Adult or Intergenerational Studies

Praying with Your Prayer Beads

Dear Prayer Bead participants,
These are times and locations that work for me to lead four 45-60 min sessions on the 4 chapters of Kristen Vincent’s book and for us to reflect together on our experiences praying with beads. As you may have noted, she suggests a specific way to use them each of the four weeks to broaden your experience.

You are welcome to participate in any of the sessions; I tried to avoid Spring break week for the most part so for each day/time offered we meet two weeks in a row, take one week off, then meet two more times. You can switch between sessions too, just track which chapter we’ll be on according to the dates.

The themes for the weeks are
# 1 – Encounter – using the Full Circle Prayer model pg. 35-36
#2 - Surrender – praying repetitive prayers pg. 49-50
#3 - Offer – praying about how you live out your faith pg. 63-64
#4 - Listen – being still and listening for God pg. 76-77

Remember you are not obligated to participate in these small groups but I offer them as support for you and a fellowship and faith opportunity to gather with other Christians. They will also be open to anyone curious about praying with prayer beads. [If I know ahead I can even have some with me for them to try.] Come and go as you like/have time.

If none of these work for you I encourage you to gather with one or two others and carve out your own time to meet – or offer another time to the group by “Reply all” and see if you find a match.

The Tuesday 5:15 p.m. group meeting at Salem will begin with a BYO Supper – Bring Your Own – pick up a sandwich or meal and if there is interest we could order pizza together or something another time.

For the Monday 8:30 a.m. group meeting at Panera Restaurant, try to come in time to order your own food/beverage ahead – we’ll look to slide tables together as needed. If it is too crowded we can move to HyVee or the Target Starbucks the next time.

For the Saturday morning sessions at our home in Genoa (corner of Walnut and Persimmon) I’ll have coffee and tea and some kind of a coffeecake or muffin ready for you. The address is 1001 Persimmon Drive, Genoa, IL. We are on the Southwest side of town. From Sycamore you’d drive Rt. 23 to Genoa, and turn left onto Derby Line Road just as you get to the edge of town. Next you turn left onto Walnut Street and follow it through 3 stop signs, about 1 ½ miles that curve through a subdivision. At the last stop sign you can see our home ahead of you, the corner of Walnut and Persimmon, a gray one-story home. I’ll have the Genoa Intersections sign on the driveway. GPS will get you close but may send you on past our house!

You can register your interest in one of the groups by a) replying to this email, b) adding your name to the sign-up sheet at Salem, or phoning/texting me at 815-895-8521. As always, comments for the group are welcome! And blessings on your prayers! Carla Carla Y Vanatta, Deacon Salem Lutheran Church Sycamore, IL carla@slcsycamore.org 815-895-9171 church

To see a short video from our Stewardship campaign about study click here.

Lunch and Learn!

Lunch and Learn All are warmly invited to a special Lenten “Film Festival.” Throughout Lent (March 7 - April 11) our Lunch and Learn sessions from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each Thursday in the Chapel Lounge, will consist of discussions of a series of movies that depict the Passion of Jesus Christ. Each week we will watch selections of about 45 minutes long, and then discuss them.

* March 7 will feature “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” directed by an Italian atheist, which was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1964. * March 14 we will screen “The Last Temptation of Christ,” an adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis novel done in 1988, with William Defoe as Jesus, David Bowie as Pontius Pilate, and directed by Martin Scorsese. * March 21 will feature “The Gospel of John,” a beautifully presented film whose script is word for word from the Today’s English translation of that Gospel, narrated by the great Christopher Plummer.

* March 28 we will see and discuss the famous Andrew Lloyd Weber/Tim Rice musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

* April 4 will feature a provocative but seldom seen 1989 film, “Jesus of Montreal,” in which a group of modern actors in a Passion play find that their lives take on the contours of the biblical drama.

* April 11 we will enjoy another musical, with music and lyrics by Harry Chapin, of Clarence Jordan’s imagining of the life of Christ set in the rural South with all of its concerns about racial justice. John Seraphine, Heatherhope Farm Sycamore, Illinois. heatherhopefarm.com