Announcements: Oct 14-20

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Jon Cook; Millie Mutka, Zima family friends Cary Gramsch, Stefan Sladek, Dave Butschli, Mick, Steven and Marilyn Hummel; Gregory Bowens; Laurie Nelson; Amber Ross’s daughter Linda; Randy & Diane Niemczyk’s niece Sarah Joda, and their dear friend Denise Hazel; Valeria Hesselberg; Chris Markussen; Jim Moravec’s sister Gladys Owens; Anne Verona’s sister/brother-in-law Pat & Woody Woodworth; Pastor Grant’s father-in-law Mark Von Donsel; Dawn Gonitzke’s brother Scott Premo; Claire Holman; the Eberts friends Patricia Kulzick and John Oliver; the Waggoner’s sister-in-law Cheryl Busse; Karen Engels’ niece Lisa and friends Bob and Dawn and Gail Wogsland; Ann Carlson’s people Dwight, Stacy, Sarah, Ben, Staci, Dana, Curt, Jasmine, Troy and Janice; those dealing with the devastation from Hurricanes Helene and Milton as well as the first responders who are helping them; and the people of Israel, Russia, Palestine and Ukraine.

PRAYER LIST PROCEDURE – Submit your prayer requests to the office in writing, by phone, by email or in person. If requesting prayers for someone other than yourself or an immediate family member, please obtain permission – unless the circumstances are public in nature. You may also submit a prayer request for events. For example – a family gathering and seeking prayers for safe travels to/from. We have a prayer request form – that works – on our webpage.

WORSHIP ON FACEBOOK – Live on Facebook on Sundays at 9:00 am and posted for later viewing.

FLOWERS – the flowers in the church this weekend are in appreciation of Pastor Grant during Pastor Appreciation Month.

MANY THANKS – to all of you who have turned in your pledge cards for 2025. If you haven’t filled out a pledge card yet, they are sitting near the blessing basket.

DEVOTIONS – this coming week’s devotions were written for the Northern Great Lakes Synod by our very own Chris Ebert. Chris Ebert’s Devotion Hers will begin on Oct 21st

GUESTS – if you are visiting us today, please sign our book at the entrance to the sanctuary.

ROGER JEHNKE’s FUNERAL – will be held here on Saturday, November 16th. Visitation at 10:30 am. Service at 11:00. Luncheon details to follow.

GOD’S WORK – OUR HANDS – actually needs a hand. They will continue to host the first Sunday of the month coffee hour, but they are asking for assistance. Asking members of the congregation to take turns bringing in homemade or purchased baked goods. Please sign up on the sheet in the Narthex or contact Betty Wright at basslakewrights@gmail.com.

SHOUT OUT – to Jack Palmer. The annual Headwaters Conference churches meet today. Thank you to Jack for representing us and being on the nomination committee!

COFFEE FUND – If you ever wondered what happens to the dollars you drop in the basket during fellowship hour – please know you are contributing to much more than only donuts. Your dollars are going towards funeral luncheons and any and all church activities where food is provided. We’ve had a lot of activities this year and could use an assist in building our fund back up again.

NEW TIME! NEW DAY! Let’s Gather Adult Bible Study! Next and final meeting for this round is Wed—October 23 at 5:30 PM. Snacks will be provided! Please bring a beverage of your choice. Questions? Please reach out to Pastor Grant, Rachel Strong or Shayne Wilfer.

EGG UPDATE – the free eggs in the frig is on hiatus. The chickens at the Carlson/Johnson ranch have stopped laying for the moment.

TRUNK OR TREAT – Do you miss the days when little goblins and ghouls came knocking on your door? Have we got the opportunity for you! We will be hosting a trunk or treat at Prince of Peace on Halloween from 4-6PM on October 31. Come spread Halloween fun to community children. You can host your own car or combine with other members. Decorate your car (or not) and dress in costume (or not) but bring about 200 treats to give out to community children. Sign up in the Narthex! Contact Rachel Strong with any questions. It is going to be SPOOK-tacular! Also on hand – hot apple cider and a campfire!

ENDOWMENT GRANTS – Help the Endowment Team use our Endowment Fund as effectively as possible to enhance the mission outreach of Prince of Peace. As the fund’s custodian, the team is looking for ways to help the church ministry in the community. If you would like to offer a suggestion to the Endowment Team or financially contribute, get a request form from the narthex, the church office or the website. A donation of any amount will help immensely and be much appreciated. Recently our endowment made a contribution of $500 to Worship in the Wild and $250 to Northwoods Share.

WEBSITE REFRESH – we also had a website refresh. Take a tour of it and let us know if you see anything that needs fixing and/or if you would like to see more of something.

FLAT LUTHER – Flat Luther will start making appearances around the church and hopefully with you on your adventures. Find Flat Luther and take him on an adventure with you – snap a picture and return the picture and Flat Luther so he can head out into the world with someone else.

REFORMATION SUNDAY – Remember to wear red on October 27th.

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY – will be November 3rd.

CHRISTIAN WOMEN’S LUNCH – had a date change this month to October 22 at Sweetwater in Eagle River at 11:30 AM. If you are going, please RSVP to Debbie at debbieroder4@gmail.com ASAP.

