Dear Family,

Summer Conference 2012 was outstanding.  One should be careful calling anything “the best ever” but if not, it was close!  Great preaching, great worship band, fun food, great attendance and great time together after every service!  You can listen to the outstanding messages online or purchase DVDs in the bookstore!

·       Summer Conference – outstanding.  Summer Camp – stellar.  Summer attendance – way up over last year.  Summer giving – not so good.  June saw our summer giving fall $45,000 below our monthly need.  SRPC members love to give, but the summer travel season leads to a loss of regularity (in giving)!  Please continue to support what God is doing in and through SRPC even during the lazy, hazy days of summer.

·        One young girl in our church is blessed with the aid of a service dog.  Thus, when she attends church – so does her canine companion.  Service dog etiquette requires that no one pet the dog when the dog is “working.”  Petting the dog seems natural and nice but it erodes the effectiveness of the dog’s aid.  So please keep yours and your children’s paws off the pooch!

·       Steve Saint is making slow and steady progress in rehab as he recovers from a severe spinal cord injury.  You can watch the latest update here.   

·       Parking Lot – our parking lots are being resurfaced next week, July 16-20.  It is very important that cars not be left in any of our parking lots unattended.  If you are not going to be on our campus where we could reach you, please do not leave your car in the parking lot or we will be forced to pave over it!

·        Great article by my fav, Peggy Noonan, on the wonder of the immigrant experience in America.  “The old hatreds.  They dissipate here.  In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants could be at each other’s throats for centuries, but the minute they moved here, they were in Kiwanis Club together.  The Mideast is a cauldron, but when its residents move here, they wind up on the same PTA committee.  It sounds sentimental, but this is part of the magic of America, and the world still knows it even if we, in our arguments, especially about immigration, forget.”   Here’s the whole article.

·         Worship this weekend will be a blast – we’ll sing, study Judges 8-9, take the Lord’s Supper,  watch a video on Camp Seven Rivers and best of all, be together with our God.  Don’t miss it!

Love,

Ray