With LaVerne Pruden's move to Berkeley Square in Hamilton she is relinquishing the job she assumed, early in coming to Holy Trinity, of writing timely and gracious thank-you notes on behalf of the parish for the many, many gifts and memorials that we have received in this period. We are deeply grateful for her faithfulness in giving so generously of her time to this service, year after year.

We have received from an anonymous donor a generous gift of power-driven black-out shades for the three larger windows at the south end of the undercroft, to be operated by remote-control. Champagne in color, they will be invisible when raised because of the dropped ceiling. The gift provides for mounting our projector permanently overhead, with projector and sound controls to enable a computer or other device to connect with the projector.

Our discussion group will meet next on Monday, May 12th, in the Undercroft to decide what to read for next year. Please be thinking of books you would like to share, and plan to come and bring the books with you. If any one would like or needs a ride, please let the office know. Everyone is welcome.

The First Annual Church of the Good Samaritan, Amelia, Benefit Concert,
 featuring Steve Chapin and Big John Wallace
Friday, May 2nd, at 7:30 pm
at the Amelia High School Center for the Performing Arts
Tickets: $20 per person
For info and ticket sales, call the church at 513-753-4115.

We need laundry detergent, trash bags (30 gallon), dishwashing detergent, shampoo, cleaning products like Pine Sol, feminine hygiene products, baby supplies including diapers ( sizes 4 and 5) and wipes. As always, your generosity is invaluable as we stock the pantry. We now have many, many plastic bags for people to take their choices home. —Geoff and Judith.

The films that the Cincinnati Earth Institute is showing once a month will now also be shown in Oxford on the first Sunday of the month (except May and June) at 1:30 pm at the Campus Ministry, 16 S. Campus Ave. Discussion is optional. The events are open to the public—bring a friend or two!

The schedule:

May 18..... Episode 3—The Fire of Creation (note the different Sunday)
June 8..... Episode 4—Coming Home (note the different Sunday)

PENTECOST - MARCH 11 - REMEMBER TO WEAR RED!

On Sunday, May 11 we will celebrate the great feast of Pentecost. We will also welcome The Rt. Rev. Thomas Breidenthal to Holy Trinity for his first visit among us, and we will witness and celebrate several confirmations, beseeching God’s blessing on those who are confirming their faith. We will also pray in thanksgiving for all sorts and conditions of mothers and the maternal instinct within us, since it is Mothers’ Day …

and for graduates, since it is the weekend of Miami’s graduation …

and for the Holy Trinity team going to the Dominican Republic in June ….

Bishop Breidenthal will also be with us at the Adult Forum from 9:15 to 10:15. All are welcome, of course. Please be sure to be among us for this day of thanksgivings and celebration. Your presence is most important. Wear your red clothes. Bring a finger-food dish to share during our festive coffee hour following the 10:30 service (special thanks to Susan Kay who is coordinating this reception). Volunteer to help set up or clean up.

And …

IF YOU SPEAK A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH, please contact me about reading a verse or two of scripture in that language during our 10:30 worship. I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you and explain this in detail. It won’t be cumbersome and will add a dimension to our worship that day we can’t obtain any other way. (Some of you may remember the experience of hearing Amy Greenbaum, Director of Hillel, chant the Hebrew scripture during Bishop Price’s visit in October 2006.)

Hopefully, in addition to our confirmands, all our high school and college graduates, our mothers, and the whole Dominican Republic mission team will be here. Plan now.

Put Pentecost - May 11 - on your calendar. Get out your red, and pick out your recipes!
Don’t miss this celebration of the Church, with the Holy Spirit ever winding in, through, and among us!

Alleluia! Christ is risen,
Karen

Diocesan Mission Convocation at Procter

Please see Carty Ellis, Sr. Warden, if you would like to join us to go to Procter for the diocesan mission convocation on May 3rd. Information is on the bulletin board in the undercroft and online on the diocesan website. Registration is necessary and can be made through Carty. Thanks!

Sharefest, the pickup of discarded furniture, clothing, and food left by MU students and then distributed to Oxford’s needy, is scheduled for May 8th thru May 13th. Again this year volunteers are needed. Volunteer opportunities include truck drivers, movers, furniture/clothing/food sorters @ Oxford Church of God, and “shopping assistants,” which help clients make their selections.

If you are able to assist, please sign up by logging onto: muohio.edu/sharefest

Thank you so much for your consideration!

HELP URGENTLY NEEDED! As you probably have seen in the Sunday bulletins, there is a need for two new people to take over the leadership of the cooking project for Serve City. These people plan the menus and do the shopping for the cooking for the Hamilton homeless shelter, which takes place the 3rd Thursday of each month. The leaders also recruit persons to help cook, to bring desserts, and to transport the food to Hamilton. For more information, or to volunteer, call Karen or Ginger Smith or Betty Julian. Without help from you, this project could come to an end. Please give it some thought!

