Pray for a peaceful and just resolution to the conflict between Palestine and Israel.

More than 1,500 children have been killed since September 29, 2000, when violent hostilities resumed.

The names and details about every one of these 1,476 Palestinian and 129 Israeli children are memorialized in Remember These Children.

Say a prayer this Mothers’ Day for their families and that the conflict that took their children’s lives end with a just peace. 

And consider being a part of that peacemaking. 

Save the afternoon of May 20 for Lunch on the Lawn, a celebration in honor of ICM Food Pantry and Co-op supporters (i.e. us!): 

 

The sponsoring congregations of Intown Collaborative Ministries (ICM) are pleased to announce the first annual Lunch on the Lawn, an event celebrating the ICM Food Pantry, ICM’s food coops, and the many volunteers and guests who have made these two programs a success.

Be sure to stay after church on May 13 for a special Mothers' Day Brunch at DHPC: a delicious affair prepared by Badda Bing: 

 

 

salad

Organic Baby Spinach & Arugula Salad

with pear tomatoes, fresh shaved parmesan cheese

with lemon juice, cracked black pepper & e.v.o.o.

frittatas

Country Sausage

with caramelized onions, peppers & goat cheese

Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella

with fresh basil pesto

Mini Ham Biscuits

with Dijon béchamel

sides

Creamy Cheddar Grits

Assorted Pastries & Bagels

with gourmet jams, whipped butter & cream cheese

Fresh Cut Fruit Salad

Yes, and more in our May Newsletter.

Our Easter 2012 offering to One Great Hour of Sharing was $3,156, more than a thousand dollars more than last year. Thank you! See what a difference these funds can make:

This week we're praying for the 12 million people living in the West African region of the Sahel where food is always scarce and famine is imminent.

The Sahel nutrition crisis spans the countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and the northern regions of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. UNICEF anticipates that one million children suffering from severe malnutrition in this region could die within months without immediate humanitarian assistance. Many more are at risk of stunting and irreversible, permanent brain damage and disability as a result of malnutrition. 

Find resources to help you pray, act, and give in response to this crisis.

 

This week, our Prayers for the World focus close to home:

Pray for tomato pickers in Florida who are seeking fair pay from Publix and other groceries. The PC(USA) has supported their efforts for years with some success at Yum Brands and others.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

The US Department of Justice and FBI have investigated and prosecuted seven cases of slavery in recent years, freeing more than 1,200 slaves in Florida farms, whose produce goes to our groceries and restaurants.

Learn more here.

This week we're focusing our prayers for the world on Christians in the Middle East, as they face uncertainties and sometimes persecution amid regional violence and unrest.

 

 

Take this little quiz to pique your interest and awareness of these minority communities

(answers below)

1. What 7 countries have significant Christian populations in the Middle East?
2. Which 5 have Presbyterian congregations?
3. When did Christianity arrive in the region?
4. How many Christians have fled Iraq (many to Syria where they now face even more uncertainty)?
5. What kinds of Christians are there?
6. Everyone else there is Muslim, right? 

Remember that our Easter offering to One Great Hour of Sharing helps people in the Middle East and around the world—people of all faiths—who face violence, disaster, and grinding poverty. 

Answers: 

1. While definitions of "significant" and "Middle East" may vary, the following seven countries are the best fit to answer the question: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran. 
2. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran all have active, indigenous Presbyterian churches (as opposed to churches for Presbyteiran foreigners/tourists/ex-pats, examples of which can be found dotted around the region).
   
3. Well, we know Jesus lived and ministered in what is now Israel/Palestine. But when did people in the rest of the region hear about and start to follow Christ? Let's just say since Pentecost.
   
4. Iraqi Christians have left their homeland in massive numbers, from perhaps 1.7 million before 2003 to perhaps 600,000 now. Read more about them with a focus on Presbyterians.
5. Just about every kind you can imagine: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Maronite, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, and more. Read more from one of our denomination's frequent partners, the Middle East Council of Churches. 
6. You're correct-- the answer is no. But you might be surprised by the diversity. Not just a variety of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but other faiths you might not have heard of. 

