WINTERGARDEN WEEKEND UPDATE

Dearest Faith Community Near and Far- Happy Friday!  First, if you need anything to help with recovery from the Hurricane, please let me know. Just call, text, or email. Call me at 941-525-6671. Also, please continue to pray deeply for our community at large. The pictures do not communicate the depth of the pain, trauma, and damage.  Second, we have been blessed by Church of the Palms in Sarasota. They have sent 3 different work teams to help on all different projects at the church. This next week, they are sending work teams to go to peoples’ homes. If you are in need of help at your home or one of your neighbors needs help, please contact me ASAP. They will review the work plans on Sunday afternoon.  Third, my heart continues to overflow with such a deep gratitude for our food pantry volunteers, our members, our staff, and our friends…and our wider community. Our volunteers ran the food pantry 3 times last week and served over 720 families!  Absolutely an amazing gift to our community. Thank you so much! We have received many generous donations of diapers, formula, food, water, food, and more. We have handed out 140 clean up buckets to help people clean their homes and have basic cleaning supplies.  Fourth, we are in the process of updating and modifying our website. We are going to streamline our website with the essentials. Hopefully that can be up and running over the next two weeks. We will be posting resources on our Facebook page, as well as images of the work being done and how we are continuing the serve our community. Please share the exciting things happening with your friends.  Fifth, our sanctuary has had significant damage. With the first evaluation, it looks like we had about 25-30% of damage to our main building. The insurance adjuster came out on Monday, October 10 and we are finalizing the process with insurance over the next week. We have met with a contractor who is truly going to be a gift and a blessing to us. More details to come next week! We recognize that everything is fully replaceable and fixable. And because of the damage in the sanctuary, we will gather outdoors for the foreseeable future.  Sixth, for worship, we are going to move to having “Breakfast Church” on Sunday mornings. What will breakfast church look like? I’m so glad you asked! We will gather in the garden, around table, and to eat breakfast. With this meal, we will enjoy fellowship, prayer, a scripture lesson, and being in community together. We are going to embody breaking bread together and being the body of Christ in a different way. We will gather at 9:30 and this Sunday, friends from Bonita Springs will be preparing and bringing us breakfast. Food for 30-35, so everyone COME! We will be postponing Sacred Space until November 6 and worship online until November 6. Internet is slowly returning, but not stable enough to run a full service with.  We also need to reimagine what online worship will look like as we gather outdoors. Please be patient with us as we work on these issues.  Seventh, thank you for the way you are giving of your time and your financial gifts. We have updated our online giving to include disaster relief. Click HERE if you would like to contribute to disaster relief and please share this link with your friends and family. You can also continue to give to the general fund, food pantry, and community garden. Thank you for supporting our faith community and for everything you do to help us live into our mission to feed people physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally in our community. You are helping us truly be the hands and feet of Christ in our community  If you have any questions or wonderings or concerns, please let me know. Call, text, or email. Blessings to you all! Much love,  Pastor Devon

Worship with Wintergarden
Sunday, October 16, 2022
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Sacred Space is POSTPONED
until November 6, 2022 @ 8:30am
We will resume in the garden by the fountain
and the service will be in-person and online
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Casual Breakfast Church @ 9:30am
In the Garden
Friends of Pastor Devon’s are preparing and bringing breakfast for us this week
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Online Worship is Postponed
until Sunday, November 6 at 9:30am:
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SUNDAY AT WINTERGARDEN

We’ll be having a casual breakfast gathering in the Garden @ 9:30am.

Every Monday Lectio Divina Every Wednesday Food delivery Every Thursday Food Pantry 12-4pm Oct 18 Homeless Coalition meal at 4:30pm Oct. 22 MADD (Make a Difference Day) at 9am Oct. 27 CNS Care N Share (Every 4th Thurs.) Oct. 28 Family Fun Night of Trick or Treat! More details to come

Bone Builders will resume in November! We want to let the dust settle a little and then we can start working on maintaining and building our health! See you in November.

At Wintergarden Presbyterian Church we are eager to pray for you!   Please let us know how we can pray by submitting a Prayer Request online (link below). The prayer requests are emailed to Pastor Devon once submitted. Prayer Request Lectio Divina for Monday, October 17, 2022 All are welcome to join us as we continue to engage in the spiritual practice of Lectio Divina together as a community. We will OFFICIALLY restart Lectio on 10/17/22. See you then! Our Scripture Lesson is Psalm 121. We will gather via zoom for an intentional time of listening, reflecting, responding, and resting in the Word of God. We will meet on Mondays from 8-9 am.  Here are some details about Lectio Divina.  Lectio Divina, literally meaning “divine reading,” is an ancient practice of praying the Scriptures. During Lectio Divina, the person listens to the text of the Bible with the “ear of the heart,” as if he or she is in conversation with God, and God is suggesting the topics for discussion. There are four movements for Lectio Divina:  1. Lectio: (Listening to the Word of God or Reading God’s Word) 2. Meditatio: (Reflecting on the Word of God) 3. Oratio: (Responding to the Word of God) 4. Contemplatio: (Resting in the Word of God) Here is the Zoom Link:  Join Zoom Meeting: Click HERE https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87832080869?pwd=TUxCRThUcEdRbTNTWmJ6emZRamUyZz09  Meeting ID: 878 3208 0869 Passcode: 396015 +16465588656,,87832080869#,,,,*396015# US (New York)