From the Pastor’s Desk

If you were not able to be here on Pentecost Sunday, I hope that you were able to view the service from your computer. Heather McGarvey had a wonderful sermon and then she and Joy Smith played a beautiful duet!

I am happy to report to you that despite my having been exposed to someone testing positive for COVID the week before Memorial Day Sunday, the baptism of Ashley Lynn Bitner went on as planned! I was able to find Reverend Jim Davison, who was both willing and available to fill in for me on very short notice. The Bitner family was well represented, and the service was well done. Thank you, Reverend Jim Davison! By the way, I am happy to report that I did not contract COVID from the exposure.

The weather cooperated magnificently and the wedding of my daughter Sarah to Alex Helberg was wonderful. The marriage took place outdoors on the lakeside lawn of a house on Lake Chautauqua. I was not able to officiate the wedding, but I did preach the wedding sermon. We had a reception for the Pennsylvania and Ohio relatives and friends on Saturday. In July we will have a Wisconsin reception for the groom’s family. While I am on vacation for the Wisconsin reception, Reverend Bruce Ford will be filling the pulpit on Sunday, July 10. Please give Bruce a warm Plum Creek Presbyterian Church welcome.

I am hopeful that we can restart serving home communion to our home bound members in July. Home communion is an extension of the congregation’s worship service and so I need at least one additional person to accompany me on these visits. If you have ever been ordained as either a Deacon or Ruling Elder (session) you are eligible to assist with home communion. With a brief training and me accompanying you, we can restart this vital ministry to those who cannot attend church in person.

The Session is looking forward to hosting a local AA and Al Anon group beginning in July. We have been working hard to update our building use policy and agreements to allow this to happen. The groups will be meeting every Monday in our facility. I believe that this is an excellent opportunity for the Presbyterian Church of Plum Creek to provide necessary meeting space for a valuable community support organization as an addition to our local community outreach.

As we enter the summer worship season, I am inviting you, the members and frequent visitors of Plum Creek Presbyterian Church, to suggest hymns that you know well and like to sing. Depending on how many suggestions I receive, I will work them into the worship services and perhaps we can have a hymn sing one Sunday! Please feel free to call the church office, send me an email, or drop your suggestions in the offering plate. Any way that you can get your suggestions to me is a good way. I am looking forward to learn what hymns you find rewarding, enriching, and fun to sing!

By way of a continuing education experience for me, I have joined a Cohort Group for Commissioned Ruling Elders (CRE) sponsored by Union Presbyterian Seminary’s P.S.C.E (Presbyterians Supporting Christian Education) program. The goals of the cohort are to engender collegial support, share new ideas, and learn best practices for Commissioned Ruling Elder ministry. The sessions are being made available across the denomination. We will meet once a month over the next five months for two hours per session. Each session is moderated by a member of the PCSE program. Including me, there are eight CREs from across the country in my cohort. There are two cohorts in this initial offering from Union Presbyterian Seminary.

To God be the Glory!

Pastor Frank Hancock

Email: pastor@plumcreekpc.com

Office: (412) 793-4525

Cell Phone: (412) 860-3719 – Please feel free to leave a message

What is Happening at Plum Creek this Month!

Summer Club Fun!

Summer Club Day Campers have been having a great time this summer! The days have been hot, but some water fun has helped us get through the day. Each day, we play games, hear a Bible story, work on some art or craft projects, have a snack and some free time as well.

During our first week, we talked about how we were created in God’s image and “knitted together” as Psalm 139 puts it. We had a fun game building our own human out of all kinds of fun items around the church. We made individual circle weavings using old CD’s and we even planted a small garden and talked about God created human beings out of the same elements found in the earth. We had some parachute time and created our own individual trail mix.

