Bishop Benjamin to Visit
His Grace Bishop Benjamin is scheduled to be with us on Nov. 11th to celebrate the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, to ordain Davi Wingate a subdeacon, and to celebrate our parish Slava.  The visit of our bishop is an important event for us, and an honor.  When greeting him, remember to ask his blessing and to address him as “Your Grace” or “Vladyka.” The Hierarchical Liturgy begins near the back of the church, so please do not come on time.  Rather, plan to arrive early.  His Grace knows that we are a small parish, but let’s show him how great is our joy at having him with us.  This would also be a good time to invite our family or friends.  Arrangements for an interview with The Pueblo Chieftain are being made.  Let’s all rise to the occasion with servants’ hearts, and if we see that something needs to be done, let’s not hesitate to do it ourselves.

November Services
+Nov. 8th: Synaxis of the Archangel Michael.
+Nov. 14th: Apostle Philip, Emperor Justinian and St. Gregory Palamas.
+Nov. 21st: Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the temple.  Beginning with this feast, Vigil is moved up to 6:30 pm.

Fast Begins
The Advent/Nativity Fast begins Nov. 15th.  In addition to increased prayer and fasting, we are also called to give alms.  It has been our custom these past years to take a collection on each Advent Sunday for a particular charity.  Below is a projected schedule for those collections.  If you will be writing a check, make it out to St. Michael’s so that we can combine all funds and send them as a single check.
Nov. 18th: International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC)
Nov. 25th: Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC)
Dec. 2nd: Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF)
Dec. 9th: Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry (OCPM)
Dec. 16th: Project Mexico
Dec. 23rd: Stewards of the West (our Diocesan charity)

Ladies’ Auxiliary/Coffee Hour
One of the most important new initiatives this year has been the revival of a parish ladies’ group, whose goals have been monthly fellowship and coordinating coffee hour.  So far the ladies have done a remarkable job and the quality of coffee hour has improved notably.  The continued success of this endeavor depends on two things: 1) Participation of the ladies of the parish and, 2) Our giving a donation toward coffee hour.  This latter condition is particularly incumbent upon the men folk.  The money that we put in that basket on the food table goes right back into purchasing the things we need for coffee hour.  The suggested minimum donation is $1/Sunday, but we can be more generous than that.  Let’s face it, our willingness to sponsor coffee hour as individual families was waning with the increase in attendance.  This new arrangement makes far more sense, but it can only work over the long run if we are willing to give of ourselves and not simply expect to be catered to.  Remember, after all, that in ministering to one another we also minister to Christ himself.  Preparing coffee hour and giving a donation for it are not burdens, but opportunities to do something beneficial for our salvation.

Treasurer’s Report

I'll Help Out When I Can
A man had a fatal illness, so he did all kinds of things to try to hasten his death.  Once he swam out into the ocean as far as he could, hoping to drown.  As he went down for the third time it occurred to him that he really prized life and wanted to live, so in his exhausted condition he tried to swim back to shore.  As he started back he said, "Oh God, get me out of this and I'll give you 90 percent of everything I've got.  A little later he said, "Oh God, get me out of this and I'll give you 60 percent of all I've got."  As he came within sight of shore he said "30 percent."  When his feet touched bottom he said, "I'll help out when I can."  When he crawled up on the beach, he said to God, "You're the one who got me into this in the first place."  Sincere tithing must not be an attempt to buy God's favor or to get something in return.  It is the grateful recognition that everything has come from God and that we are temporary stewards deciding how it will be used.                                                                                                                                                                   -- David Rogne

Bookstore
The bookstore is having a clearance sale.  Most items are available at drastically reduced prices.  We have your Christmas cards here!  Preorders of the Orthodox Study Bible with Old Testament are currently being taken.

Parishioner Profile: La Familia Edwards

We have recently been very pleased to welcome a new family into this parish.  John (Bob) and Gabriella (Sonia) Edwards come to us from Los Angeles, and have distinguished themselves as warm, hospitable people with the added gift of good singing voices.  The path that led them to each other, and to the Orthodox Church, was not one that could be clearly seen from the beginning.  This circuitousness is often a sign of Divine Providence.

Born in 1970, John grew up Mormon in Southern California.  This was not a faith that rested easy with him, however, especially as he began to explore Church history and doctrine.  Around the age of 18, John became an Evangelical Protestant.  A few years later, his further studies led him back to the Orthodox Church.  He was serving in the army at the time he became a catechumen, and was chrismated by a chaplain while deployed to South Korea.  Continuity was key to John’s embrace of Orthodoxy.  “If I hopped in a time machine and went back a thousand years, I could still go to church,” he observes.  No other type of Christian can claim that.

