Newsletters
2023 Newsletters
December
Dear Friends of Good Samaritan UMC,
I hope you all had a wonderful and meaningful Thanksgiving Day with your family and friends. I thanked God for his unfailing love and grace, and his provision and guidance for me and my family this year. I also thanked God for you all for sharing your lives and gifts with us, especially your commitment to Christ. I wanted you to know that committed to Christ, our fall discipleship/stewardship emphasis, was a big success. We had a great response in the number of commitment cards during the six weeks of the program.
November
Dear Good Samaritan families and friends,
I am grateful to see all of you participating in the "Committed to Christ" stewardship program. It is six steps to a generous life as we follow the lifestyle of Jesus. These six steps are the foundation for us as followers of Jesus. Like the above scripture, we are all in a race for the eternally. We all start at a different place in that race, but we are running hard to the finish line.
October
Dear Family and friends of Good Samaritan UMC,
Have you spotted some beautiful fall leaves that are changing colors? I begin to see changes everywhere I go, and it is beautiful. It just reminds me of who we are as God’s people. God made us so beautifully and uniquely different, so when we are together, we reflect God's beautiful creation. Like fall leaves, we change as we move through the season of our lives. Changes are good but adopting it might take some more effort. I know some of us don't like change, but without it, we might fall behind because the world that we live in is constantly in change. Thank you for paying attention to the past five weeks of our theme according to the “10 prescriptions for a healthy church."
September
Dear Good Samaritan UMC families and friends,
Greetings to all of you from our Lord Jesus Christ, and I wish everyone well with all you do. I would like to thank all of you for your prayers and support for my South Korea Mission trip and time of vacation. It was a learning and refreshing time for me. It was nice to worship in two Korean Methodist churches; it felt special to me. Things have changed so much in Korea in the past twenty years, and the only thing that didn't change was God's love.
August
Greetings to The Family of Good Samaritan UMC,
Bring peace to all of you from South Korea, I have arrived safely to Korea. I stayed at Gwanglim Prayer Mountain retreat center. They have eleven different statues of Jesus' ministry and I visited each place to meditate and pray. I hope you also had a time alone with God.
July
Dear Good Samaritan families and friends,
Greetings to all of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I can't believe how time goes by so fast. I have been with you for a year..
June
Dear Good Samaritan families and friends,
We will celebrate with those who are graduating or advancing to the next level of education on June 4th. If the graduates are available to worship on that day, we will have time for blessing and celebration with them during the worship. If they cannot be here, we still want to recognize them by introducing them and praying over them.
May
Dear Good Samaritan families and friends,
Greetings to all of you from our risen Lord Jesus Christ. What a celebration we had together on Easter Sunday. We had one hundred and one people joined together for worship, and it was so good to see families and friends near and far to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wish we could see you more often in worship and church ministries. May God’s joy fill your lives during this Easter Season!
April
Dear Good Samaritan families and friends,
Easter celebration is just around the corner. How is your Lenten journey so far?
By the time you get this newsletter, it will be a week before Easter, the Holy week. So far, we had Ash Wednesday service, Lenten Dinners on Wednesday, Lenten Bible study on Thursday, Feed My Starving Children mission outing, and a couple of pulpit exchange. I hope these practices have helped you in your Lenten journey so far. More spiritual practices are on your way.
March
Dear Good Samaritan UMC families and friends,
Lent began last week on Ash Wednesday, as did our journey of forty days of Lent. I want to greet you with a question that John Wesley always greets “How is it with your soul?” It is an especially important question to consider in this season of Lent, a season that is a stark reminder of our sinfulness. Lent reminds us of our sinfulness and invites us to remember Jesus's death and resurrection. We could also consider Lent a time to spring-clean our souls.
February
Greetings to families and friends of Good Samaritan UMC,
How was your month of January? Did you have a good start? I think we, as the church, had a great start; we kicked off with a Covenant renewal service and had two weeks of communion. We also had a fun event on January 21st to make Chinese dumplings. What fun we had making Chinese dumplings and eating them together. We had about twenty-five people, and we had a great time of fellowship. I wonder if that might be something Jesus did with his disciples, making Pita bread sandwiches or grilled fish on a sea shore.
January
Dear Good Samaritan UMC families and friends,
It is that time of the year when we get to look back on all the days of 2022 and reflect on the days that we accomplished something and some days that we wish we could have done better. How about your faith journey? Have you grown your faith and be-come a little stronger, or took backsliding a little? The good news is that 2022 has passed, and the New Year, 2023 is here.