The Easter offering was over $3000! As you know, this money will be divided between the Community Choice Food Pantry, and the mission trip of Holy Trinity youth to the Dominican Republic (not for travel expenses, but for supplies needed on-site for their work once there). Thanks so much for your generosity!

Sometimes individuals who are homeless, or need a meal or transportation or gasoline, come to Holy Trinity seeking emergency help.

For assistance there is “Butler County 211”, a 24/7 resource contact reached by dialing 211 on a regular telephone (cell phone must dial 785-3095 or 727-3215). Staff at this number can provide telephone numbers for reaching agencies which provide various types of assistance, ranging from rent or utility assistance to (in Oxford only) vouchers for gasoline or housing for one or two nights. The agencies will require a photo ID and will require forms to be filled out and submitted. Karen Burnard and several parishioners have been trained to access this system from the Holy Trinity office.

If you are at Holy Trinity when the office is closed, try not to be alone in the building. If you are approached for emergency help please consider these guidelines. They are for your safety and to assist you in helping those in need:

• Do not take out your wallet/purse and offer cash.
• Do not (alone) provide a ride.
• Between 9 AM and 5 PM Monday through Friday, you can reach “Butler County 211” at the numbers listed above.
• After hours, the Community Counseling and Crisis Center 523-4146 may be able to help. (“Butler County 211” is automatically routed here after hours.)

Several members of the congregation have expressed an interest in going to Westerville to support those parishioners of St. Matthew's who remained loyal to the Episcopal Church when others seceded in protest over the church's consecration of Bishop Robinson in Vermont. These loyalists have been worshipping in the Westerville Fire House while disputes over ownership of St. Matthew's property were resolved by Bishop Briedenthal. These disputes have been resolved, and June 1st is their first day back into their proper worship space. If you would like to go to Westerville to express support and solidarity with the loyal people of St. Matthew's in worship on June 1st, please tell Susan Kay of your interest (and make sure she writes it down). We'll figure a time for departure from HT later. Also, if you are willing to drive, please make that known as well.

—Susan Kay

 

So much work was accomplished on Saturday, April 12, that Master Gardener Dick Lodge recommends that our next work day be in August. More in July…

Social Justice Commission Gives and Plants "Bulbs"

Saturday, April 12 was cold and dreary, but that did not deter Karen and Bob Burnard, Susan Harlan, Dick Lodge, and Chris Taylor of the Social Justice Commission from working with Lila Greer and Jack and Sally Southard to clean the gardens, plant iris bulbs in the Old Rectory garden, put away buckets of salt and snow shovels, and bring out water meters and garden hoses.

In exchange, workers took home energy-saving light bulbs.

The many hands finished the work in 2 hours and saved the Grounds Budget hours of paid labor which later in the week finished the work of mulching the grounds and gardens. Please do speak your thanks to each of these parishioners who gave up a Saturday morning for all of us.

—Sally Southard, Grounds Coordinator

With diesel fuel hovering around $4.00 per gallon, it now costs Shared Harvest Foodbank more than $1000 per week to transport food that eventually makes its way to emergency pantries that serve families in need. At the same time, those same high fuel costs and increased costs of food and medical care have caused more people to turn to food pantries for help.

You can do something to help. Members of the Naional Association of Letter Carriers throughout Butler County are preparing for the largest one-day food drive in America—on May 10th.

Your letter carrier will pick-up donations while delivering your mail that day. Just set bags or boxes of non-perishable food items next to your mailbox around the time your mail is normally delivered. In addition to pick-ups on city postal routes in Hamilton, Fairfield, Middletown, Monroe, Oxford, and Trenton, rural carriers have agreed to pick-up food donations on rural routes.

All of the food goes to Shared Harvest Foodbank, which distributes it to soup kitchens, food pantries, homeless shelters, and other emergency food programs in Butler County. It is distributed during summer months, when children in need are home from school and parents are faced with providing additional meals for them. God bless you for your generosity!

In 2007, we in Butler County contributed a record 70,000 pounds of food to this campaign.
Can we beat that?

Anita and Michael Dohn are physicians serving as missionaries with La Iglesia Episcopal Dominicana through the South American Missionary Society. They live along the southern coast in San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic.

      E-mail: < DohnFamily@sams-usa.org >

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sometimes the medicine just works too fast. Of course, it can never be too fast from the patient’s perspective. However, recently we had a special request.

An Emmy-winning film team was coming to document the cooperative efforts of the Dominican government, non-governmental organizations, and the churches as they respond to the AIDS epidemic here. The film team asked that the Clinic identify several children with HIV infection to put a human face on the story. Among our recent children enrolled in treatment, we found two families willing to participate.

Manuelito was a scrawny 9-month-old baby who weighed nine pounds when he started therapy two months ago. He has done great on treatment. He is now a fat and happy 11-month-old who is hanging onto things to stand-up and looks as though he is about ready for his first steps.

