Posts from March 2013

aloha spirit

Aloha Spirit

Dear Friends, During my trip back to Hawaii, Marlou and I joined with other members of the family and went to worship at Aldersgate UMC, just west of downtown Honolulu. It was the church I grew up in. I was pleasantly surprised to see how some things had changed, but yet how some things remained the same. The changes included a whole new audio-visual system – two projection screens mounted on the front wall of the chancel, like ours at…
sand and desert

Make Some Desert

Dear Friends, During Lent I’ve been reading the devotional Small Surrenders by Emilie Griffin. On one of the days Griffin quotes Carlo Carretto who says: If you cannot go into the desert, you must nonetheless “make some desert” in your life. Every now and then leaving… and looking for solitude to restore, in prolonged silence and prayer, the stuff of your soul. [Brewster, Mass: Paraclete Press, 2007, p.40] The common image of the desert is present throughout the Bible. The…
bible study

Young Adult Bible Study

New!  Young adults (ages 18-40) are welcome to get together on Thursdays from 7:30pm-9:30pm in the Upper Room (youth room) at church.  This is a weekly gathering to hang out and discuss the matters of faith and philosophy that interest, concern, and confuse us as college students and young adults.  Info:  Tyler Dobbs, tyler@firstumctorrance.org