It was a beautiful service, and was followed by a fellowship lunch at the hall.

What an amazing God we serve!

The post Island Service With Two Baptisms appeared first on Anglican Life.

It can be a time of silence, and silence has its own value. It can also be used for meditation and contemplation. When we walk outside, especially in the “wild,” we can be more in touch with nature—God’s creation. I seem to be more aware, in particular of my body while walking. I walk no matter the weather, unless it is very severe, as I find that facing the elements in all its moods affects my well-being.

When I lived in the U.K. I discovered hiking which was commonplace there. My most ambitious hiking was in the Swiss Alps. When I returned to NL in the 1970s, hiking was catching on here and the government was promoting the upgrading of old trails and the construction of new ones. We have a lot of hiking trails today, and over the years I have used many of them—five to ten kilometres normally. The East Coast Trail comprises 270 kilometres of coastal hiking from Topsail Beach to Cappehayden, and 66 kilometres of community walks. There are also trails in ever so many communities on the Avalon. I have walked trails in Bay Roberts, Heart’s Content, Norman’s Cove, Chance Cove, Arnold’s Cove, Sunnyside, and Chance Cove, all within a 90 minutes’ drive. The most popular trail in NL is Skerwink in Port Rexton/Trinity East.

What I have said about walking can also apply to swimming and skating , skiing and snow-shoeing. When I retired 20 plus years ago, I took up kayaking. I find this another instrument of spirituality.

The post The Spirituality of Walking appeared first on Anglican Life.

The occasion was the celebration of the 70th anniversary of their church. The cornerstone for the first St. Alban’s was laid by Archbishop Barfoot on June 17th, 1953. 

It was a weekend packed with emotion, nostalgia, memories,  reflections, laughter, tears, and prayer. The Rev’d Charlie Cox, rector of the parish, was overwhelmed, and explained that it was “A true celebration is the greatest statement I could make as I summarize the events of the 70th anniversary celebrations. From the initial planning stages to the conclusion of the celebrations, I believe we were blessed beyond measure.”

The weekend started with a gospel concert setting a deep spiritual tone for the celebrations. A family day on Saturday, engaged the youth and their parents in a variety of fun activities.

This was followed by the banquet where people shared a beautiful meal and memories of days gone by. The congregation was joined by past rectors and members of other churches and denominations, as well as politicians from provincial and municipal levels.

Rev’d Charlie thanked the Rev’d Canon Reuben Hatcher for agreeing to be the guest speaker at the banquet, referring to his presentation as “the highlight of the evening.”

Canon Hatcher explained, “I was, indeed, pleased to be asked to be the guest speaker for the anniversary celebrations. I was a bit reluctant at first, since it’s been a long time since I served the parish in 1968. But I am glad I came.”

He added, “It gave me an opportunity to reflect on the beginning of the church and its growth over the years and to share that with those assembled at the banquet.”

And share he did, beginning when “the church” existed with no building, and worshipers assembled in places like the Temperance Hall, the Orange Lodge and Harry Grandy’s Theatre for services.

The big break came when resettlement of some communities took place from Brunette and other places along the coast. 

Canon Hatcher noted, “It was this influx of these people, their strong will and deep faith that led to the construction of the church in 1953.” The first service was held in the basement on Thanksgiving Day, 1953.

That church served the needs of the congregation until 1975, when the vestry decided it was time to build a new church.

Canon Hatcher also shared some of the experiences he had during his tenure in the parish. Many of them were happy, but others very sad, especially the loss of life to the fury of the sea with the sinking of the Blue Mist and Blue Wave.

He spoke of one lady who lost her husband, her son, and her son-in-law in the one disaster. “Her response to me was, ‘Well, I guess God wanted them more than I did’. What faith! What faith!” explained a tearful Canon Hatcher.

Interspersed with the sad experiences, Canon Hatcher related numerous light-hearted experiences that kept his audience in stitches.

He told of one incident when he and his friend Tom Pope got stuck in the middle of the road between Hungry Pond and Lorries while returning from a Lenten service in Lamaline.

“We got so far but the storm got worse, and we got stuck. With no plow on the road we had no choice but stay in the car all night. Then after a while we saw lights of a truck coming towards us.

“Hardly seeing through the snow, I saw this man driving the truck; he had his stocking cap down over his head. I soon recognized him; it was my rector coming to look for us. Needless to say, I never got aboard the truck with him; I got in with the snowplough operator.”

