Dear Church Family,

Thank you for your continued support of our blood drives and for helping save lives through your compassion for life. Your willingness to give has made a meaningful difference in our community and beyond.

We are excited to invite you to our upcoming American Red Cross blood drive, held in honor of Pride Month as the Community Church of Poway’s Pride Drive. This drive is a celebration of inclusion, care, and the power of coming together to support one another, especially in support of our LGBTQ community.

We also want to share an important update: blood donation guidelines have changed, allowing many people in the LGBTQ community to now be eligible to give blood under updated, more inclusive policies. This change reflects important progress toward a more equitable donation process while continuing to maintain the safety of the blood supply.

We encourage everyone to consider donating and helping spread the word. Please consider signing up to donate, and invite a friend, family member, or co-worker to join you. Every donation can help save lives.

First time donor? Need some additional information or help with registrations? Please contact Susan Gurriell sgurriell@gmail.com.

Thank you again for being such a caring and supportive community.

Community Church of Poway-Red Cross Blood Drive

13501 Community Road

Poway, CA. 92064

June 18, 2026, 11:00 am-5:00 pm

Fellowship Hall

With gratitude,

Community Church of Poway, Ministry of Outreach

June Basket of Hope

Greetings from the Outreach Ministry!!!

First, thank you for helping stock the Abraxas High School food pantry this May! For the month of June, we would like to fill our Basket of Hope with all the ingredients to make 100 sack lunches for Interfaith Community Services in Escondido. It has been our mission here at the Community Church of Poway to help them with their mission to feed the homeless and to make life easier for those on the streets. Together, we can make a difference in another’s life. Here is a list of the items we are requesting:

• Peanut butter (small jars preferred)
• Jelly (small jars preferred)
• Chips (single serve)
• Soft granola bars or fig bars
• Fruit snacks
• Bottled water (single serve)
• Napkins
• Plastic sandwich bags

Day of packing (July 5th)

• Fresh Clementine tangerines or apples
• Fresh bread

On July 5, we will have a “Do Church” to put the sack lunches together for our neighbors in need. During church, we will make 100 peanut and jelly sandwiches and after church we will pack 100 sack lunches with all the goodies.

We are looking forward to this mission of service. It’s a lot of fun and it does so much good😊Thank you as always for supporting your Outreach Ministry.

Centering Prayer

Tuesdays at 6:30pm

Contact Colleen Clementson at powclem@yahoo.com or on

her cell at 858-663-6584, for the ZOOM invite



I was hoping to write a little something about the Stonewall Riots this week – the riots in the summer of 1969 that eventually grew into what we now know as pride parades. Finding myself somewhat low on energy, that must wait for another week. In the meantime, I'm sharing a quote from Margaret Killjoy, an author, anti-fascist, and trans woman, as well as sharing about historical figure, Willem Arondeus.

"It’s a surreal feeling to be criminalized for something that feels like such a minor part of who I am, but that’s just how oppression works. Some women care about being women, other women don’t care about being women, and that’s never stopped any of us, cis and trans, from being held down by patriarchal society.

It makes sense, then, to organize around gender or any other oppressed position. It makes sense to take pride in being part of the feminist movement, in being part of the struggle for queer liberation. I’m proud to be part of a lineage that includes the stonewall riots. I’m even more proud, though to be part of a lineage that includes Willem Arondeus, the Dutch gay man who, with his gay friends, burned Nazis records in Amsterdam. Whose last words before his execution, words that were passed to his lesbian lawyer, were 'let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.'" -Margaret Killjoy

Here's some more detail about Arondeus's acts of courage:

"Cognisant of this dire threat, Arondeus sprang into action right at the start of the Nazi occupation. Along with publishing anti-Nazi information, he and other members of the resistance created about 70,000 false identification cards of Dutch Jews — preventing them from being tracked down by the Nazis.

Yet over time, the Nazis began to catch on more and more to the forged documents, which could be double checked at the Amsterdam registry building. 

Arondeus and the rest of his unit constructed their riskiest plan yet: they would blow up the facility — along with the hundreds of thousands of documents inside." Source

If you'd like to learn more about his life, please check out the article below.

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Image Credits:

Progress flag photo by Tong Su on Unsplash
Sandwich photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
Background gradient illustration by Andrei Castanha on Unsplash
Bible and flowers photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash