New Year's Day service cancelled. Please pray for Jensina!

Our celebration of our Lord's circumcision, scheduled for New Year's Day, will be cancelled - or at least significantly curtailed. My daughter, Jensina, has been sick since Sunday afternoon - nothing too serious we hope, but she's been throwing up and has a bit of a fever, so I feel I should stay home with her and help Matushka look after her and the rest of the family. Please keep her in your prayers. Brother Cyprian did say, before we left on Sunday, that if the service was to be cancelled, he would still be there and would serve Typika (a very short adaptation of the Liturgy to be served without a priest and without the eucharist) to commemorate the feast, so if you do happen to show up at St. John's on Tuesday morning, feel free to join him! Unless anything more serious develops, I should be back in Vancouver for Little Compline on Thursday.

Proposed Agenda for Our First AGM

Our very first parish Annual General Meeting is coming up soon! To prepare, St. John's is accepting nominations for new mission board members, so feel free to nominate someone you think might be qualified to do something for the mission, including yourself (otherwise known as volunteering!) by mentioning his or her name to a current mission board member. We are also publishing the proposed agenda for the AGM so that all members of the mission can look it over beforehand and submit any items they feel should be on it but aren't yet to a current mission board member (i.e., Peter the Medic, Gareth, Brother Cyprian, Deanna, or myself). The proposed agenda for the mission board meeting can be viewed here by logging in with your St. John's username and password - e-mail me (frjustin{at}stjohnofshanghai.org - replace "{at}" with "@") if you've forgotten either!

Upcoming Special Events

We have two special events at St. John's coming up this week. This Saturday (Dec. 8th), we will be holding our last work party of the year, starting around 11am and continuing until just before Vespers. If you are coming and can also bring something "pot-lucky" to help with the meals, that would be even more helpful - and much appreciated!

Before that, we will be celebrating St. Nicholas' feast-day with St. Nina's this year. To make sure I get all the info right, I am copying and pasting Fr. Christopher's annoucement to St. Nina's below:

Thursday, December 6th, we will be gathering in celebration of the Feast of St Nicholas the Wonderworker and Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. This year we will be gathering at St George's Anglican Church, where St Nina's holds services, (2950 Laurel St & 14th Ave) at 7:00 PM. We will be gathering with our brothers and sisters from St John of Shanghai Mission to celebrate this Feast amidst the Fast. The plan is to pot luck "lenten" snacks and goodies with a particular focus on cookies and to have a gift exchange as is our custom in honour of St Nicholas. For a gift please simply wrap something of your own that you wish to give to someone that you think someone would like to receive. This will include the children, so, parents, please help your kids bring something for the gift exchange.