The
Gryphon’s Roar
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The
Gryphon’s Roar
"St. Mark's Newsletter"
| Message from the Rector | Celebrate! |
| Education for Ministry EFM | Do you like to sing? |
| News from the Book Club! | Ecuador Dinner update |
How to contact us:
St. Mark’s Website – http://www.stmarksantioch.org
Contact The Reverend Battle Beasley via email:
Make electronic submission to the Gryphon’s Roar at:submitgryphon@aol.com or nanaljn@aol.com
Next month deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 22nd.
Dear People of God,
The summer seems to have swept by and already we begin to start to prepare for school and
fall activities. And for us here at St. Mark’s the fall will indeed be busy. Rally Day falls on Aug
22nd, followed closely by pilgrims from St. Mark’s going to Ecuador to visit our companions
in Christ at St. James the Apostle in la Pila .
When they return we will hold our fabulous Talent Show for the benefit of our common
work with St. James in Ecuador. Quickly followed by our now annual Best of Fall Fest!
Is your head spinning yet? All of these activities of course take much time and talent, gifts
that God has given us that we return.
I invite you to begin considering how you are blessed with gifts and talents and how God is
calling you to use them.
God's Peace,
Battle +
Education for Ministry or EFM is a study course that teaches people about their Christian
faith, and helps them live out that faith and identify their own ministries. The text materials
and class organization are provided by the School of Theology at the University of the South
in Sewanee.
Students enroll one year at a time to study Hebrew Testament, New Testament, church
history and modern religious thought.
Several members have completed the course, including Frank Brannon, Cathey Gwyn, Greg
Noren, Gretchen Miller and Peggy Tucker. Information brochures and enrollment forms are
available in the track rack by the door.
Tuition is $340 per year and includes books. Enrollments should be turned in by August
15th. Frank Brannon is the class mentor. If you have any questions about the class, I am
sure that any of the people above who have previously completed the course would be glad
to tell you all about it and answer your questions
The St. Mark's Book Club will next at 7pm, Aug. 3, at Carey Hardison's home. Please bring either a beverage or an appetizer/snack for about 3-4 people. We're currently discussing Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Future books that we are considering are:
Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, a novel about a devout Anglican woman in 1950s London.
Lynne Cox's Swimming to Antartica, an autobiography from the American woman who is considered the world's greatest long distance swimmer.
Life of Pi, a recent novel about a young boy stuck on a dismasted sailboat with a hungry tiger that begins talking to him.
One book from the Left Behind series.
Barbara Rossing's The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, a response to the Left Behind series by a faculty member at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (Lynn Kauppi's alma mater).
One book from Jan Karon's Mitford series about an Episcopal priest in rural South Carolina.
C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity
Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian, a statement of nonbelief by one of the leading philosophers of the early and mid-twentieth century.
We welcome other suggestions. We look forward to seeing you at the bookclub!
Cheryl Mohr and Lynn Kauppi have been very slowly trying to organize the church library. Our current plans are:
1. Finish culling unneeded volumes from the shelves.
2. Organizing what we do have into categories.
3. Holding a book sale at some point to help fund the library.
4. To begin to add to the library.
We welcome your suggestions for books you'd like to see in the library. Please call, email, or
speak to either Cheryl or Lynn.
ADULT STUDY
The Adult Study group (Sunday 9:15-10:15) is currently finishing a discussion about St.
Paul's letters. We then plan to discuss the Da Vinci Code for two to three Sundays. It will not
be necessary to have read the book in order to participate. Please let Frank Brannon or Lynn
Kauppi, know if there are any other topics you wish to discuss. We look forward to seeing
you!
N E W S N E W S MANY THANKS N E W S N E WS
The Ecuador dinner on June 23rd was delicious and the program entertaining. Pam Carr-Brannon shared her stories about the June 2004 trip to the Diocese of Litoral in Ecuador. The focus of that trip was to make advance preparations for the two-week medical clinic visits in July and visit churches seeking new companion relationships with churches in Tennessee. The group spent a day in La Pila, and Pam showed slides from that visit with our Companion Church of Santiago Apostol. Thanks go to our Ecuador committee for arranging the South American menu and to Holly and Elizabeth for sharing their delicious Liqueur made in Ecuador to go with the dessert ice cream. But most of all - thanks to everyone who made donations totaling $560 to our St. Mark’s special Companion Church fund!
And you know what else? Four of us will be visiting Santiago Apostol the first week in September. Holly Granger, Elizabeth Gregory, Jeff Miller and George Kurz will all be visiting just with our companion church folks for F O U R days! This will be Jeff’s first trip. He is very excited! And since he speaks and writes Spanish so very well, we are especially thankful he will be there. We will keep him busy talking for us all! He’s already talking to Padre Leon via e mail, setting up the visit arrangements. The focus of this trip is friendship and long range planning. Holly, Elizabeth and Jeff will also visit Quito and shop for our St. Mark’s Ecuador Market at this year’s BEST ‘O Fall FEST O’ Fall. If there is anything you especially would like, please let one of us know.
Do you have ideas about growing our friendship with Santiago Apostol? Have you considered visiting? If you are interested, please consider serving on the St. Mark’s Committee. Let one of us know and we will add you to our e mail dialog and be sure you know when we meet…there is no set schedule.
Holly Granger, Elizabeth Gregory, Jim Johnson, George Kurz, Jeff Miller, Melanie Pafford-Failor. Our phone numbers are on the Directory
Dave Colvin 5
Marcia Williams 7
George Noren 10
Jacquee Parris 13
Lorna Noren 21
David Young 21
Steven Page 22
Battle Beasley 29
Caprice Campbell 31
Sharon & Mike Rice 21, 2002
John & Lauren Cook 30, 2003
Lynn and Karen Kauppi's son, Christopher, will start classes on August 25 as an aerospace engineering major at Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech). He and his family will arrive the week before for orientation and a few days of vacation.
DO YOU LIKE TO SING?
The choir will be back in full swing on the Sunday after Labor Day. If you like to sing but have
until now been confined to the shower, please think about joining us. We would love to see
our choir grow.
We will be changing our rehearsal night to Wednesday this year to accommodate a few
people who will not be able to rehearse on Thursday.
The time will be 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM but once in a while will need to go until 8:30 to learn new
music. If you are not sure it is what you would like to do, come to rehearsal and try it for a
few weeks. If you don’t like it, no one will force you to stay. If you decide that you want to
stay, that is wonderful.
Our only request is that if you decide to stay, you make the commitment, to attend
consistently.
Lorna Noren
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked. "He died and went to Heaven," the Dad
replied. The boy thought a moment and then said, "Did God throw him back down?"
