Good Friday Offering

Although this bulletin insert from the Episcopal Church Center was for the eighith Sunday after Epiphany (February 27), we put it in this Sunday's bulletin since Good Friday is this Friday.

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Excerpt From a Message From the Presiding Bishop

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

For almost a century, the Good Friday Offering has been a source of support, love, and hope for our brothers and sisters in the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. … This offering expresses our own commitment to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to walk with the church of the Middle East as they continue to work toward justice, reconciliation, and peace. Through our prayers for and support of these churches we are helping to realize God’s vision of shalom. … Please join with me in giving thanks for the work of the Good Friday Offering by generously sharing the gifts we have been given with our sisters and brothers throughout the Middle East.

I remain, Your servant in Christ,

Katharine Jefferts Schori

(To read the complete letter , see http://www.episcopalchurch.org/110049_126699_ENG_HTM.htm.)

Some of the projects funded by the 2010 Good Friday Offering include:

• St. Peter’s Elderly Home in BirZeit, which offers housing for elderly Christians


• St. Andrew’s Day Care Center in Ramallah, a new clinic for diabetic cardio treatment


• St. Andrew’s Housing Project for Young Christian Couples, which helps young couples afford apartments


• Needy families on the West Bank


• Ras Morbat Clinic in Aden, Yemen, which provides unlimited access to basic health services in a low-income area


• Scholarships for religious education for Christian children (who represent only 1 percent of the population)

Collected funds can be sent in the form of a check, payable to “The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society” (please write “Good Friday Offering” in the memo line of the check) to:Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society Good Friday Offering PO Box 12095Newark, NJ 07101For more information contact the Rev. David Copley(800) 334-7626, ext. 5461; dcopley@episcopalchurch.org.

Copyright © 2011 The Episcopal Church Center, 815 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017 (800)-334-7626 www.episcopalchurch.org

This Week's Haiti Appeal Bulletin Insert

The Rev. Mark Santucci, St. Mark’s Church, Mystic

St. Mark’s in Mystic partnered with St. Luc’s Church and School in Mercery, Haiti, in 2003 through our contact with the priest in charge there, the Rev. Kerwin Delicat. Two moments from our trip to Haiti in 2009 provide touchstones for the joy, pain and hope of partnership in Christ.

We spent some time one morning at a hospital for children. Our task was just to hold babies, to give them with some cuddle time the nursing staff was too harried to provide. I started by picking up Kimberlee, a skinny 18-month-old with big, brown eyes you could drown in. We strolled the hall for a while, until I thought it was time to move on to another child.

Kimberlee, however, thought differently and cried mightily when I put her down. So I picked her up again and began the pattern of holding, trying to put her down, her crying, and me picking her up again that went on until the nurses told us our time was up.

I put Kimberlee into her crib and walked away from the tear-filled eyes and throaty crying. But even in the next room I could hear her cry: even in the parking lot, even on the plane ride home, and even today.

The other moment was the celebration of the Feast of St. Luke at our partner parish in Mercery, near Leogane. Th e small church was filled, not only with people, but with music and joy and a fullness of Spirit that was close to palpable. We were given places of honor among the community, and our feeble attempt at a Kreyòl greeting was met with thunderous applause. In the Eucharist and at the feast that followed, we knew that even though we did not speak the language, even though we were seriously underdressed, and even though we had a long plane ride ahead of us, we were truly home.

Like Connecticut, Haiti is a Diocese of the Episcopal Church. It is our most populous diocese, with about 80,000 people, and it is our poorest.

Its Cathedral in Port-au-Prince was a cultural center for the nation, a place of pride and beauty for all Haitians.

In 35 seconds on Jan. 12, 2010, it fell.

People still flocked to its grounds and its ruins for food and shelter. Absent a working government, the church has always been a place to find schools, clinics, and other social services we take for granted. And thanks to Episcopal Relief and Development, as well as many other agencies and churches, the Bishop, school staff, and sisters of St. Margaret, were able to off er short-term employment, provisional homes, and sanitation systems in addition to other community-focus recovery programs.

Even in the midst of the deep human need and suffering in Haiti, the people seek to worship God together. And while there are agencies who will rebuild schools and clinics, only the church will rebuild a church. Please join in supporting the rebuilding of the Cathedral complex in Port-au-Prince by making a donation this Lent.