Week 2 let us talk about being in community together. How each of us has a place for us in God’s kingdom and we learned about the Mustard Seed parable. We created our own birds and made our own “living” mustard seed bush. We created paper cutouts of ourselves with our unique things about us built into the drawings and then used those cutouts to create a splatter paint mural of our outlines on sheets! Water balloons, slip and slides and a sprinkler rounded out our day. We had ice cream sandwiches for snack with some of us breaking them up and putting some left-over strawberries and whipped cream in a bowl!

Week three, we talked about being good neighbors and acted out the story of the Good Samaritan. We even baked some yummy apple pie bites and monkey bread to share with Pastor Frank, Kathy in the office, the gardeners and the afternoon Bible Study. We added some beautiful paper water lilies to water and watched them open. It was another hot day, so we had a game with ice, a large slip and slide and some more watercolor art.

We will have one more Wednesday in this first 4-week session and will take a break for the 4th of July holiday week. Many thanks to our adult helper volunteers who have given their Wednesdays to make Summer Club a fun time for all. We will need adult volunteers for the second 4-week session of Wednesdays beginning July 13th and running through August 3rd. Please let Carolyn Leah, Director of Christian Formation know when you can help and/or sign up in the vestibule at the church.

There is still room for additional day campers each week and new campers completing K to 6th grade can register at https://bit.ly/3wEfXTg. The fee for each day is $10 per child, with a maximum of $25 per family. If you would just like to add additional weeks to your current registration, contact Carolyn at christian_formation@plumcreekpc.com and for any Summer Club questions.

Strawberry Festival Recap

An announcement was made at the June 5, Sunday worship service that our Festival was going to be held on Friday, June 10 from 4pm – 7pm and that we needed volunteers to make fudge, bake angel food and/or pound cakes, serve food and help clean up at the end of the day. We needed people to cut strawberries on Friday morning at 9am, too.

Laura Campbell ran the kitchen crew - Beth and Steve Kist, Dee Deltondo, Gaye Mallisee, Chris and Les – friends of the Campbell’s -Patty Badali, Dot Easter, Linda Stiles, and others that made ham barbeques, hotdogs, potato salad, and prepared iced tea, lemonade, hot coffee, and water. Our fudge and cakes were cut.

The Jackson family was contacted about putting up our large yellow and white tent and Don Campbell was asked to put up his tent.

Dea Wingard power washed all the tables and the floor of the pavilion, which took 2 days! The cemetery sent 2 men to move the tables from under the pavilion to under the tents (they are so good to Plum Creek Church!!)

All the tables were covered with white plastic covers and strawberry decorations were washed and ready to go, along with real strawberry plants.

People were asked to be “servers” of the food. We had 2 shifts – the first group – Alice Angelo, Judith Anderson, Joy Smith and Shelley Shaneyfelt. The second group consisted of Dee Deltondo, Clark Kemmerer, Ed Smith, Don Campbell, Chris, and Lucy Ofstun. We put out our “Love Offering” jars for donations. Then we waited until 4 pm for our first visitors to show up.

For the next 3 hours we had a steady flow of customers; some people that we had seen at our Festivals before COVID, some newcomers, and some people who even used to attend PCPC! There were people eating inside and outside under the tents! We estimated that we fed about 250 people that night.

Carolyn Leah had sidewalk chalk and toys for the kids to play without in the pavilion and the Jungle gym, slide, and swing, and climbing wall set up so that she could meet the little ones and their parents.

The clean-up group of Mary Jo and Dave Nesbit, Rory Badali and his son, Dee Deltondo, Laura and Don Campbell, Beth and Steve Kist, Joy and Ed Smith, Alice and Clark Kemmerer put everything back and it looked like nothing had ever happened in the Fellowship Hall at all.

All in all, people had lots of good food, good conversations, and lots of laughter while enjoying the Strawberry Festival for 2022!!

Thanks to everyone that attended, congregation members that baked cakes or made fudge, people that volunteered, brought a friend or two, and enjoyed the evening!

Sincerely, Joy Smith on behalf of the Evangelism and Fellowship Committee