Rev. Eleanor Terry, Rector

25-01-12 Gospel & Sermon, Rev. Eleanor Terry, Rector

Epiphany Lessons & Carols

Feast of the Epiphany - Lessons & Carols, January 5, 2025

The handbell choir rings again

Pastoral Associate of Music and Liturgy, Ellen Oak, led six members of the Good Shepherd community in a beautiful handbell performance this Christmas season. The merry crew of amateur musicians learned and played four festive pieces. You can watch their moving rendition of Carol of the Bells in the video below.

Members of Good Shepherd play Carol of the Bells.

The history of handbells at Good Shepherd

In October 2007 parishioners at Church of the Good Shepherd raised enough money to purchase a 3-octave set of high-quality English handbells. Jay Lane, our music director at the time, also purchased several other items helpful for handbell choirs: stand-up music folders; music stands with space underneath to lay bells down; additional sheet music arranged for handbells. The new handbells made their debut at the Lessons & Carols service in December 2007, adding their lovely sweet sound to an already special service.

Over the years, we have assembled both adult and youth handbell choirs to provide special music at select services. Early handbell enthusiast Ronnie Diesl created several protective foam pads and decorative cover slips to use with our folding tables. Bells are an easy and fun way to participate in our music ministry. All the skills you need are the ability to count to 4, and to tell your left hand from your right.

If you’d like to get involved in making music at Good Shepherd, please contact us.

Rev. Ken Schmidt

2024-12-29 Gospel & Sermon, Rev Ken Schmidt

The Rev. Eleanor A. Terry

2024-12-24 Gospel and Sermon, Rev. Eleanor Terry, Rector

The Rev. Eleanor Terry

2024-12-22 Gospel & Sermon, Rev. Eleanor Terry, Rector

The Rev. Ken Schmidt

Advent 3, Gospel & Sermon, Rev. Ken Schmidt

Bundles of warmth and goodwill

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the hat and mitten drive for the Acton Shelter. We donated over 100 hats, mittens, and gloves, including many hand-knitted ones and some purchased with $300 in contributions. Every item included a personalized card!!!

Special thanks to the Bates, Magee and Jackson families for coordinating this ministryto help local families stay warm this winter.  Thank you to the Mission Outreach Committee for championing and planning this community service.

Resettlement news

It has been ten months since our Rohingya family arrived in Massachusetts. Their transition to American life has been difficult after many years, and in some cases a lifetime, in a refugee camp. They have needed a lot of support from both the International Institute of New England (IINE) and the Interfaith Partnership group.

Although our specific responsibility has been to support the cohort of seven which included two adult siblings, their spouses and three children, the family is actually twelve people including a brother and his family who arrived in the spring, plus the matriarch of the family and a teenage brother. They all live in two apartments in Lowell.

At this point the oldest brother, who speaks fairly good English, is fully employed working the overnight shift. His job involves sterilizing medical supplies. He works overtime whenever it’s available and, along with his brother, is paying the full rent and utilities at one apartment. A member of IPRR has been meeting with him to teach him how to understand his paycheck, how to pay bills, use a credit card to build a credit history, and to start a savings account. This is all very new for him since his previous experience was earning $3/day and living in a cash economy. His next goal is to learn to drive and to have his own apartment with his wife and child.

His sister and her husband have had a more difficult time. They have struggled to learn English and have had some bumps in the road to overcome. He is now attending English classes 3 days a week at IINE and is eager to be employed. She is gradually coming to terms with the need to work to pay the bills in spite of the cultural norms around women working outside the home.

Getting a job is difficult when you can’t yet independently navigate the complicated process of submitting applications and taking phone calls from prospective employers. IINE has a philosophy of tough love with their clients. Our financial support will end soon. Both IINE employment specialists and the creative problem solvers in the Interfaith Partnership are working hard to find placements that will get them started.

In the meantime, the Partnership has provided Cultural Orientation classes to the whole family, weekly English instruction to the women, and bike riding lessons to the children, taken the families on picnics and to Halloween events in Lowell, and accompanied their mother to medical appointments.

The happy smiles on their daughters’ faces when they get off the school bus make us optimistic that they will all find their way.

A Meeting with Noah Bullock

In November about twenty devoted supporters of El Ocotillo had the opportunity to meet with Noah Bullock, the Executive Director of Cristosal, to learn about the current reality for human rights in El Salvador. Cristosal has for more than 20 years defended human rights and been the catalyst for long lasting positive social change in northern Central America. During his time in Boston, Noah met with the Governor’s staff, Bishop Julia Whitworth, and graduate students at Tufts and also conducted a workshop in Norfolk. We felt honored to have time with him.

The current authoritarian government of President Bukele has dismantled legitimate democratic processes and incarcerated more than 80000 people without due process. We discussed the effects we see in El Ocotillo where people, including alumnae of the scholarship program, are being dismissed from government jobs because they are not aligned with the incumbent political powers.

To learn more about the important work of Cristosal, check out their website.