“Rebuilding Trinity Cathedral will do more than raise up bricks and cement. It will raise the hopes of a people who have lost so much of their earthly habitation. It will raise the Spirit of a community made weary, ...inspire the minds and hearts of the young men and women who knew Trinity as their intellectual and artistic home [and] serve as a beacon and shelter for literally thousands who are rebuilding their lives with little more than hope and prayers.

--Bishop Duracin, Bishop of Haiti

Nou ave’ou! - We’re with you!

This appeal in the Diocese of Connecticut is part of an Episcopal Church-wide appeal this Lent coordinated by the Episcopal Church Foundation. In Connecticut organizers are asking that donations be made to the local parish, which will then forward them. For more information see the “Rebuild our Church in Haiti” page on the diocesan website, www.ctepiscopal.org. The Rev. Rachel Thomas is the coordinator of the appeal for the Diocese of Connecticut. Contact her at rwthomas55@att.net.

This Week's Haiti Appeal Bulletin Insert

Dan Taylor-Stypa, D. Min., David Evangelisti, St. John’s Church, Essex

Our relationship with Hôpital Albert Schweitzer (HAS) in Deschapelles Haiti began through our membership on the World Mission Committee of St. John’s Church in Essex. Th e parents of fellow parishioner Jenifer Grant, Gwen Grant Mellon and Dr. Larry Mellon, founded HAS 54 years ago.

After the “trambleman” (earthquake) in January 2010, surgical patients were brought to HAS, while others fled there from Port-au-Prince to join friends and family in relative safety. David and I began “Have a Heart for Haiti” as a town-wide initiative to support the relief efforts for HAS. Parishioners from St. John’s participated in this initiative, which was also greatly supported by individuals and businesses in the area.

This initiative gave way to the development of Sister Cities Essex Haiti, (SCEH). Sister Cities is an international group which assists groups in forming long-term, mutual and sustainable relationships with international communities. In the summer of 2011 this relationship was formalized with the town of Deschapelles, where HAS is located. In collaborating with their local community organization, ODES, we learned that Deschapelles needed a library so we began the present library project.

In our visits to HAS, our days are long, but are fulfilled in building relationships with other groups and individuals. These include the clergy, hospital personnel, hospital social services, and community development programs -- wells, sanitation, water pumps, community gardening, micro-banking, micro-businesses, and re-forestation programs. As we have met and shared relationships, we have been graced with the resilient hope of the people.

The Haitian people tell you they are fortunate, they have earned this luck by the labor of their hands and their determination. They continue amid all the difficulties to tend their gardens and their children. They work to build relationships, they make time and they continue to make a life rooted in their deep faith and devotion: not to a God who sends them difficulties, but to a God who graces them with what little they have; a God who does not abandon; a God who is a companion, who lifts them up. They are our Haitian brothers and sisters.

Its Cathedral in Port-au-Prince was a cultural center for the nation, a place of pride and beauty for all Haitians.

In 35 seconds on Jan. 12, 2010, it fell.

People still flocked to its grounds and its ruins for food and shelter. Absent a working government, the church has always been a place to find schools, clinics, and other social services we take for granted. And thanks to Episcopal Relief and Development, as well as many other agencies and churches, the Bishop, school staff , and sisters of St. Margaret, were able to off er short-term employment, provisional homes, and sanitation systems in addition to other community-focus recovery programs.

Even in the midst of the deep human need and suffering in Haiti, the people seek to worship God together. And while there are agencies who will rebuild schools and clinics, only the church will rebuild a church. Please join in supporting the rebuilding of the Cathedral complex in Port-au-Prince by making a donation this Lent.

“On Sunday ...we attended Eucharist (out of doors) at the Episcopal Cathedral of Ste. Trinité, completely leveled by the earthquake, in Port-Au-Prince. We couldn’t help but think how many present had lost friends and loved ones. Yet, their sincere prayer and their everyday response to “How are you?” remains steadfast as “Mwen kenbe ale sou” ( I keep going on), “Mwen isit la” (I am here), par la grâce de Dieu (by the grace of God).” -- Dan Taylor-Stypa and David Evangelisti

Nou ave’ou! - We’re with you!

This appeal in the Diocese of Connecticut is part of an Episcopal Church-wide appeal this Lent coordinated by the Episcopal Church Foundation. In Connecticut organizers are asking that donations be made to the local parish, which will then forward them. For more information see the “Rebuild our Church in Haiti” page on the diocesan website, www.ctepiscopal.org. Th e Rev. Rachel Thomas is the coordinator of the appeal for the Diocese of Connecticut. Contact her at rwthomas55@att.net.