Christmas Poinsettias

Adorning the chancel with poinsettias beautifies the sacred space of our church during the Christmas season! If you’d like to sponsor poinsettias this season, please order no later than Sunday, November 24, 2024. Convenient forms will be in the Sunday bulletins or order online here.

Community Breakfast

Saturday, November 23, 2024 | 8:00 – 10:00 a.m. | Magnolia Hall at First Pres

The community breakfast serves as a vital hub for connection and support, providing a wholesome, homecooked meal along with a chance to spark meaningful conversations. We invite you to join us in this experience—whether you're seeking help, eager to lend a hand, or simply want to connect with a caring community. Together, we aren’t just enjoying a meal; we’re nurturing the very foundations of our community.

Christmas Cookie Exchange

Sunday, December 8, 2024 | 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. | Magnolia Hall at First Pres

A cookie exchange is a fabulous way to celebrate the holidays and get everyone together! So, here’s the scoop on how this will work while you Connect Over Coffee after worship:

• 2 dozen cookies are requested (6 each in plastic sandwich bag - labeled with cookie name) BUT
• You don’t need to bring cookies to get some!
• Bring copies of your recipe to share with anyone who finds your cookies delicious!
• Drop off on Sunday morning, December 8th, in the “Cookie Exchange” bin next to the hospitality table (by church office)
• Meet in Magnolia Hall at 10:30 a.m. to choose treats - and hang out with the crowd!

Lunch and a Movie: White Christmas

Sunday, December 8, 2024 | 11:45 a.m.| Multipurpose Room (#103) at First Pres

RSVP: on or before Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Don’t miss this fabulous opportunity to gather with friends and family for an afternoon at the movies. Laugh, talk, and bond with all who attend. Feel free to bring your own camp chair if that enhances your comfort at this event!

We’ll enjoy a scrumptious chili lunch (regular and white meat chicken) – plus mini corn dogs, corn bread, fixins’, and more; and then the movie begins! The classic White Christmas will bring joy to your heart! Two talented song-and-dance men team up after the war to become one of the hottest acts in show business. One winter, they join forces with a sister act and trek to Vermont for a white Christmas. The real adventure starts when the star performers discover that the inn is run by their old army general who’s now in financial trouble. And the result is the stuff dreams are made of!

So, bring your family and friends. And let us know today that you’ll be joining the fun! Convenient forms will be in the Sunday bulletins or order RSVP here.

Equine-Assisted Memory Café

 Monday, November 18, 2024 | 1:30 – 3:00 p.m.

BEAMING Barn | 2692 County Road GG, Neenah

Free Admission | Registration Required

call 920.851.6160 or email incbeaming@gmail.com

The BEAMING Barn community members with early- to moderate-stage dementia and their caregivers to enjoy horse experiences and other interactive activities such as educational presentations, musical performances, arts and crafts projects and other outdoor and barn activities. These hands-on horse experiences offer participants and their families an opportunity to engage in a social gathering and meet others for support.

Traveling Oshkosh Memory Café

Wednesday, November 20, 2024 | 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. 

Military Veterans Museum and Education Center

4300 Poberezny Road, Oshkosh

This month’s traveling Memory Café will find the group honoring the nation’s military history. The afternoon includes a tour of the facility.

Make a Difference This Thanksgiving

Christine Ann Domestic Abuse Services

240 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh | 920.235.5998

Help families in need by donating a Thanksgiving dinner to Christine Ann Domestic Abuse Services. Your generosity can provide comfort, warmth, and a delicious meal for those facing tough times. Together, let’s create a holiday filled with hope and support. Call or visit Christine Ann to learn how you can contribute!

National Family Caregivers Month: I Care…

November is a time to show support and to honor our nation’s vital caregivers during National Family Caregivers Month. Join us in acknowledging and honoring families who are often caregiving “around the clock”. That means around-the-clock dedication, organization, responsibility, scheduling, and hands-on care.

Families are often the primary source of support for older adults and people with disabilities. In fact, today in America, more than 53 million family caregivers provide unpaid care.(1) That’s an economic value totaling more than $470 billion. (2)

That’s why every November we celebrate National Family Caregivers Month. While family caregivers should be celebrated every day, this is a time to recognize and honor caregivers nationally, raise awareness around caregiving issues, educate communities, and work to increase support for our nation's caregivers.

While family caregiving can be a privilege and a rewarding opportunity, caregiving can be a tough job, sometimes thankless and costly. These responsibilities often leave caregivers overlooking their health and well-being.

When our nation’s caregivers suffer, are unhealthy, and unsupported, our country’s older adults and individuals who are ill, frail, and disabled also suffer. In contrast, when our nation’s family caregivers thrive because their loved ones have access to paid support, respite care, peer connections, and necessary therapeutic and medical care, our country thrives.

The work done by family caregivers has long been the safety net of the American long-term care system. Family caregivers are advocates who:

• Work tirelessly to keep people in their homes for as long as possible and out of expensive nursing homes
• Fill in the gaps when an in-home care worker is absent for scheduled visits
• Attend doctor’s visits and help give care recipients a voice
• Function as chauffeurs to and from medical appointments, pharmacy trips, and grocery store runs
• Miss sleeping many nights in a row to ensure their loved one with dementia does not wander away
• Provide personal care for bathing, dressing, and grooming.

Often, family caregivers even tend to complex medical tasks typically performed in hospitals by nursing staff, including medication management, wound care, and even observing pulse oximeters and ventilators for signs of respiratory distress.

If you were called upon to offer care to a loved one, how would you manage? What would you need as a family caregiver to carry on? Consider these questions, as it is likely that each of us will be a caregiver one day. Writer, advocate, and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter famously declared, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.”

In honor of National Family Caregivers Month, we encourage every person to reflect and identify the friend or neighbor in their life who is in the role of a family caregiver. Family caregivers need you! Be open and intentional about offering support. This could mean doing a household chore, lawn care, or laundry, providing a meal, making a grocery run, or lending an empathetic ear. Most importantly, offer them grace and flexibility when with them at work, church, or family gatherings.

(1) National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP. Caregiving in the US 2020. Found on the internet at https://www.caregiving.org/research/caregiving-in-the-us/caregiving-in-the-us-2020/

(2) AARP. Valuing the Invaluable 2019 Update: Charting a Path Forward. AARP Public Policy Institute. Nov. 14, 2019. Found on the internet at https://www.aarp.org/ppi/info-2015/valuing-the-invaluable-2015-update.html

Compassion or safe communities?

The Rev. Dr. Tracy Keenan of New Castle Presbytery offers a faithful response to the immigration debate

Rev. Dr. Tracy Keenan, Missional Presbyter for New Castle Presbytery, Special to Presbyterian News Service

November 6, 2024

Imagine you and your family are living a quiet life as best you can in a city in Central America and a local gang leader decides he wants your 14-year-old daughter as his “girlfriend,” and won’t accept no for an answer.

Imagine your child’s survival depends on medical care that is not available in your homeland.

Imagine militias from neighboring countries or communities have overrun your community and you have to run for your life.

There’s a lot of heated rhetoric right now about immigrants. And it’s clear that our immigration system needs a lot of work. It is underfunded, understaffed, and many of the attempts to fix it have hobbled through partisan rancor and landed in half-baked solutions. At the same time, migration numbers are up all over the world, and not just at our southern border, due to conflict, natural disasters, persecution or the desire to earn a better living. Read more.

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