NEW COVENANT WITH REV. JOËLLE LEDUC

The following is from the most recent Nakonha:ka Regional Council newsletter:

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A special online service on Sunday, February 21, 2021 celebrated a new covenant between Rev. Joelle Leduc, Ste. Genevieve United Church and Conseil régional Nakonha:ka Regional Council. Lisa Byer-de Wever, member of the congregation and director of Maison Saint Columba House, offered an inspiring sermon about the nature of promise and finding wonder even in the midst of the wilderness. Rev. Linda Buchanan, president of the Regional Council, was present to lead reflection and preside over the covenanting. The congregation of Ste. Genevieve United Church was also delighted to welcome many guests from

Covid Vaccination Campaign for Seniors

You’ve surely all heard that Quebecers 85 and older are now eligible to get vaccinated, and that those between 70 and 84 will be soon. Still, being eligible and actually getting vaccinated are two different things. The hurdles in the way are not insignificant.

First there’s the fact that the government wants you to register for vaccination through a website. We know very well that many of you don’t have computers or internet. There is a phone number to call and we would be curious to hear if anyone has used it and had success registering that way. The number is:  
1-877-644-4545 (toll-free line from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday or 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday).

The Quebec government is not, at this point, offering to vaccinate people in their homes, even though many seniors have mobility issues. Seniors in Verdun keep hearing about the mass vaccination site at the Olympic Stadium and wondering if the government really expects them to go there!

On your behalf we tried going on the website first thing Thursday morning and by entering a Verdun postal code, we were able to learn that the closest sites to us are: the Glen; the Montreal General; and the Palais des congress. Those who live in Lasalle or elsewhere will likely get different recommended sites.

In order to register on your site you will need to provide your Medicare number, date of birth, and your parents names.

Many of you have some familiarity with the new hospital at the Glen, but that’s not to say getting there to be vaccinated will be a breeze.  There is some talk of opening smaller vaccination clinics in pharmacies and such, but that may not happen for weeks. So unfortunately if you want to be vaccinated sooner rather than later, a certain amount of travel will be required. We have drafted a letter* (signed by Pastor Beryl and Dennis Brown) to Isabelle Melancon, provincial  MNA for Verdun, gently suggesting that we need at least one site within Verdun - and we don’t mean Nun’s Island!

If you have any mobility troubles you should get someone to drive you and go in with you. (That person can even register to be vaccinated themselves if they are over 70). The good thing about a hospital setting is that you should be able to get hold of a wheelchair; take it, because chances are the vaccination site will be a trek from the parking garage.

There has been no suggestion that parking will be free at these sites (the Big O has given in to that demand, however). I would hold on to your receipt if you pay for parking because there may be some kind of reimbursement later. I would do the same if you end up taking a taxi: get a receipt!

If anyone reading this needs help registering or getting to an appointment, contact the office. We will do our best to help.

-      Amy

*click below to see the English version of the letter, which was also sent in French.

Pastor Beryl's Blog: Journeying Through Lent, 2

For the blog this week, I am sharing a story entitled “New Adventures”, submitted by Won Hur.  I hope you will find inspiration for your own journey as we travel through Lent together.

Genesis 12:1-5 -New International Version

The Call of Abram

12  1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

 Abram and Sarai are living among their kin as they always had when God turned their lives upside down.  Rather than living a life of comfort and leisure in their retirement years, they are called upon to leave their home, family and community for a land far away.  Unlike Adam and Eve, they are not banished, but are give the promise of a new nation in a new land:  God will make their names great, and they will be a blessing.  The promise does seem rather incredible.

Abram had to trust in what God had said, but he must have had his doubts.  Was this message really from God?  Or was it a dream?  No matter; the fact is that Abram had to have faith that it was indeed God in order to uproot not only himself, but also his wife Sari and his nephew, Lot – both of whom joined him on the journey to an unknown destination.  A promise from God not only upended their life, but they also truly changed the world.

With the exception of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, everyone is a foreigner on this continent.  Everyone has a story about how, when and why they or their ancestors left their original home and come to this land.  Our stories connect us to one another, to Abram and Sarai and to God, who calls us to new adventures.

God may be calling you on a journey to a new land, a new job, a new home, a new opportunity or a new friendship that might transform who you are so that you may become an even greater blessing to others.  Ae you ready?

Let’s pray:

O God of life and love, you call us from comfort, complacency and status quo.
You nudge us to a live beyond ourselves and to a life even greater than our imaginations and fears.
May we trust in your guidance towards a new life.
Protect, comfort and lead us, and we will follow.
May we be a blessing to others, not just in the future, but starting today.  Amen

Beryl

When Mrs. King Came to Montreal

A typed letter found in a box of papers indicates that Coretta Scott King gave a speech at St. James United Church in Montreal in February of….

Well I wish I could tell you the year but the letter isn’t dated! Someone has written 1965-66 on it in pencil, then scratched that out.

A history of St. James by Rob Bull includes the following line: “In the 1970’s, keeping its place as a centre for public discourse after her husband was killed, Coretta Scott King addressed a large gathering of United Church Women at the church.”

There’s a great deal of difference of course whether the appearance took place in 1966 - which would have been before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King - or the 1970s, which would put it after. The event was indeed organized by the Presbyterial UCW, but as the letter also shows, it was not only a gathering of women.

