REMINDER: Reader's Vigil Wednesday for St. Anthony the Great

Just a quick reminder: there will be a reader's vigil this Wednesday at St. John's House for the feast-day of St. Anthony the Great.

Blessing Trout Lake

Pictures of our Theophany Great Blessing of the Waters at Trout Lake are now up!

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!