Mark your calendars for February 18th for our Annual Choir Fund Raiser/Valentines Dinner.

Join us for an Italian Feast, with music and Hickory Bend’s version of . . The Newlywed Game!

Prices: $20.00 per Couple

$11.00 per Person

$6.00 per child under five

Dinner will be served between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Reservations suggested: just drop us an email and we will have your tickets at the door!

Eveyone is invited to our council meeting.  Please join us Sunday, April 12, immediately after the worship service.

Consider yourself in a new career.  You welcome weary travelers, wash dishes, distribute underwear and toiletries, and listen patiently to the stories of difficult journeys.  Is this the kind of work that appeals to you?  Why not join us this Friday night at APMUMC and see if you have a future in inn keeping. You might be able to get in on the ground floor of a growing and challenging field.  The work isn’t that hard, your co-workers will show you the ropes, and the benefits are out of this world!

Call Judy or Emalie if you are interested in an inn keeping internship. 615-403-8455

Join us on the second Friday of the cold weather months as we welcome our homeless guests to Room In the Inn at Andrew Price UMC.  We need cooks, servers, dish washers, inn keepers, lunch makers, coffee makers (people who can make coffee, there is a coffee maker machine there, but it is not fool proof), and gentle listeners. Call Emalie or Judy if you would like more information. 615-403-8455.

Purchase your Flamingo Insurance Now!  Join Club 52!

Friends, you do not want to be caught without this important protection.  These flamingos can strike without warning, and if this happens to you, you will need the professional services of the UMYF to remove these pesky, plastic pests. For $1.oo a week, or $52.00 a year, you can purchase this important piece of mind. We offer a complete package of flamingo removal services including removing the flamingos and, well, just that. If these terrible hot pink birds invade your yard, call the UMYF Flamingo Removal Professionals at 615-403-8455.  For our especially environmentally conscious customers, we will remove the flock to the ecosystem of your choice.

I am going to get organized.
I am going to be on time.
I am going to eat healthfully.
I am going to exercise regularly.
I am going to be more responsible about money.
I am going to stop wearing goofy clothes.

Now, why do I think this year will be different?

Because something is different this year.

Hickory Bend UMC is different.  We have always had a reputation of being a welcoming congregation with a giving spirit. This year, we have been called into new territory. We have come through a difficult year, and we have come through it richly blessed.  We usually form committees and study our ministry. We usually sign up for projects and plan our events. We usually put things on the calendar.  We continue to do this, but, this year is different. We can continue to plan, schedule, volunteer, and study.  But for about a year, we haven’t been able to some of those regular things. God has taken over our calendar.

On one hand, our congregation has been struck with many illnesses, surgeries, and hospitalizations that no one could have seen coming.  We are watching dear friends and long time members lose their health and even their memories. Some of our members have been hit with unemployment and underemployment. We couldn’t have anticipated that. Many of the pillars of the church, the people who have led the church through its toughest times are now, themselves, in need of the love and care of the church.  The people who have cared for us for so long, now need our care.  That is different.

On the other hand, God has brought us many new friends. We are constantly receiving new visitors with amazing gifts, and other with heavy burdens. Some of those are the same people. God is bringing us wonderful people to enrich and enlarge our congregation.  That is ongoing, but the needs and the gifts are new and different.

Brother Gary’s illness and the side effects of his therapy have hit him hard. His whole family has been turned upside down, first by the flood, and then right on the heels of that, a difficult diagnosis.  After years of not taking any time off, our SPPR strongly insisted he take some time to heal.  He reluctantly agreed.  That was different.

And the conference has certainly stepped up to help.  We are connectional ministry, and thanks to that, the district has sent us guest speakers, and now, Bob Lewis, who has already been a great blessing to us.  And he brought a whole pew full of people!

We are different. We have grown. We are learning how to take even better care of each other. We are learning how to step up to leadership in new and unexpected ways.

We could never have planned this. We could never have formed a committee to learn these things and prepare this things in case we ever needed these skills.  We had to be thrown into the middle of the deep water to find out we could swim.

But we have found that we can swim.  We are cleaning the church, and sending cards, and taking food, and calling friends, and praying for one another, and reaching out to new people. Hickory Bend is going to be fine. We have been well trained by Brother Gary and others before him.

