The Beacon, July/August 2008

Father Bill

Looking Ahead

I hope that all of you are having a good summer, and that you're able to get some rest from the daily grind of living. I want to tell you all how grateful I am for your prayers and support as I undergo surgery on my right arm and shoulder on July 16th. As many of you know, I had surgery on this shoulder about a decade ago, and now it needs to be repaired again. The doctor is telling me that I may have to wear a sling for up to six weeks. I can certainly officiate at Sunday services, but I will not be able to administer the bread and wine. Bishop Scruton's policy in this diocese is that the laity are to administer the chalice only. However, because of my situation, he has waived that policy for St Stephen's for the six weeks that I am incapacitated.

Many of you know that I intend to go on sabbatical in 2009, from mid-April to early July. Bishop Scruton's visitation was scheduled for June 14th, when I would be away. Further, that date would have required someone other than myself to conduct confirmation classes in preparation for the visitation. That didn't seem acceptable. I have therefore been communicating with other clergy in our area, who have the bishop visiting, in order to see if a switch of dates would be possible. I'm happy to report that the rector of St Paul's in Gardner had responded in the affirmative. St Paul's will assume our date of June 14th, and we in turn will assume their original date of March 29th. This is before I will leave on sabbatical. Thus, I will be here not only for the bishop's visit, but also for the confirmation classes preceding that visit. Those classes will start sometime in mid-January.

I'm very pleased to announce that our newly formed Peace and Justice Committee has obtained an acceptance from US Congressman Jim McGovern to appear as a speaker here at St Stephen's on Sunday, September 21st at 4:00pm. His topic will be on how his own spiritual life has shaped his work in government. He will talk specifically about his experiences in El Salvador, as well as on hunger and human rights issues. Please mark this date on your fall calendar.

Obviously, we will open this talk to the people of the larger Westborough community, so we should have good attendance. I hope to see you all there!

Faithfully, Fr Bill

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From the editor

Peace Corps

It occurred to me on the last Sunday in June as we commissioned Gemma Kite for her upcoming stint in the Peace Corps, that St Stephen's has had a great group of young people become wonderful young adults. Much of this can be attributed to good parenting and also to St Stephen's for providing an atmosphere that is conducive to assisting young people in their Christian journeys. Thus it gives me much pleasure to use this space in this issue to share with you what Gemma has written about her upcoming stint with the Peace Corps.

I ni tula,

As some of you know, I will be joining the Peace Corps on July 7th to have a two year adventure in Mali, West Africa. This is both an exciting and anxious time for me, as I prepare to leave my life behind in the States for two years and get to start a new chapter in a completely different country!

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I will be working as a Water/Sanitation engineer. For non-techies, this means that I could be doing a number of activities, including installing wells/pumps, water treatment, composting latrines, education in proper sanitation and importance of clean water, etc. As my main project in the Peace Corps is also my project and thesis basis for my masters program at Cornell, I will have additional academic support and encouragement from friends and advisors at Cornell.

So you might ask why I have decided to join the Peace Corps? This question has come up a lot. Not only do I want to experience a new country, the culture, the tradition, the language, the food, but I want to be able to put my engineering specialties to good use. Additionally, I can't see a better way to get the best hands on engineering design and construction in the first few years of my career than with the Peace Corps!

I have done a lot of research on Mali and preparation work for my travel to the country. The Peace Corps gave me free access to the Rosetta Stone to learn French, the official national language (as Mali was a French colony). Additionally, I will be learning Bambara in the first three months of training. This is the official native language and will be used more frequently than French. Depending on where I am placed, I might even have to learn a third language or dialect! Mali is a large country and contains many different types of people, including urban and nomadic tribes, cave dwellers and silversmiths.

I will be in touch as often as I can to give you all updates on my adventure. But you can also write me either by email, or letters to.

• kite.gl@gmail.com
• Gemma Kite, PCT
• Corps de la Paix
• B.P. 85
• Bamako, Mali West Africa

That will be my mail address for the first 11 weeks.