Gabriella was born in Mexico City in 1969 to a nominally Roman Catholic family.  She was baptized in due course, but faith was never a matter of much consequence growing up.  As a teenager, she met a family friend who was very zealous about his own Jehovah’s Witness faith.  This encounter left a strong impression.  Not long afterward, her family moved to L.A. in search of a better life.  One day, a Jehovah’s Witness came knocking on her door and she agreed to convert. When John and Gabriella met in 2005, they were both divorced and neither wanted to waste any time in pointless dating.  “On our first date,” Gabriella recalls, “He said, ‘I will not marry you unless you go to my church.’”  On their third or fourth date, church was exactly where they went.  Gabriella’s first impression was a powerful one: “It was very romantic [in the classical sense of the word] the way they worshipped God, the way they sang everything.”  The sensory nature of Orthodox worship contrasted forcefully with her JW experience, but was familiar from her Catholic youth.  Still, her embrace of Orthodoxy was by no means immediate or unquestioning.  She sometimes felt the need to defend JW beliefs and practices.  She realized eventually that whereas the JW’s see themselves as “getting more biblical over time,” the Orthodox Church has maintained the biblical faith from the beginning.  The couple first attended a parish in Riverside before settling in at St. Steven’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, where Gabriella was chrismated in May ’06.  She remembers fondly the vivacity of that parish’s cultural life, particularly the food and dancing.

Given the atrocious cost of living in L.A., the couple began looking to relocate.  With John’s job as an engineer for the BNSF railroad, they had to make sure they moved someplace where he could work, and they could go to church.  They found St. Michael’s through our website.  The photos of Slava celebrations appealed to John.  He first came out for a visit during last Lent.  Gabriella joined him here for Pascha, and by the end of June they had completed their move.  A month later, they were married here in our church.  Gabriella has a 17-year-old daughter, also named Gabriella, who still lives in L.A.  The couple is expecting their own child in early March.  Coming from a big city cathedral that always had at least 200 people on Sundays, John and Gabriella like the cozier size of St. Michael’s.  “I feel like family here,” she shares.  John and Gabriella live at 1515 Lake Ave., and they invite everyone from the parish to a housewarming party at 4 pm on Sunday, Nov. 4th.

Kids
With the bumper crop of children in our parish (and more on the way), we are learning to deal with noise during services.  We do not send our kids off to daycare while we pray, because we believe the most important place for them is in church with us.  This means parents have to be vigilant in minimizing the degree of distraction their children cause, and also in picking up after them at coffee hour (there are often plates and other garbage left on the grounds).  It is difficult for Father or Popadija to watch Mila during services, and we realize she is one of the most distracting of all, so we greatly appreciate your active and ongoing help with her.

Parishioner Profile: George Zmiewsky

George is another (relatively) new face at St. Michael’s.  He was born in Denver in 1951 to immigrant parents from Petrograd (mother) and Ukraine (father), and baptized at Holy Transfiguration Cathedral.  There he served as an altar boy, but like so many others drifted away from church life as a young man.  George worked a variety of jobs before landing a position at the Drivers License Office, where he has been now for 16 years.  As a traveling examiner, he sometimes logs up to 2000 miles/month.  In July of ’06, George relocated to Pueblo from Rifle, CO.  He recently moved into a home on Kingsley in the south side.  One thing that led him back to church was how much St. Michael’s reminds him of Holy Transfiguration and the happy memories of youth.  It also helped that “everyone was so warm and friendly.”  George has a 25-year-old son, Adam, who lives in Greeley.  His nephew, Dn. Alexander Vallens, serves at Holy Transfiguration and will be with us during Bishop Benjamin’s visit.  You may have noticed that George is a rather quiet sort.  This is not from any disregard for the company of others, but from the gentleness of his soul.

Recommended Reading
The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andric, tells the story of over 500 years’ worth of important encounters and tragic events that took place on or near this historic bridge in Bosnia, built by a Serb (Mehmet Sokolovic) who like so many others was taken away from his family as a child and forcibly converted to Islam in order to be made a servant of the Turkish Sultan.  An epic work of great beauty and sadness, Bridge won the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Though not a theological work, it conveys a resonating sense of the Serbian Orthodox experience.

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