with varying amounts of RE experience and available time to give. Would you like to help with children’s worship once a month? Can you teach one of our 9:30 am RE classes two times per month? You can help provide spiritual nourishment for the youngest members of this faith community! Email dre@uucss.org for more information or to volunteer.
Volunteer of the Month – Rob Dahstrom
Rob Dahlstrom, already a UU, came to UUCSS in 1978 when his wife Hank Dahlstrom was hired as the DRE. The family had been looking for a new church and when Hank’s term as DRE ended two years later, the family decided to stay. Over his nearly forty years of membership, Rob has been involved in many committees and other activities. One of the volunteer activities he derives great satisfaction from involved his work with a group that was working on a new governance structure for the church in the 1980s. He came up with an alternative program council to the one that was proposed. Although neither was adopted his proposal provided the basis for the ultimate model that was adopted and which we still use. He was also involved in more recent efforts to create the Operations Council, as a separate group from the program council on which various committees focused on church operations (as opposed to church programs).
Rob, with February’s Volunteer of the Month, Ken Iobst, has for many years provided the IT support for the Church Auction. He and Ken run the IT system that captures all the auction items that people donate, maintains everyone’s bidder number, compiles the entered bids by bidder number and derives each bidder’s total, and provides lists of items bid and items donated by bidder/donor. Rob and Ken’s IT support is critical to the success of UUCSS’s annual Auction.
UUCSS Member Dropbox Link
In order to provide ready access to documents that help everyone stay engaged and informed about church matters, the UUCSS Board of Trustees created folders in Dropbox at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6m0pncsiskos8f4/AACRaDMaJy8kua–iMJ0zHRNa?dl=0
Click on the link, or copy/paste it into your browser, and it will take you to “UUCSS Member Dropbox”. There you can view minutes from board meetings, congregational meetings, and annual meetings, as well as copies of UUCSS constitution and policies, and other resources. New folders and documents will be added over time. Questions about the Dropbox may be sent to: boardsecretary@uucss.org. Emails to the Board of Trustees may be sent to: board@uucss.org.