Keep in mind that mail takes approximately three weeks to reach me from the States. After the 11 weeks of training and when I get inducted as a PC Volunteer, I will move to my own site where I will spend the next two years. I requested a rural area, as I will be able to get more design and construction projects, but this decision ultimately rests on the PC, so I won't find out until half-way through training where I will be placed.

So right now, I am doing a lot to prepare, including language lessons, selling my car, and buying supplies. It's hard to pack for two years. The PC tells us to pack clothes for one week. Clothes are something that can be found abundant in Mali's markets or can be handmade cheaply by a seamstress. More importantly, they tell us to bring things that we might miss for two years, like our favorite book or DVD, pictures, certain jewelry and perfume to make us feel pretty every once in a while, etc. The most important buy (I have been told) will be the mosquito net tent that I can pitch outside. Since it is so hot, most Malians sleep outside during the dry season (9 months). Malaria is a concern, as well as the lack of sleep from pestering bugs, so a net tent is the perfect (and transportable) way to get a good night's rest

Lastly, I know some of you are thinking. "Wow, Africa. I'd like to go there!" And this might be the perfect time when you know someone who will be living there. I urge you to all think about visiting. It is costly, both in vaccination shots and airplane tickets, but I can promise that it would be worth it. Or, if you would like to check out how you could be of use in the Peace Corps, check out the website at www.peacecorps.gov.

Until next time, I wish you all the best. I hope to hear from all of you soon.

Peace, Gemma

Godspeed to you Gemma - Fred

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Prayerful Notes

A time to heal

"There is a time for every activity under heaven ... a time to keep and a time to throw away" - Eccl. 3:1 & 6b

This verse from Ecclesiastes came to mind recently, as I took on the arduous task of cleaning out my attic. Knowing this would be a major project, I wisely enlisted the help of my daughter Carrie. I must preface this by saying that, a few years ago I had a new roof put on my house. What I did not realize until after the fact, was that as a result of that, everything in the attic was covered with fine black dust. Fortunately most things were boxed or bagged, nevertheless it was a very messy job.

Now attic storage differs from basement storage, in that the old adage about out of sight, out of mind holds true. I often go to the basement, see things and weed them out. The attic, however, remains unseen and holds much more dated items. Some of the items we came across up there were:

her crib, her baby bouncing seat and a box full of her baby shoes. Carrie is 43 years old! She was 13 when we moved to this house. Whatever possessed me to transport all of those items here at that stage of life? Even if I had anticipated future grandchildren, these things would have been out of style and would no longer have met safety codes. As most parents who have grown children can attest, while children grow up and move on, our homes remain storage units for their no longer needed items.

Beneath the attic eaves, we also found her old college text books, along with home furnishings from the various apartments that she had lived in. There was a lot of decision making to do yet it seemed to come easier at this stage of our lives. While many items will go to Goodwill, much of it just went to the dump.

Carrie and I have had a long and complicated journey as mother and daughter. We have worked through a lot of painful situations and through God's grace, we have a wonderful new relationship today. While many of those things in the attic had simply been forgotten, others were reminders of a simpler, uncomplicated time in our lives. I think that was a part of the reason they had been hard to part with.

Now we both feel free to let go of the past. Those things somehow do not seem important anymore. What we have today in our relationship is so much more valuable. I think we let go of a lot more than baby shoes and household furnishings that day. We let go of another period of time and celebrated the new chapter in our lives.

"Thanks be to God! ... and a time to heal" - Eccl. 3:3a

Blessings Always, Phyl Endicott

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Announcements

Stewardship

Help! Help! Help! Pledge payments are way behind!

Please catch up. The bills keep coming in so please don't abandon ship. Summer is here and our lifestyles are subject to change. Church life changes, too. We condense to one Sunday service and many of our internal organizations and activities relax their schedules. However, salaries, utilities, building maintenance, and mission programs do not take a holiday. It's extremely important that pledge receipts do not take a holiday, either.

