Hello, beloved church family!

2/15/2019

We bring you greetings and prayers from Congregational UCC of Punta Gorda, Florida.

This is a congregation with a fluctuating population, as many people are snow birds. (There are also 16 retired UCC pastors there!) We estimated about 130 people or so at the worship service. They were celebrating Volunteer Sunday, since almost all the jobs around the church were done by volunteers (sound familiar?).

They have an opportunity at the beginning of the service to introduce yourself or visitors, so Lenny stood up, said who we are and where we are from, and asked that all of you be held in their hearts because church had to be cancelled due to the weather. This was greeted with many cries of “Oh no!” “Oh dear!” and “Of course!”. We felt surrounded by love and community.

We are in this area until March 7th, then plan to move down the coast a little bit and cross Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic Ocean side of Florida. As you may recall, part of our Loop journey is to do the baseball tour, and we are already booked for 3 games of spring training, with six different teams. We also participated in the South West Florida Ranger Rendezvous, with about 30 other Ranger Tugs and Cutwater Boats. We made new friends and were able to match faces with names.

Hopefully, the next edition of the blog will be up soon.

In the meantime, we hold you in our hearts and look forward to news and pictures of all of you.

Blessings,

Louise and Lenny