 

Holy Week, Easter, Earth Day, and more. Read it here. 

When one person invests in community, we're all enriched. 

Consider if you are called to invest a pocket of time in our DHPC community in these ways:

 

Assisting or lead teaching our Elementary Sunday School (grades 1-5), and Middle School next fall.  Talk to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to be part of this opportunity. 

 

Greet weekday visitors and help in our office. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . 

 

Help Coordinate, plant and cultivate sustainable and beautiful gardening in our front beds.  Talk to David Carter Florence.

One of the local ministries we support with our offerings and donations and time is Intown Collaborative Ministries. Last year, 180 volunteers – our own Anne Townsley and Jane Boyd Lee among them – served over 2,000 hours at Intown projects like the Food Pantry and the two Briarcliff Summit Food Co-operatives; $89,000 of donations went to support those programs; and donated food was estimated at $49,000.

 

Those funds and volunteers from the participating fourteen local congregations assisted Intown with its programs to alleviate the homeless and hungry in and around the Ponce corridor. Among those programs were the Heading Home initiative that helped twenty-one former homeless men and women relocate from the streets and shelters into stable income and housing. 130 were helped traveling on public transportation for job and health trips. The Food Pantry served nearly 10,000 meals for a total of over 35,000 pounds of food. The two Briarcliff Summit Food Co-ops have 54 members and for a small fee receive over $125 worth of food per month.

 

Every Sunday, we drop off food for Food Pantry in baskets at the front of the Sanctuary. Throughout the year, our specific offerings go to support Intown through the Souper-bowl offering, the lily and bread offerings in Lent. This support is in addition to a one-time pledge from the Mission Team budget that’s made up of our offering and donations. These are the great things that we work to accomplish together; thank you, for your support.

 

 

Please join us for the Maundy Thursday worship service and potluck, 6pm on April 5th, in our Parlor.

For the potluck, you are invited to bring a dish according to last name:

• A-E - Appetizers
• F-J - Entrees/Main Dish Casseroles
• K-O Vegetables
• P-Z - Salads/Fruit/Desserts

(These are suggestions only.) 

Please label your dish on the bottom with indelible marker and masking tape so we can wash and return dishes to you after the dinner and service. 

And if you're bringing desserts, please cut them into individual portions, ready to serve.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you at this wonderful service!

 

This week our prayer for the world is for women around the world where most of the one billion people living in extreme poverty are women and children.

 

Did you know this? In 2011, our congregation helped people facing extreme circumstances in all these countries:

 

Argentina

 

Belize

 

Bolivia

 

Brazil

 

Cameroon

 

Congo

 

Dominican Republic

 

El Salvador

 

Egypt

 

Ghana

 

Guatemala

 

Haiti

 

India

 

Indonesia

 

Israel/Palestine

 

Japan

 

Kenya

 

Lesotho

 

Liberia

 

Libya

 

Malawi

 

Nicaragua

 

Niger

 

Pakistan

 

Paraguay

 

Peru

 

Philippines

 

Russia

 

Senegal

 

Sierra Leone

 

Somalia

 

South Africa

 

Sri Lanka

 

Sudan

USA

 

Zambia

People around the world are touched when we give (every Easter) to One Great Hour of Sharing, which supports the Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and Self Development of People. Let's see where our gifts can go in 2012!

 

Our church raised enough for at least SIXTEEN BICYCLES that will enable sixteen Congolese families to get their produce to market and make a living. Thanks to the whole DHPC for participating in this great project!

 

Pray for Israel and Palestine that they may come to an agreement bringing justice and peace to their people.

 

Our denomination’s position has consistently been to affirm the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state within secure, internationally recognized borders and the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, including the right to the establishment of a neighboring independent, sovereign state toward the end of establishing a just and durable peace.

