From Deacon Ron Reno:
Pine Ridge Christmas Project. For several years Saint John’s has collected 
Christmas gifts for the children of the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota in South Dakota. Our church and others have helped with this project. If you can help, contact our Nick Behrens about possible donations. According to Nick this reservation is one of the poorest so even bedding, toilet paper, paper towels etc would be welcome. Jesus wants us to help the poor, so please do what you can to help for this project.
O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offenses; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O Heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen. Collect for the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.
Our service last weekend included the Litany. This was the first officially sanctioned liturgy into English in the English Church during the time of Henry VIII. It came about with the English Reformation following the break from Rome. This work was done by Archbishop Cranmer and is mostly from the Latin Sarum Rite. Influences for this litany came from Cranmer himself, influences from Martin Luther and from early church father John Chrysostom. We at Saint John’s sing the Litany at the first service in any calendar month for its historical, ancient penitential and intercessory nature.
Father Andrews homily is attached and is really two homilies in one. This is a must read, as it addresses our last election and takes a wonderful Godly historical spin that honors our veterans, world history and how faith enters into this history. Thirteen pages, so brew up some tea to read. God bless, Deacon
We celebrated Saturday with Sung Morning Prayer and Communion of the Presanctified Gifts, with an emphasis on All Saint’s Day in our music and our homily. Who doesn’t love to sing music we know such as “For All the Saints” and “I Sing a Song of the Saints.” The choral postlude “The Souls of the Righteous” was especially moving. We are so blessed to have a joyous group and sing music honoring God and His Saints. Our homily gets into the reason why we 
celebrated this day. Our observance goes back to the early centuries of the Christian Church when we celebrated the many martyrs on the anniversaries of their death. In the fourth century the Church established a common day to honor all martyrs. Both All Saints and All Souls Day have special prayers. We Anglicans believe in the power of prayer and sometimes ask for these Saints to have a spiritual connection to us and pray for those who have passed. By the way those martyrs have eternal life with Jesus. Our purpose on this earth is to do our best to have eternal life with Jesus too.
What a blessing it is to hear the noise of children in our midst. We have new people with children. God loves it when His children make joyful noise. That definitely includes all of us with our choir, Nick, Lynda, Julia and the rest of us singing out of the 1940 Hymnal. We are all God’s children. We use the 1940 with its supplements because it is simply one of the best hymnals ever printed. Our hymnal is a nice worship resource and can be used at home as well at the church. Our hymnal, along with the 1928 BCP, is very orthodox in its following of scripture, the seasons of the church, Saints days and it follows our one year lectionary. Some of our hymns are ancient and go back to the late 1500’s. I especially appreciate that its text is dark, easy to read and feels like a history book companion to me.
