Our Pastoral Charge has been paired with the Wesleyville–Valleyfield Pastoral Charge in Newfoundland and Labrador Conference.

As chair of our board and a member of the Worship Committee, I wrote a letter of introduction to our distant partner, and sent a package of material that included some of our history, pictures of each church in our charge, a couple of bulletins and newsletters.

To date we have not received a reply, but hopefully we will.

We received an email from a "partner" in Ontario, a church in St. Thomas, and have responded.

We hope to learn more about each other in the coming weeks and months.

We were in touch with the church we were partnered with in PEI, and received an warm response, but we have not been contacted by any congregation partnered with us, yet.

I sent an email to the church we were to contact and received a reply - now I have to follow up with some kind of connection - they have a web-site they directed me to.  We do not, so perhaps I will make up some kind of package (thanks for the ideas, gecko).  We have not been contacted yet by the church who had our name.

I didn't.

What partner?

 Jae, that's because you're a Baptist, right?

This evening at our Session meeting we made a pre-arranged phone call to the session of the church in Ontario that is our partner.  They were well organzied;  after greetings and opening remarks by the ministers of the two congregations, several members of their congregation shared with us things that 'excited them about their church'.  One mentioned that they have a fund raiser to send youth from their congregation to the church camp.  Our minister was once a counsellor at that camp (Silver Lake), and my son attended it as a child. 

Members of our group then shared things that excite us about our church - like its welcoming policy and its work among the people of the downtown core, its education programs, its twinning program with Cuba, its inclusiveness. 

As we chatted one woman from our church told them that she had visited their church twice - for her nephew's wedding, and her niece's wedding.  When she mentioned their names, you could hear the people at the other end affirming that they knew them. 

We told them that the little packages of bread starter that were sent out to all congregations were made up at our church, and that we would be thinking of them when we share the communion bread on June 6th. 

Then we arranged for a follow-up phone call in the fall.  I don't know the technology but we had a phone on our table that everyone in the room could hear, and we could speak and be heard from wherever we were in the room. 

No, it's because he's an idiot.

Yeah, that's right.

Just thought I would give this a bump in case anybody missed it and has congregational connections stories to share for the 85th anniversary.

Thanks,

Aaron (Admin2)

We continue to have email exchanges with our "partner" in St. Thomas, ON.  We have issued invitations to events taking place in our respective pastoral charges with the hope for visits between our congregations at a future time.  We know where we are geographically, and we know some details about each other.

We have not heard from our partner in Newfoundland and Labrador which surprises me, since Newfoundlanders are a very friendly people.  Hopefully we will.

Nothing remarkable, although we were only contacted by the second congregation who had been sent our name, late this week. And the flour hasn't arrived. It's way too late for us to plan anything with that, as our bread was assigned in early May (an Elder takes a turn supplying the bread each communion) And I do find the worship resources a tad thin... but we'll do what we do next week.

My church received a gracious letter that was read as part of the sermon today. In response we have posted back a letter. It's from a small church in/near Sault St Marie.

During today's service, a young woman from our congregation read greetings and told us more about our partner church - Spring Park UC in  Charlottetown, PEI.   She was very happy to be our liaison, as she had grown up in Charlottetown herself.  They sent us information, and a book of the history of their church.   We look forward to more connections with them. 

We enjoyed the bannock for communion this morning too (thanks Seeler!)  Tasting it instantly brought back memories of many canoe trips I have enjoyed, where bannock was a great treat!  Today all that it was missing was that smokey campfire flavour & a bit of ash & dirt mixed in! 

I think everyone on WonderCafe thought of Seeler and family today when eating the bannock.

We sent out emails to our 2 partners, with no followup from these churchse. we sent out a welcome package to them, in time for  the 85th anniversary. So far we have not gotne any response. I am disappointed, but we can't mke them partake.

Hopefully they will. Our packaghes had stuff from our church including sunday school crafts, old bulletins, pictures and a nice letter from our congregation.