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.

Reader's Compline Tonight

The combination of a relatively nasty cold and the Vesperal Liturgy for the Feast of the Entrance on Tuesday left me largely without a voice on Wednesday. I took Wednesday off work and am taking today off as well to try to fight off the cold and get back in shape. Little Compline will be held as usual, but without me - which means our study of Luke's Gospel will not resume until next week.

God willing, I and the family should all be out at St. John's house in time for the mission board meeting tomorrow (Friday) evening - the meeting starts at 7:30pm.

Pray for Fr. Lawrence!

Pray for Fr. Lawrence - his retina is apparently coming detached again and so he is again going in for surgery at noon today. Lord, have mercy!