Our Next Service Opportunity is Tuesday, April 23, at 4PM

We always need 7-8 individuals to serve dinner at this United Methodist Outreach Ministry (UMOM) event and we welcome families with teenagers 14 years old or older to join us. We leave CCOV at 4PM and are usually back around 7:30 PM.

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” 

This is your invitation to live and love as our faith calls us to do.

Plan to meet at CCOV and then carpool to Halle Women’s Center, 3424 East Van Buren.

Contact: Janet at 480-391-3905 if you have any questions or need more information.

Our Musical Guests on Sunday, April 7 – Judy and Frank Ryken

Please join us Sunday, April 7, when we welcome Judy and Frank Ryken as our special musical guests. They will join Larry in offering classical selections by Purcell, Vivaldi and Bach.  Be sure to bring your friends and neighbors for this special event!

Judy and Frank Ryken have performed for many years with various theater and opera companies throughout the bay area. Some of Judy‘s favorite roles include Marietta in “Naughty Marietta,” Musetta In “La Boheme” and Mable in “Pirates of Penzance.”
A few of frank’s favorites are: The Prince in “The Student Prince”, Alfredo in “La Traviata” and Billy Crocker in “Anything Goes”.
Frank and Judy met on stage 30 years ago and have been together ever since. 
Frank serves as a cantor and music director. Judy teaches vocal music to elementary students. She is the founder of “Curtains Up Youth Company” where she and Frank find great joy directing together. 

Mary Petrich will be our soloist for the service on Sunday, March 3rd

She and Larry will be doing a program of classical saxophone music that day. Mary is a creative saxophonist who has been developing her own vision for the past 20 years. Her desire to push the boundaries has led her to many projects and collaborations, the latest being the album “Murmuration” with her quartet “OpenHand”.

Mary Petrich

With an abiding love for free style improvisation and the intimate collaboration of small group settings, she is equally at home playing standards and working in larger group formats. Her large group work includes the Phoenix Symphony, the Grammy award-winning Phoenix Chorale, the Az. Music Festival Orchestra, and the Nash Composer Coalition.

Our Next Service Opportunity is Tuesday, February 26, at 4PM

We always need 7-8 individuals to serve dinner at this United Methodist Outreach Ministry (UMOM) event and we welcome families with teenagers 14 years old or older to join us. We leave CCOV at 4PM and are usually back around 7:30 PM.

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” 

This is your invitation to live and love as our faith calls us to do.

Plan to meet at CCOV and then carpool to Halle Women’s Center, 3424 East Van Buren.

Contact: Janet at 480-391-3905 if you have any questions or need more information.

Healthy Packs

This Sunday, we will launch our annual drive to support the Healthy Packs program, which serves students in the Scottsdale Unified School District. Each year Healthy Packs supplies healthy weekend snacks (and sometime, vouchers) to at-risk students who often don’t receive necessary nutrition when they are away from school over weekends and holidays. Since Healthy Packs began, teachers report a noticeable improvement in the attentiveness of these students when they return to school on Mondays.

We think of Scottsdale as an affluent community (which it is comparatively), but there is great need in the unseen communities which represent the lower income and struggling families who also live here. CCOV chose Healthy Packs as a mission because it serves the community close to home. Please give as you can when we launch this mission February 17. Our goal is to support 10 students for a year with $2000 in giving. More information can be found at https://scottsdalecommunitypartners.org/prog…/healthy-packs/

Coat Donations

When Pastor Sandi learned last month that Casa Adobes UCC in Tucson was collecting coats for border refugees she spoke with the church member there who was coordinating this effort.  He told her the collection would go through the end of the month and they had a special need of children’s coats as well as adult sizes small and medium. He said used coats and jackets were fine as long as they were in good condition.  So the call went out for coats.

Coats collected for Casa Adobes UCC

This photograph shows the response to the request. The coats were sent to Tucson on January 27th. Thanks to all who participated.

Warm Coats

Forty degrees in Philadelphia feels very different from forty degrees in Prescott.  Clint and I were chatting about this yesterday, grateful for the warm coats we brought along with us. It’s probably the humidity and grey skies that make the air feel colder, more biting back east.  We walked to Chinatown for lunch and saw scores of homeless people sleeping on vents in the sidewalks.  My heart went out to them-they feel the cold acutely and have few places to warm up.  When we lived here years ago, our church’s youth group collected warm blankets for them.  It’s terrible to be cold.

Last week I learned that Casa Adobes UCC in Tucson is collecting coats for border refugees.  It gets so cold in the desert at night this time of year.  I wondered if we at CCOV could help and spoke with the church member there coordinating this effort.  He said the collection will go through the end of this month.  They have special need of children’s coats as well as adult sizes small and medium.  Used coats and jackets are fine as long as they are in good condition.  If you have any contributions, please bring them to church this month and give them to either Clint or me, and we will hand deliver them to Casa Adobes UCC at the end of January.  After all, we are to treat these children of God as we would treat Jesus himself.  

I will be preaching on Jesus’ Baptism on this second Sunday of Epiphany.  The scripture is Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-22.  I look forward to seeing you all on Sunday!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Sandi 

Our Next Service Opportunity is Tuesday, January 22, at 4PM

We always need 7-8 individuals to serve dinner at this United Methodist Outreach Ministry (UMOM) event and we welcome families with teenagers 14 years old or older to join us. We leave CCOV at 4PM and are usually back around 7:30 PM.

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” 

This is your invitation to live and love as our faith calls us to do.

Plan to meet at CCOV and then carpool to Halle Women’s Center, 3424 East Van Buren.

Contact: Janet at 480-391-3905 if you have any questions or need more information.

Lan Qiu will be our soloist for Feb. 3rd

The musical guest for our service on Sunday, February 3rd will be Lan Qiu, violinist with the Phoenix Symphony. Lan will join with Larry for a varied program including Ravel’s beautiful “Pavane pour une infante défunte”, and an exciting New Year’s piece from Lan’s native China to help ring in The Year of the Boar, which begins on February 5th. Invite your friends to join us to hear this amazing guest soloist!

Lan has been playing in the first violin section with the Phoenix Symphony since 2003. Between 1996 and 2000, Qiu was a member of the first violin section of the China National Symphony Orchestra, one of the most outstanding professional orchestra in China. He toured and performed in most countries in Europe, Asia and North America between1987 and 2000.

Since his graduation in 1989 from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China, Qiu was serving acting concertmaster for the China Central Philharmonic Orchestra (former China National Symphony Orchestra) in Beijing till 1996. With great honor, Qiu was invited to perform at the First Shanghai Worldwide Chinese Artist 2006 New Year’s Concert in China. In 1996, he was elected as the “Outstanding Young Artist of China.” Qiu was also the winner of the National Youth Violinist Competition in 1990.

In February 2009, Qiu was invited to be the guest concertmaster for the Chandler Symphony Orchestra. With the same orchestra, Qiu was featured as the violin soloist performing Sinfonia Concertante in Eb Major by W. A. Mozart with violist Dwight Lear in March this year.