The rector that he referred to was, of course, the Rev’d Wilson Tibbo. He spoke of the same incident at the 50th anniversary of St. Alban’s. “I needed confession and absolution after that night because I do believe when we found him, I used some not so nice language on him which he has never forgotten,” he joked.

The Rt. Rev’d John Watton, the rector of the parish from 1990 to 1996, brought greetings on behalf of the Diocese of Central Newfoundland and spoke of his experiences in the parish. 

The anniversary celebrations ended with a Thanksgiving Service with Bishop Watton as the presider. Archdeacon Terry Caines, a native of Grand Bank, was the preacher.

The post St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Grand Bank Celebrates 70th Anniversary appeared first on Anglican Life.

Two of the photographs with this article show our ACW president, Carol Ann Keough, distributing the flowers to the women in the congregation.

The other photograph is Rev’d Knott and Deacon Herb

The post Mother’s Day Celebrated in Isle Aux Morts appeared first on Anglican Life.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2023 approximately 177 million people—more than three times the population of Canada—will be forced to leave their homes or countries. It is the highest number in history. The journey to safety can often be very perilous, all-too-frequently meeting a tragic end. According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, migrant deaths in the Central Mediterranean hit a six-year high in 2023.

“The majority of refugees are…living in exile for more than five years, and often decades,” says Carolyn Cummins, PWRDF’s Director of Fundraising and Supporter Relations. “The number of refugees in need of resettlement to another country has increased significantly, but unfortunately only a fraction will ever be offered an opportunity to relocate to countries such as Canada. The rest remain displaced, mostly in low to middle income countries which do not have the resources to care for their needs. PWRDF partners [such as the Act Alliance, the Anglican Alliance, and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank] are caring for displaced individuals and families with support for income generation, improved food security, medical care, counselling, and more.”

Naba Gurung, Humanitarian Response Coordinator at PWRDF, reports that many refugees at the Nyorugusu Camp in Tanzania have been there since the 1990s and know no other life. The camp is underfunded and overcrowded, and currently filled to three times its capacity. 

The fundraising goal for the 2023 Wild Ride is $50,000. You can register a team, register as an individual, or donate to an existing team or individual. Or just simply “donate now”! There is at least one team registered from our province so far, Book-lovers with Heart, (https://www.canadahelps.org/s/nMCxZf). If you form a team, how you raise the money is completely up to you. You can walk, run, cycle, bake cakes to sell, or anything you please. As the campaign says, “Put your stamp on it!”

Especially as we lead up to Thanksgiving, participating in this campaign would be a wonderful way to give thanks for all the blessings in our lives, especially those of us who have the luxury of living in our homeland, free of the fear of violence and persecution. Check out the website (https://pwrdf.org/wild-ride), speak to your rector or parish PWRDF representative, and let us push this Wild Ride right over the finish line. 

PWRDF Materials for you:

Did you know that PWRDF has printed materials available to every parish each year?  Make your PWRDF awareness/fundraising events more informative and inviting with specially-created brochures, bulletin covers, laminated placemats, bookmarks and donation envelopes. You can download and print your own or order them for delivery straight from PWRDF on the downloadable order form: https://pwrdf.org/get-involved/resources/annual-resources/. Then, plan your special PWRDF Sunday or other event. 

Your support of PWRDF is an excellent way to give life to at least three of the promises of our Baptismal Covenant: 

• Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbour as yourself;

• Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being; and

• Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation, and respect, sustain and renew the life of the Earth.

Whether you participate in this year’s Wild Ride or plan your own unique fundraiser, please continue to support the work of PWRDF through your prayers and your donations as we work towards a truly just, healthy and peaceful world.

The post Join the PWRDF Wild Ride While There’s Still Time! appeared first on Anglican Life.

Throughout the year, they play games and enjoy the activities created and led by their dedicated longtime leaders, Heather Greeley and Sylvia Greeley. During Hallowe’en, they invite their dads to a Hallowe’en Party, complete with games and costumes. During Christmas, they have a Grandmother’s Tea, providing entertainment such as singing, skits, etc. Then at the end of the year, they have a Mother and Daughter Banquet where they are presented with awards for their work throughout the year. These groups attend an Initiation Service in February, which they attend in their respective colours, from Sunbeams through to YGA.  Each group has their own banner, which is brought to the altar during this special service.