This year is going to be different. We can learn from Mary to take the Good News for what it is. We can learn from her cheerful obedience. We can learn from Joseph to open our hearts to surprising and unexpected responsibilities. We can learn from the angels to proclaim the good news that Christ is here!  We can learn from the shepherds to respond with open hearts and go to visit the Christ child. We can learn from the Magi to bring our gifts.

So this year is going to be different. We can’t imagine today what challenges or opportunities may come. I want to say as clearly as possible, I believe in us as a church family.  We will make a way through this year’s challenges, no matter what may happen, so that we can open our hearts to the opportunities this year may bring.  We have no way of knowing now what we may need to do, but with God’s help, we can do anything we need to do together.   Thanks be to God. That is not different. God’s love is constant and His strength endures. What I see is a new willingness in us to follow the shepherds to the stable and see what the Christ child wants us to do.  So as we all must leave Advent and Christmas, and return to our work, and school, and responsibilities, let us all greet this New Year with the joy of the shepherds as they returned to the fields.

Luke 2:20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard.

For me, that would be different.

Please join us for congregational singing, special music as the children act out the Christmas Story from Luke.

We had a visitor Sunday who was hitch hiking to Knoxville from Michigan. Michael is a disabled vet, recovering from PTSD. He had a job he loved working twenty hours a week in a furniture store.  It was his favorite job, but he had just lost his job at a furniture store, because he hurt his back. So now he is physically and mentally disabled.  His father died in June.  Michael’s dad was a rock. His mother didn’t mind him living with her until recently.  He calls her often, but she is busy. Michael is a history buff, and the Civil War is his area of particular interest. There is a Civil War course at the University of Tennessee he would really like to take. In the course, the class travels to several Civil War battlegrounds, and the professor is a good story teller. Michael had his military disability check sent to Knoxville. Knoxville is close to Gatlinburg. Michael’s family had a wonderful time in Gatlinburg when he was a child, and he would like to go back.

Michael hitch hiked as far as Exit 219, and he got out of a car in the pouring rain. From the Interstate, he could see the steeple, and he thought that he might be able to get out of the rain for a while at the church.  Michael was christened as a child in the Catholic Church, went to catechism, was confirmed, but then they moved. Their family never reconnected with a church.  When Michael saw that our church was a United Methodist church, he was hopeful. Michael’s platoon sergeant in Somalia was a Methodist, and he used to talk to Michael all the time. “He really talked to us. He was a really cool guy.  He took great care of everybody.  He cared about all of us, and he cared about the Somalians, too.  He had a really different way of talking to people. He talked about people, you know, like he really cared. He cared about our families and if we were writing to them all the time and letting them know what we were doing. That we were okay.  He took great care of his own family, too.  That guy was a Methodist. He told me I had to get back home and get into a church. I told him I was Catholic, but he said I should just go to any church. It didn’t have to be Methodist or Catholic, but everybody has to go be with a church.”

So Michael saw the steeple, saw that he was at a United Methodist Church, and stood under the front porch for a few minutes before people started arriving, making coffee, making a breakfast burrito, (where did that sausage come from?) warming up pastry, pouring apple juice, and introducing themselves.

Ethel asked him where he ate last night.  ”I didn’t eat last night.”

“Where did you eat lunch yesterday?”

“I didn’t eat yesterday.”

He ate Sunday, though.  attended Sunday School, sat with new friends in the worship service, and went to lunch with new friends.

And people gave him money.

He came to lunch with more new friends. He couldn’t eat all of his lunch, because “People gave me so much breakfast, I can’t eat all of this.”  He asked for a box.

Michael said, “I might have enough money to get a bus ticket to Knoxville!” Robbie hopped on the phone to find out how much a bus ticket to Knoxville was.  She couldn’t hear in the restaurant, so she went outside to be able to hear the ticket agent.

I asked Michael how much money he had.

“Forty-seven dollars.”

Robbie returned to the noisy restaurant.  ”A bus ticket to Knoxville is forty-seven dollars.”

Dear Friends,

Don’t forget your gently used or new undies for our homeless guests! Please bring these important items for our sweet friends at Room in the Inn. There will be a suitcase in the Fellowship Hall to collect these items.

Emalie