Dear One’s of St. C’s, 

it is hard to believe we only have two more Sundays with Alissa, Andrew, Jubilee, and Salome as a part of our Sunday morning worshipping community.  They are so much a part of us it is hard to imagine them not among us.  One of the hardest things about endings is that if you did the beginning and middle part well the end is inevitably painful.  Communities are continually ebbing and flowing, growing and changing in different ways.  I wholeheartedly believe that every person who enters our church impacts and changes us.  The longer they stay, the more they pour into our community, the greater the impact and change.  And when people find for whatever reason it is time to leave, their impact and change lives on in the community.

We are changed because Alissa, Andrew, Jubilee, and Salome were an integral part of our community for nine years.  And that doesn’t change because they are leaving.  We know ourselves in a deeper and fuller way because of this family and because of Alissa.  And we get to keep that knowing of our community and grow even deeper and stronger in our faith in Christ. I hope you can live into and feel both the loss and sadness of Alissa, Andrew, Jubilee, and Salome’s departure and the excitement of the future of St. Columba’s.  As a community we have so much more to do and so much more to learn and because of the love and gifts of this family, we are all the more equipped to enter into this new stage of the life of St. Columba’s.  

Continue to feel your feelings, feel free to bring your feelings about this loss on Sunday mornings.  Please, join us for Alissa and her family’s last Sunday with us on May 28th.  Let’s carry all the feelings together and offer our gratitude and care to this wonderful family.  

with Care and Hope, 

Meghan