When a girl is finished with YGA, she graduates to GA (Girls Auxiliary). GA was started at St. Lawrence in 1964 by Mrs. Enid Smith, who was the wife of the Rev’d Thomas Smith. Ruth Bugden, the current leader of GA, has been involved with this group since its inception. She helps with Sunbeams, JA, and YGA as well. Many of our parish families have seen 3 generations work their way up through the Girls’ Groups.

GA carries out a variety of outreach projects in our parish, and many of these programs have been in effect for years.  On Good Friday of every year, you will find these teenagers preparing fruit baskets and delivering them to those who are 70 years of age and older in Portugal Cove, regardless of their denomination. Before they start the preparation of the fruit baskets, they do the Children’s Liturgy, complete with costumes and script, a crown of thorns, the tomb, and so on. They also carry out the Children’s Liturgy on Christmas Eve, again complete with costumes, script, Baby Jesus, and so on. They enter a float in our community Santa Claus Parade, and have won first place many times.

At the end of their year in May, at the Mother and Daughter Banquet, earned badges and others awards are presented. The girls put off a play during the banquet, which is put off again as a dinner theatre in September of each year as a major fundraiser for our parish. There is a group of volunteers who come together to take care of the cooking and clean up to help these fantastic young people.

One of the awards which is presented during the annual banquet is a ‘GA Honour Ring’. These rings are presented to the girls for outstanding attendance, involvement, and co-operation since their enrolment in the Girls’ Groups at the tender ages of 5 or 6. GA Honour Ring Girls are invited back each year for this banquet, so it is a reunion of sorts among ‘older’ GA girls. Among these ‘Honour Ring’ girls, you will find both mothers and daughters who have been awarded a ring in their respective years. 

For the past 59 years, this group has met at 8 pm at our parish hall. 2024 marks their 60th Anniversary, so you can be sure there will be a celebration like no other.  They already have a committee of 30 volunteers (GA girls/women) to get started on the celebration.

The post Our Girls’ Groups at St. Lawrence, Portugal Cove appeared first on Anglican Life.

In Genesis 12:1-3, we see the call of Abram by God. God calls Abram out from his home in Haran and tells him to go to a land that he will show to him. God also makes three promises to Abram: (a) The promise of a land of his own; (b) the promise to be made into a great nation; and (c) the promise of blessing. What makes Abram special is that he obeyed God (Genesis 12:4). He left behind everything and migrated to Canaan (Palestine) when he was 75 years old.

In other words, God has spoken (Genesis 12:1-3), and Abram responds by believing God (Genesis 12:4). This is faith. God made a promise, and Abram showed a saving faith in God’s promise by turning his back on his past and setting out for Canaan.

God called Abram out of a pagan culture. Abram was a Gentile who was chosen by God to be the ancestor of the Jewish people. He lived in Canaan as a stranger, and God promised that his descendants would own it (Genesis 17:8). His descendants (12 sons of his grandson Jacob and their descendants) would become God’s chosen people. By the time of Exodus 1, the descendants of Jacob were recognized as a distinct nation in Egypt. No one was called a “Jew” before the exile (II Kings 25:25). The Jews came from Abram/Abraham because he was chosen by God from among the nations to be the origin of a new nation.

Why did God choose Abraham? God wanted to make him a blessing, first to the nation that would come from him—the Israelites—and ultimately to all the people of the earth. Also, God chose Abraham to prepare the way for the Messiah. God used him to play an important role in the story of redemption, culminating in the birth of Jesus.

But Abraham was far from perfect; he was a sinner like us. Before God changed his name from Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17:5, he had sex with Hagar (Genesis 16:4) and Hagar conceived. Later, Isaac was born to Abraham in his old age (Genesis 21:2).

The Arabs are mainly descendants of Abraham’s son with Hagar, Ishmael. The Jewish people are descendants of Abraham’s son Isaac. Arabs and Jewish people are Semitic by race. Today, generally speaking, some Arabs have a dislike of and distrust for some Jews, and vice-versa. However, we must be careful to avoid stereotyping people. Please note that life of Abraham is taken as an example of outstanding faith in God (Hebrews 11:8-12) by both Arabs, Jewish people, and Christians.

Indeed, from the very beginning, God had in view that Jesus would be the descendant of Abraham and that everyone who trusts in Jesus would become an heir of Abraham’s promises. God blesses people from all nations through Abraham. After we become the disciples of Jesus, we must learn to live by faith. We must continue to trust God in all situations.

