Our June 18 service will be our annual flower communion service. Bring a flower from your yard with you to participate in the service.

The Religious Education program will continue during the summer. Contact Diane Holliman for more details.

Water is an important symbol in many religious traditions. In the

Unitarian Universalist tradition there is service that generally takes place in the early fall to which people bring a small container of water. The water comes from a place that was visited during the summer. This water can come from Paris, New Zealand or from the water fountain in your office where you worked all summer. The purpose of this service is to come together in the fall to tell of your adventures and prepare for a new season of community.

Please keep this in mind as you travel and work and play this summer. You may also bring in music, stories and other items which you can use to describe your summer. This service will be about us!

You will be hearing more about this service.

Our date for meal deliveries with the Break Bread Together program is the 2^nd Monday of each month. If you can deliver meals on this day beginning about 11:00 AM, please contact Virginia Branan.

Report next month: ELECTIONS

ANNUAL MEETING

The Annual Meeting of the Valdosta Unitarian Universalist Church where we elect the officers and approve the budget for the coming year and make other congregational decisions which guide our officers and religious community came too late in May to make the June Newsletter. Watch for a full report next month!

April Budget

Outstanding Debts: $0.00

Savings: $0.00

Income:

    Pledge:     $1715.00

    Fundraising: $6.00

    Rent:        $340.00

                $2284.44

Expenses:

    Mortgage: $520.00

    Speaker: $277.06

    Insurance: $634.00

    RE: $54.00

    UUA: $300.00

    Utilites: $145.48

    Postage: $17.49

    Vacuum: $63.13

            $2011.16

Your Treasurer, Rene' Kerr

We have welcomed Dr. Marcia Bauer, a former member who has returned, back to our church in recent months. She originally joined our church about 1977 when the church was still at the Mary Street house. She had come to Valdosta as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology, Counseling, and Guidance at then VSC. She had recently received her doctoral degree at that time from the College of William and Mary. After eight years at the college she taught at Valdosta Technical Institute where she helped to develop a state curriculum for Child and Family Care. She retired in 1992 and moved north of Tampa where she worked as a drug and alcohol counselor in the Florida prison system and later in mental health. She says she moved back to this area last year and has built a house, which she invites us to visit, on her son’s farm in Pinetta, FL. Two of her five children live in this area along with seven grandchildren. She now works part time training for Headstart in the Valdosta area.

Steve and Janet Andersen write: "Jan and I love living in Estes but we do miss you folks in the church. We currently attend a combined Unitarian/ Quaker meeting here in Estes. It’s small but friendly and we have interesting discussions. The weather has been great---many days in the 60’s with little snow here but lots for skiing in the higher mountains 20 minutes away. We hope that you will come for a visit. We’d love to see you! Cheers!"[Steve also sent a poem by Leif who is in Scotland and noted that the stationary had been done by Tor 22 years ago.]

Do you know who

• Has coordinated the Sunday programming for this past year and invited most of the speakers as well as presided many Sundays and, when she didn’t, made sure someone else did?
• Has kept us organized?
• Prints and mails the newsletter each month?
• Coordinates the Membership Directory?
• Coordinates the Break Bread Program for our church and often does the meal delivery herself?
• Helps with the R.E. program, sharing her expertise?
• Represents our church in the community and at VSU?
• Is a quiet and effective mediator?
• Retired a year ago but couldn’t quit working, or at least couldn’t quit working for us?!

Your editor would like to take the opportunity to say that dead trees provide habitat for a number of animals, woodpeckers and bees are two examples. They are part of the Web of Life in which we live. Most of us like the woodpeckers and squirrels that may use the tree. We may be less sure of our feelings toward bees and various "bugs" which use the tree, but we can’t have flowers without those bees! We have infringed on their habitat not they on ours.

Your editor has voted before to leave the tree, though any limbs overhanging the driveway or walk might be trimmed. Keep in mind that limbs that fall and trees that fall usually are live trees and limbs until they fall. If you're standing under one when this happens you may be hit. Presumably no one would be in favor of cutting all trees because a falling limb might hit someone.

Nature is not always pretty or for that matter safe. Such is the web of life (and death).

The Board discussed at its May meeting circulating a "Time Pledge Sheet" at the Annual meeting. If you have not already done so, please consider pledging some of your time on a regular basis for the on going needs of our congregation. Here are just a few areas to consider:

1. Church Clean-up Committee - volunteer to be responsible for just one task (refrigerator, bathroom, mopping, vacuuming one area, watering plants, sweeping walkway and entrance, etc.)

2. Break Bread Together - Coordinator or occasional volunteer to deliver meals to shut-ins on our route

3. Teacher for adult or youth religious education

4. Serve on programming committee for our Sunday Services

5. Social committee

6. Fund (and FUN) Raising Committee

7. Book Discussion Organizer

8. Telephone Committee

9. Bulletin Boards (we have 2)

10. Scrapbook/History

11. Grounds care: mow the lawn, water plants, pick-up limbs

12. Building repair and care

13. Think of something else that needs doing.