Palm Sunday

Today was Palm Sunday and the entire congregation went to St. Paul's, Nyssa for a joint service with Bishop Gregg. Bill has resigned as Bishop of Eastern Oregon and leaves April 30 to be an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of North Carolina. We wish him Godspeed. Today was Bill's farewell to Southeastern Oregon and folks from Canyon City, Parma, ID and Ontario were there as well as us. It was a nice service and it was great seeing many of the St. Paul's people who are old friends from the Seven Rivers Cluster Days. It's amazing to think that we began our bold experiment in Mutual Ministry with 7 congregations from two dioceses clustering together to uphold one another in Mutual Ministry twenty years ago. It was a grand experiment ending finally with a turf battle with a Bishop and priestly indiscretion. Both St. Paul's and Holy Trinity continue to work in ministry for all the baptized and fondly remember those halcyon days when each day was a new beginning and a new awakening. We had a lot of people excited about doing ministry. Perhaps it's not possible to keep such excitement alive for 20 years, but we gave it a heckofa shot. Today was like old home week seeing the remnant (at least the Eastern Oregon side) get together. Many are gone, and they are missed. I remember one Easter Vigil at Holy Trinity with 70 people in the church, probably the only time that HT has seen so many worshippers. Well, it doesn't do any good to pine for lost times, we must move forward, we have other souls to win and other hearts to mend.