FUN FACTS: So – why are we having a Flat Luther? Flat Stanley is an American children’s book series written by author Jeff Brown (January 1, 1926 – December 3, 2003). The idea for the book began as a bedtime story for Brown’s sons, which Brown turned into the first Flat Stanley book. The book recounts the adventures of Stanley Lambchop after he is squashed flat by a bulletin board while sleeping. He is otherwise uninjured, and decides to make the best of being flat. Soon, Stanley discovers that he is able to enter locked rooms by sliding under the door. Over the course of the story, he is also rolled up to go out to a park, and he is used as a kite by his younger brother, Arthur. Another special advantage of being flat is that Flat Stanley can visit his friends in California by being mailed in a large envelope, allowing him to avoid the cost of a train or airplane ticket. Later, Stanley even helps catch art thieves at a museum by disguising himself as a painting on the wall. However, Stanley eventually becomes tired of his flatness, and Arthur restores Stanley’s proper shape with a bicycle pump.

NOTES FROM ANN – Pictures! We have pictures from our Blessing of the Animals. Enjoy! (My favorite is the one of Ruby – she is leaning into Pastor Grant for her blessing) Then – at the top of this email is a picture taken last night by the Wright’s son. And we have a picture of Flat Luther admiring the changing colors of the leaves. Or as I like to call it – the Call Folors.

Before I give you too much information about the comet – I have a fun story to tell you. Burt and I went comet hunting on the 15th. We went to the airport because we thought with that much open space it would be easy to see. There was a band of clouds that night right where we needed to look. So last night, the 16th, we went back out with Burt’s brother Brad. Burt and I were looking everywhere that we thought the comet would be and couldn’t see it. Brad was sitting in the car and he spotted it with the naked eye. For me – without the binoculars – it looked like a smudge. And it wasn’t where Burt and I had been looking. With the binoculars – boy – it was clear as a bell and worth the time to look at it.

While we were there – another car pulled up. No one got out of it. Burt read off the plate to me (as you do when you are a retired police officer). I said, “Boy that plate sounds familiar”. He agreed. We ooo’d and ah’d a bit longer. I thought I would be neighborly and talk to the occupants of the other car in case they wanted to use our binoculars.

Would you believe it was Tim and Betty Wright and their good friend Ginger? Well – it was! How cool was that? We shared the binos. Good time had by all.

If you’ve seen the hype online about Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (also called C/2023 A3 and Comet A3), you’ll want to know exactly when to look, where it is and how to find it. It’s now almost 50 million miles distant from earth.

The comet is now just slightly past its absolute brightest, but in some ways that’s a good thing because it’s now much higher in the sky. That means you can watch from anywhere — no special trips to mountainsides and beaches required — and it’s now shining in a darker sky that it was a few days ago.

The rare sight of a naked-eye comet — one that orbits the sun only once every 80,000 years — is a rival sight to Thursday’s global display of Northern Lights.

Luckily, it’s now easily visible in the west in the post-sunset sky, if you have clear weather. As an extra bonus tonight, on Thursday, Oct. 17, it will be possible not only to see the comet, but — right behind you — a rising “supermoon.”

How To Locate Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS: Thursday, Oct. 17

Position: west, 37 degrees from the sun in Serpens

Time: 45 minutes after sunset where you are

Magnitude: +1.3

Comet’s distance from the sun: 60.9 million miles (98 million kilometers)

Comet’s distance from Earth: 49.9 million miles (80.3 million kilometers)

This evening, the comet will be visible above the western horizon about 45 minutes after sunset, setting around two hours 10 minutes later. That means it will be in the sky for about 15 minutes longer than on Wednesday.

However, there’s a good reason to get outside 10 minutes before sunset in the west — so about an hour before the sky darkens enough for the comet to appear — because the full “Hunter’s Moon,” a big, bright supermoon — will rise in the east.

How To Use A ‘Cosmic Coat-Hanger’ To Find The Comet

Its brightness will bleach the sky, but not enough to make the comet hard to see. Swivel 180 degrees back from the moon to look west for the bright planet Venus and the bright twinkling, reddish star star Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes; the comet will be high above a point roughly halfway between them.

Think of it this way; if Arcturus and Venus are the ends of a coat-hanger, the comet is the hook. With this knowledge you should be able to find the comet with your naked eyes, but since you’ll be outside during twilight and there will be a lot of moonlight, take any pair of binoculars to speed-up the process.

As a bonus, when you do locate comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, a pair of binoculars will give you a great view.

How Do You Pronounce ‘Tsuchinshan?’

Tsuchinshan is the English name for the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, which discovered comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in January 2023. That observatory is also commonly called Zijinshan. The pronunciation is similar to “tsu-jing-shon.”

“The tsu part actually sounds fairly close to the ts sound in English like in itsy bitsy,” said astronomer Dr. Qicheng Zhang of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, who has been monitoring the comet, in an email. “The chin part — now usually transliterated as jin — sounds quite the jin in jingle bells,” and the shan sounds sort of like sun, but with the un part sounding perhaps a bit more like the on sound in von with a German accent.”