Our own Shirley Stark remembers attending the event, although she couldn’t be sure of the year.

“I saw her at St. James. The place was jammed to the rafters. I sat up in the balcony.”
If she had to guess, Shirley would put the event in 1969.
“I was working as secretary at Chalmers,” Shirley says, “and I started there in the mid-sixties.”

Shirley remembers Ada Scoates, and thinks she hadn’t been President of the Presbyterial UCW for very long when this appearance was organized.

I wish I had a transcript of what Mrs. King said on that night of February 23rd, in 1969 or maybe 1970. We know that she tried very hard immediately following King’s assassination to carry on his work, even sometimes speaking from notes that he had left. She helped make sure that his vision for a Poor Peoples Campaign did not die. Not three months after his assassination, Mrs. King was among the speakers at the National Mall in Washington, the site of a protest camp demanding economic justice for all people.

Dr. King had also been scheduled to address the Harvard graduating class that June. Mrs. King stepped in and as you can hear in the clip below, she did not hesitate to speak out against the Vietnam war.

Coretta Scott King passed away on Jan. 30, 2006, at the age of 78.

If anyone else has memories of Mrs. King’s speech at St. James, we would love to hear them!

 Complete text of the letter:

To Our Ministers

Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., from Atlanta, Georgia, will be the guest speaker at the evening session of the Annual Meeting ofthe Montreal Presbyterial United Church Women, to be held on Thursday, February 23rd, at St. James United Church.

          I would be very grateful if you would make use of the contents of the enclosed flyer to make this meeting known to all the members of your congregation, either by announcement or in the church calendar.

          We feel that this outstanding speaker will be of great interest to all. May we look forward to meeting you and members of your congregation (both men and women) on this occasion?

Yours sincerely,

Ada M. Scoates
President, Montreal Presbyterial
United Church Women

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Pastor Beryl's Blog: Journeying Through Lent 1

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For Lent 2021, I am following the Daily Reflections on Hope and Change, from the book “Faith on the Move”. At the end of each week, I will share stories which I hope will be inspirational for your own journey.

 

Ruth 1:16-20 NIV

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. 19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi” she told them. “Call me Mara because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

Naomi had suffered the death of many loved ones, leading her to change her name to Mara (which means bitter).  She urged her daughter-in-law to let her travel to her homeland alone, but Ruth would not let her go.  And so, Ruth and Naomi travelled together to Bethlehem, fleeing famine and death.  This pilgrimage started not as an adventure into a new life together, but as a journey filled with pain and loss. A pilgrimage of solidarity.

Whether our journeys are physical or emotional, we go together, with the love of God, even and maybe especially when our hearts are heavy with fear.

Each Lenten journey, we travel with Jesus to the cross.  We go knowing it isn’t easy but recognizing that we are not alone, that Jesus was not alone.  We move in solidarity amidst pain and loss, trusting that hope will break through and (we) as well as our world, will be transformed.

Let’s Pray:

God of Ruth and Naomi
God of pilgrimage to the cross
God of solidarity, we pray
For your hope to enter our hearts amidst our fear,
For your love to enter our hearts amidst our grief,
For your courage to enter our hearts amidst our pain.
Move us to be in solidarity with all people searching for hope.
Move us to stay with Jesus on his journey as he stays with us.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen

                                                                             - Story submitted by Miriam Spies

Ministers

Below is, we think, a complete list of ministers from our two founding congregations, Verdun United and Crawford Park United.

Verdun Methodist Church 1901 – 1925

1901 - 1902                Rev. A.C. Hoffman
1903 - 1906                 Dr. A.J. Martin
1906 – 1910                Rev. Thomas Bole
1910 – 1914                Rev. F.B. Allnutt
1914 – 1915                Rev. H.W. Burnett
1915 – 1916                Rev. D.I. Hart
1916 – 1920                Rev. William Timberlake
1920 – 1924                Rev. Fred Williams
1924 – 1925                Rev. Isaac Norman

Verdun United Church 1925-2007

1925-1933                   Rev. Isaac Norman
1933 – 1957                Rev. J.G. Joyce
1957 – 1975                Rev. A.E. Jones
1975 – 1976                Rev. K. McLaughlin
1977 – 1979                Rev. J.R.H. Corbett
1979 – 1980                Rev. Harold Kennedy (supply)
1980 – 1998                Rev. Maurice Nerny
1998 – 2007                Rev. David Lefneski

Crawford Park United Church 1939 – 2007

1939 – 1944                Rev. J. Wilkinson
1944 – 1947                Rev.  J. K. Brown, (supervising supply minister)
1947 – 1955                Rev. John Downing
1955 – 1957                Rev. A.E. Jones
1957 – 1971                Rev. C. Dawson MacDonald 1972 – 1973 Rev. J.R.H. Corbett & supply
1974 – 1979                Rev. J.R.H. Corbett
1979 – 1980                Rev. Ernest Barratt (supply)
1980 – 1998                Rev. Maurice Nerny
1998 – 2007                Rev. David Lefneski

 SouthWest United Church 2007 – 2019

2007 – 2019                Rev. David Lefneski
2019 - present DLM Beryl Barraclough


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