Feeling Like Home

Good Monday Morning Trinity Tribe,

We had a wonderful worship service yesterday! My family joined the church officially, which is great and makes me happy! If you weren't with us, we missed you! We hope you will be with us next week! I have attached the bulletin and sermon, if you would like to keep in the loop!

We are officially moved into the parsonage! Hip Hip Hooray! I am within striking distance of having the kitchen together. Mark worked hard yesterday getting our beds put together and organizing other things. We are living in a fishbowl since the blinds aren't up yet, which makes mornings funny. We get to see everyone go by as we eat breakfast!

Thank you to all the people who helped us move in on Saturday! It went quickly since you were so kind to give up your Saturday afternoon to help us!

Living in the parsonage is a new experience for us. My grandparents who were in ministry no longer served a church when I came along and our last church didn't have a parsonage, so none of us have not lived in a parsonage before. It is a house owned by the church and provided because it is too difficult to buy and sell houses as pastors move around. Looking at the wall of previous pastors here at Trinity, some only stayed for a year or two! There is no way that a pastor could afford to buy and sell a house that quickly.

400 East Third Avenue is your house. People in this church raised the money to build it back in the early 1950s. Part of the church budget is saved every year for repairs on the parsonage. In the Book of Discipline para. 258.2.g.16 it says, "The parsonage is to be mutually respected by the pastor's family as the porperty of the church and by the church as a place of privacy for the pastor's family. The chairperson of the committee on pastor-parish relations, the chairperson of the board of trustees, and the pastor shall make an annual review of the church-owned parsonage to assure proper maintenance."

We, of course, will have that annual review every January. We also want to have an open house in the late fall or early winter so that everyone can see the "new" floors in the parsonage, so be watching your bulletin and newsletter for details!

400 East Third Avenue is also our home. Right now it looks like a rummage sale with all the boxes, but soon we will make it look like real people live there! We hope that you will drop by and say hello when you are in the neighborhood. We have already enjoyed walking the dogs around Flora McDonald and the surrounding neighborhood. We ran into church folks as we walked and had a great conversation. We are having a great time as official members of the Red Springs community!

And to quote a country song, "It feels like home!"