 

We can stand in the GAP with fellow Presbyterians and people of all faiths seeking a just peace:

 

Give: Support peacemaking efforts. Through our Easter One Great Hour of Sharing Offering, we support projects that can prepare the way for peace.

Act: Engage faithfully with this region through advocacy, pilgrimage, partnerships, alternative gift markets, education & more. (Find resources from PC(USA)’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network.)

Pray: Consider dedicating time on the 12th of each month to pray for all Israelis and Palestinians, especially remembering our Christian brothers and sisters (as part of a US-based ecumenical vigil initiated by the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine).

From PC(USA) denominational leaders: 

 

Our Christian friends are enduring great suffering, along with all the Syrian people, under the escalating violence of the Assad regime and the counter-violence of armed resistance groups. The international community seems unable to agree on ways to bring the violence to a halt or to find a path of engagement that can lead to a peaceable resolution of the conflict. As believers in Jesus Christ, who declare that our God is “able to find a way when there is no way,” we must go to God in prayer on behalf of all who are suffering and ask for wisdom as to how we might provide comfort and support.

 

Click here for 5 things we can all do. 

See what is going on in March at DHPC. 

 

The mission of DHPC includes celebrating God’s work in the world.  Today we celebrate the ways in which God has been at work in preparing member Jessica Chancey as she explores a potential call to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. At the Presbytery meeting on February 11, 2012, Jess moved into the candidacy phase of preparation (after serving as an “inquirer” for more than a year).   

 

Jess first came to DHPC as a soprano soloist, and we have enjoyed her considerable musical talents.  Thereafter Jess became a member of DHPC, came under the care of our session to explore the possibility of ministry, and is now in her second year as a student at Columbia Theological Seminary.  Last summer Jess served as a pastoral intern in a Presbyterian church in Fairhope, Alabama.  This coming summer Jess will pursue Clinical Pastoral Education as a chaplain at St. Joseph’s Hospital here in Atlanta. 

 

We celebrate all these milestones with Jess.  Please continue to hold Jess in your prayers that she might continue to attend to God’s leading in her life.       

 

We also celebrate the faithful service of member Paula Thweatt as Jess’s liaison.  Paula has provided important support and guidance to Jess through prayer and conversation during this journey of exploration and preparation. 

 

Pray for peace and justice in Madagascar and for the health and discernment of the church there.

 

Doug Tilton, PC(USA) mission worker in Africa, says Madagascar’s political and economic crises after a military coup in 2009 still persist. Human rights violations also continue. In response, the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, known by its Malagasy acronym FJKM, is pushing for a return to democracy. Presbyterians in the United States, including the Madagascar Mission Network, are supporting the FJKM. FJKM leaders hope that a “roadmap,” brokered by a delegation from the Southern Africa Development Community, will provide an effective pathway toward the restoration of democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, there continues to be great concern for the safety of FJKM pastors and other church leaders, some of who have been threatened and others arrested. “We hear constantly from the FJKM that the most important thing people can do is to pray, pray for peace and justice and for the health and discernment of the church in Madagascar,” Tilton says. “It’s also important that we engage in advocacy with U.S. officials.”

Learn more at pcusa.org. 

Please join us on February 5 for our annual Kirkin' o' the Tartans worship service. This is a special time to celebrate our denomination's Scottish heritage. Members of the St. Andrew's Society and the Burns Club of Atlanta will again enrich our worship service, and join us at the special reception afterwards in the Parlor.    

 

Members are asked to either provide food and beverages or help with the setup.  To make sure we get enough of everything, we've divided up the responsibilities among groups in the church.  If you don't belong to one of these groups, you could bring some food from any of these categories or contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to see how you might help with setup or other things. Thank you!

 

Desserts - Youth and their families

Tea Sandwiches - Clarion-McNair Fellowship

Fruit, Cheese, Cheese Ball and Vegetables - The Roundtable Class

Appetizers (dips, spreads, cracker, chips) - Choir

The Hospitality Team will provide Punch and Coffee.

Greeters - Session members