The post The Call of Abraham appeared first on Anglican Life.

The views of others can easily be shared and the sharing of such information can result in too many of us accepting everything at face value. It seems we instinctively strive to conform to the will of the many. Does our basic follow-the-herd-instinct sometimes unduly sway us into entertaining outlandish views? In our time, are we really better equipped to understand life’s age-old questions, with our ever-increasing communications, or are we simply sharing our levels of collective ignorance at a faster pace? And gathering too many encyclopedic collections of piffle and piddle? 

The matter of dying, and particularly the issue of life-after-death, is a puzzle to everyone who cares to give it much thought. Prior to scientific cosmology, many held the view that heaven was located in the sky—always above our heads—and hell in the ground—always below our feet. Nowadays, heaven very much remains a subject of awe and wonder, and is sometimes conceived of as the enjoyment of the full consciousness of God’s presence, in the here and now, that represents the fulfillment of God’s purpose for his creation. Hell is viewed as the self-exclusion from any of this. Of course, these are perennially debated issues, with very little clarity in sight. 

Dying is pretty straight forward and we all have to embrace the inevitability, sooner or later, of our own demise. In an earthly sense, death is simply going out of existence. When I think of my own death, I accept its inevitability similar to the way I would have accepted an unpleasant transfer whilst a member of the RCMP. While I would have unease whenever the high command ordered me to a new posting, especially to unfamiliar surroundings, the challenge was to accept the new duty and get on with it. And surprisingly, things always had a way of working out. I know, comparing dying to that of a transfer is a stretch, yet it represents the changing ways of life. I am reminded of that great line in the well-known Newfoundland song “Let me fish of Cape St. Mary’s” wherein it states “…let me be a man and take it / when my dory fails to make it…” What a great attitude, eh? And I believe as the person in the dory, that as we traverse this journey of life on earth, we become inclined to accept the natural state of earthly beings—to be born, to live, and to die. 

Now as for me, a well-established octogenarian, my most fearful thoughts on dying occurred away back in my early teens. Hearing such lines as “…even in blooming we die…” was so scary. And thankfully the march of time has a marvellous way of levelling off such fears, and death itself, is no longer such a big deal. The matter of how I die though is, and my preferred option (very few of us will have one) would be “dying with one’s boots on” perhaps the best of all. 

While we are very much alike in so many ways, yet we are so individually constructed to interpret the world around us as we feel it, hear it, and see it. And then to further compound things, many of us have eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear. For believers, without faith in God nothing makes sense—it’s as simple as that! And that there’s a prevailing belief that our lives are more than an ant-like quality of being activity oriented, where we just keep on going until we run out of heart beats. Fathoming-out our roles in how we relate to God transcends our common understanding. And one has to ponder the simple fact—if we were presented with an absolute certainty of God’s presence and power, would we really be able to cope with it, to handle it, and carry on in our day-to-day living anywhere near as naturally as we do? And should we not also ponder the thought that there may well be good reason, beyond our human comprehension, that requires us to have the limited understanding of God that we do?

The post Reasonable and Probable Grounds to Believe appeared first on Anglican Life.

In July 2008, a group of girls who resided at the Bishop Jones Hostel (Spencer Lodge) held a reunion in St. John’s. The objectives of the reunion planning group were to renew old friendships, to make new ones, to establish a contact network, and to initiate a Bishop Jones Memorial Scholarship to be awarded annually to a deserving student attending Memorial University.

The 2008 reunion was an overwhelming success. It resulted in the creation of the Bishop Jones Memorial Scholarship (awarded annually at MUN). The initial award in 2009 was valued at $500. Last year’s 2022/23 winner received approximately $2300. The scholarship is now fully funded, and will continue in perpetuity. To date, in excess of $17,000 has been awarded to 13 deserving Newfoundland and Labrador recipients.

For more information, you can go to the website www.envision.ca/webs/bishopjoneshostel, or you can contact Shirley Cooper by email at this address:
bjh2008@ng.sympatico.ca. 

Contributions to the BJM Scholarship can be made by contacting the scholarship coordinator, at:
Verna G. Smith
267 Elizabeth Ave.
St. John’s, NL,
A1B 1T8.

The post Home Away Fom Home: Bishop Jones Hostel appeared first on Anglican Life.

What a joy to see these people being so active in their community and doing God’s work.

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