Please make every effort to keep your pledge current during the summer months. You may choose to prepay a few months, mail your pledge, or electronically transfer funds (see office for details). You will be contributing to the financial well-being of St Stephen's as well as reducing the stress for those individuals who have volunteered to pilot and crew the financial ship.

Please don't abandon us! Thank you all and have a safe and enjoyable summer.

Geoff Underwood, Treasurer

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Soldier's Angels

Parishioner Ruth Beck offers the following:

In 1991, during Desert Storm, my daughter's elementary school class adopted local soldiers in Iraq, to write letters. Jenny wrote a letter to a soldier and sent her school photo along. She received a very nice letter back from him, a little about himself growing up in Framingham and a little about the war conditions in Iraq. He hoped she would write back, but she never did.

Fast forward ten years, we are now in Southborough with a new husband and house. The walls are covered inch by inch of family photos, ninety-nine percent Brian's family. I put up one frame with all my kids' school and sports photos in the living room.

The house needed serious clearing out, so Brian told me to call a local firefighter who had helped his mother in the past. The day he came over, I found him staring at the photos of my kids on the wall. He told me he knew that little girl; she wrote to him when he was in Desert Storm, but she never wrote back. Next, he opened his wallet and showed me his photo of Jenny and her letter. Two things that he always carried in his pocket in Iraq and in his wallet after he returned. Jenny and Jeff did get to meet and it was really touching. I could add here, to make it more dramatic, that he asked her why she never wrote back, but he didn't. That one letter was enough.

There is an organization called Soldiers Angels. Through them, we can "adopt" a soldier who wants to be adopted, male or female, in Iraq or Afghanistan. All we are committed to are writing letters of support and sending one gift package a month to our adoptee. There are three soldiers from Massachusetts waiting to be adopted, right now. All female. I hope this is something the congregation would be willing to participate in, especially now that the soldiers are tired, stressed out and away from home for long periods.

You can visit their website for more information at www.soldiersangels.org. They offer other projects, some of which are also very interesting. Or contact me, as I am in touch with their local coordinator and she will guide us through the process of adopting a soldier from our area, or any other areas. We can chose which branch of the service, male or female, and for how long. It is up to adopters as to how long they want to participate. Most people adopt for the length of the time spent overseas. There is no fee to adopt but they ask for donations on their site, through PayPal.

You can contact me online at rbeck76@verizon.net, at church, or by phone (508) 485-5338. There is no timeframe; this can be an ongoing project through the Peace and Justice Committee. I am planning on adopting at least one soldier by the end of the month and to start in July.

I hope you will consider joining up with us and perhaps even adopting your own soldier. This is a very good cause as the soldiers really need our support now. The suicide figures keep going up, and we can make a positive impact on any soldier's life.

The Peace and Justice Committee's Soldier's Angels have "adopted" a female soldier. Her name is Erin King. She is 25 years old, has a 16-month old daughter, and is on her third tour in Iraq. She is based at FOB Loyalty, Iraq. The Committee's commitment includes writing letters of support and sending care packages. All information is available on the Peace and Justice table in Fay Hall. If you would like to help, contact me at rbeck76@verizon.net or by phone at (508) 485-5338. The suicide rate among our troops is rising; you can do something about it by letting them know that someone at "home" cares.

Thank you - Ruth Beck

Other Announcements

Thanks to those who volunteered during the time that we hosted the people from IHN. Volunteers cooked dinner, got groceries, slept over and helped in many other ways.

Thanks to the St Stephen's choir for their excellent presentations during the year. They were truly pivotal in helping to set an atmosphere conducive to worship.

In Memoriam St Stephen's mourns the recent loss of parishioner Bob Anderson. Bob and his wife Marie were parishioners at St Stephen's for many years. Bob will remembered for his dry wit that would seem to appear completely by surprise. He was a thoughtful man, always concerned for the welfare of others. Our condolences to his wife Marie and the family. May they take comfort in knowing that Bob is in the loving care of our Lord. Rest in peace, Bob.

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