Ana is a 6-year-old who arrived with horrible skin lesions all over her body three weeks ago. She looked terrible and felt miserable (not to mention her embarrassment from the very obvious skin spots). She is already doing much better. Her skin is practically clear, she is back in school, and she is gaining weight.

The documentary team observed that these two children looked pretty normal. What could we say? Children respond quickly to this therapy! During the three weeks between the team’s request and their arrival, these children attained a pretty normal appearance.

Both these children are orphans who are living with distant relatives here. I have been to their homes: the typical wood clapboard walls and corrugated tin roofs with unfinished concrete and dirt floors.

Another theme of the documentary is that a properly organized health system can provide good care even to poor children with serious disease. Manuelito and Ana do demonstrate that point fairly well. From our perspective the medicine does not work too fast; it is great to see these children get rapidly better.

In Christ,
Michael

 

Whether you choose the traditional blue box or the more convenient  blue envelope for your “thankful coins,” you will be joining a long-standing tradition in the Episcopal Church.

The United Thank Offering began as a part of missionary efforts of the women’s auxiliary to the Board of Mission in 1889. Julia Emery and Ida Soule, two members of the auxiliary, inspired women to pray and give coins with the idea of building a new church in Anvik, Alaska, and sending a woman missionary to Japan. At the 1889 Triennial Meeting the offering was $2188.64 and accomplished those purposes.

In the last ten years UTO has given grants between $2.5 and $3 million each year to address human needs and promote mission expansion. Every coin from every blue box and envelope is given away in grants. Ever cent you give, representing your thankful prayers today, is the dream for tomorrow’s life and gives hope to people all over the world. Let’s help keep the hope alive!

The Net:

Don’t you sometimes long for the days when books and magazines kept us up-to-date? Computers are somehow encroaching—ironically, perhaps especially if you don’t have one. Once you get started though, it’s very hard to go back, because there are fascinating websites for and about just about everything, and they can be literally up-to-the-minute.

So if you haven’t already, just try it sometime. Go to the Lane Library and ask one of the librarians on the second floor to help you get acquainted with one of the computers there. Then just play with it—it’s very hard to break anything or mess anything up. Maybe ask the librarian to get you to Google or Yahoo or another search engine you’ve heard about, and then type in anything you want, hit “return,” and see what comes up. You could try your name, for example, or “growing tomatoes,” or “knitting patterns,” or “borscht recipes,” or “cancer treatments.” There’s even a way to actually look down on your house and see what other people think it’s worth. The possibilities are endless, and you will be amazed at how your world can grow.
            And now that you’re there, try typing in a few of the following and then click on what looks interesting to you:

• Coopamerica.org
• Composting.com
• Gardeners.com
• Grist.com
• Cookingbynumbers.com
• NRDC.org/greenliving/

And if you run out of things to look up and have fun with, just ask me!

—Mary F.-T.

******************

Basics in your cupboards:

white vinegar
baking soda
borax
hydrogen peroxide
club soda (fresh)
lemon juice
liquid castile soap
cornmeal
olive oil

What do they have in common? They can all be used alone or in combination to clean the house, and none of them is as expensive, toxic, or toxin-emitting as most manufactured cleaners the media try to convince us we need. Want to find out more? You know those computers at the Lane Library ...?
(or just ask the librarian)

******************

Germs and Other Concerns

You may be worried about do-it-yourself green cleaners not being able to kill germs effectively. Researchers at Tufts New England Medical Center, on the other hand, worry that we’re killing too many microorganisms, saying that disinfectants found in household cleaners may contribute to drug resistant bacteria. The Childrens Health Environmental Coalition says that ordinary soap and water do the job well enough to keep our families safe, barring someone with a seriously compromised immune system.

For most of us, the best way to prevent the spread of harmful microorganisms is to wash our hands frequently. Also, disinfect any sponges you’re using weekly by boiling them in water for three minutes and then microwaving them for a minute or two. Launder dish rags every week.

If you prefer over-the-counter products, look for green cleaners made with natural ingredients.

We are now into the second year of Holy Trinity fourth-Wednesday Community Dinners. This has been a wonderful opportunity for us to reach out to others in the Oxford area and to get acquainted with people with whom we seldom interact. As you know, this kind of success takes a lot of work. We invite more Holy Trinity people to become involved in this project.

We have provided a downloadable Word document which you can fill out and return to us. Thank you!

2 Karen Burnard, Mary Jo McMillin, Barbara Hamilton
5 Yero Peterson
7 Jean Perry
10 Dick Nault, Cynthia Hanscomb
11 Barbara Ellison
14 Laura Poppendeck
18 Nina Stahr (1999)
19 Mary Poppendeck
21 Tom Dierling
24 Gitzene Myers, Jordan Secrest
25 Tom Coakley
27 Marshall Patterson
28 Jacob Bausano
31 Linda Church