CHILDREN’S FAITH FORMATION

Welcome to all children ages 5 and up to join us! One Wednesday of each month during the school year, after school. Bring your children and a friend or two, to join us for messages from God, food and fun!

Christian Education

In our community of faith we learn from each other what it means to follow Christ in our daily life through biblical and Lutheran identity. While groups may meet separately based on age we value the practice of inter generational discipleship. Adults learn from children a simple trust in God, while children model adults by what they do and say. We help each other live out our faith in daily discipleship learning what it means to embody faith in our world. In this, we share the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed to our neighbors and community.

Children

Christian education for our children means active involvement in our worship service, children’s lesson during worship, and a once a month Family Faith Formation fun night. Family Faith Formation night includes a topic of learning such as Bible stories, Lutheran concepts, sacraments, etc. Food, activities, and games reinforce the chosen topic for the month.

SUNDAY SCHOOL – SUNDAY MORNINGS AT 11:00 AM

All ages are welcome! Older children can be helpers 🙂 The children will be upstairs for part of the worship service and will also be downstairs to participate in Sunday school!

Click on the link below to see some pictures from Octobers gathering! 🙂

Halloween 2018 Faith Formation

March 2018 Faith Formation was a fun get together for the children! Pastor Julie told the Easter Story with symbolic foods to add to our plates for our lunch! Games were played, and an Easter Egg Hunt was enjoyed by all!

September faith formation

September’s Faith Formation was a fun time for the kids on Wednesday afternoon! They went fishing in the living room of the parsonage with the carpet being the Sea of Galilee – each of the 12 fish had the names of Jesus’ disciples on the back with a symbol to help the children remember something about each of the disciples. They ate fish sticks and goldfish crackers to go along with the “Fishing for Men” lesson!

Annika and Leann 🙂

Bella and her fish! 🙂

The group learning about the disciples!

Fishers of Men!

april faith formation

On Wednesday, April 27th the Faith Formation group met at the parsonage. Five children and two helpers made “Take Out Church” boxes. The boxes include things for families to take their faith with them on summer vacation! One great part in the box is “Flat Jesus”. We are hoping that families will take pictures with “Flat Jesus” and post them to Holy Cross’ Facebook page – It will be fun to see where Jesus shows up this summer! 🙂

“Flat Jesus” is available in the Narthex – take one and color/decorate him the way you would like – and take him with you on your vacation trips this summer. Please take a picture(s), post it to Holy Cross’ Face book page or email pictures to holycross@up.net and Tracey will post them.

The Helpers! Savanna and Maddie 🙂

Bella

Cole

Izzie

Rylee

Vic

Take Me With You!

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Flat Jesus sightings are being shared! Be on the lookout as we begin posting them! This is a picture of our presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton in Chicago with her Flat Jesus!

march Easter Faith Formation. . .

The kids got together on Wednesday, March 23rd in the church fellowship hall for some Easter fun! Easter eggs were colored and decorated, they ate hot dogs and mac and cheese, played the “Left Right Easter Game” with wrapped presents passed from left to right as Pastor Julie read the story of Jesus’ death on the cross and His Resurrection! A fun time was had by all! 🙂

. . .As evening approached, Joseph went RIGHT to Pilate and asked that Jesus’ body be LEFT for him to bury. With Pilate’s consent Joseph took the body RIGHT down from the cross and wrapped it in linen. He LEFT the body in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a large stone RIGHT against the entrance of the tomb.

RIGHT on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome LEFT to go to the tomb. They LEFT just after sunrise. They were going to apply spices RIGHT to Jesus’ body. When they arrived they were LEFT in shock. The very large stone had been rolled RIGHT away. They entered RIGHT into the tomb and saw a young man dressed in a white robe. He was sitting on the RIGHT side. He told them not to be afraid because Jesus had risen and had already LEFT the tomb. He instructed the women to go RIGHT to Jesus’ disciples and let them know that Jesus had risen.

Easter Fun!

Cole and Rylee

Pastor Julie, Izzy and Savanna

The Egg Coloring Crew!

Playing the “Left Right Easter Game”

Children’s Christmas Program!

On December 20^th the Children had their Christmas Program during Worship ~ they all did such a wonderful job and the congregation enjoyed all of their beautiful singing! Following the program everyone gathered downstairs for a Birthday Party for Jesus! It was a great day of celebration at Holy Cross in preparation for Christmas Day! Special Thanks to Christine Wilson for orchestrating the program!

Thanksgiving Faith Formation News!

On Wednesday, November 18th seven children joined us for Faith Formation in celebration of Thanksgiving.

First we went to the Community Soup Supper at Holy Cross and ate soup, bread, and dessert. Afterwards at the parsonage the children

made Thanksgiving Baskets to fill with an assortment of special treats to remind them of things as Pastor Julie was telling them about the Pilgrims and their struggles, faith, and their special friend Squanto!

A few things the baskets were filled with:

The Earth – Malted Milk Balls

Praying Hands – Pretzel Twists – when the Pilgrims were in stormy seas on their way to America.

Dry Biscuits – Oyster Crackers – was all they had to eat during their voyage.

Snow – Mini Marshmallows – When they arrived in America the Pilgrims endured hardships due to the snow and winter.

Lifesavers – Squanto was the Pilgrims lifesaver!

Corn – Candy Corn – what they learned to plant

Fish – Goldfish Crackers – what Squanto told them to plant around their corn to make abundant crops.

The gathering ended with everyone holding hands and reciting a special Thanksgiving prayer by Pastor Julie for everything that we have to be thankful for!

Youth

Our approach to engage with our youth is to go into their culture, their places, their experience of media, their consciousness, and their schedules. We enter their world, compassionately and consistently. To be with our young people in their world means this ministry is youth driven. They chose what they want to talk and learn about along with activities they would like to do.

“Rise Up” 2015 ELCA Youth Gathering in Detroit, MI.

The group from Holy Cross who gathered in Detroit in July 2015 to be inspired, encouraged, strengthened, connected and sent out to do God’s work in the world!

The Youth Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser in February was a huge success again this year! $1,268 was raised and will be used toward their RISE UP trip to Detroit in July! Youth from Holy Cross along with youth from Good Shepherd Lutheran in Houghton, and Mission United in Pelkie all helped at the spaghetti dinner. More fundraising will be done; the youth will be taking a bus as a group with others in the synod and are looking forward to a great trip!

Some of the Volunteers getting ready to serve spaghetti!

Youth Service Project at L’Anse VFW

Youth from Holy Cross and Mission United gathered at the L’Anse VFW to clean and paint. Thanks to all of the youth for their hard work – Special thanks to Gail Herrala for orchestrating this service project!

WELCA

We are the women’s ministry organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As a community of women created in the image of God, called to discipleship in Jesus Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves to grow in faith, affirm our gifts, support one another in our callings, engage in ministry and action, and promote healing and wholeness in the church, the society, and the world.

Quilters ~ sew quilts for lutheran world relief, hospice and community needs.

meet every monday at 10:00 am at holy cross

2015 WELCA Sunday! 70 Quilts for Lutheran World Relief

Little Dresses for Africa Work Bee

Thanks to the ladies who stayed following worship on Sunday, March 12th to help! Many adorable little dresses are in the progress of being sewn and will be ready for shipment! The women from Holy Cross do awesome work for this global outreach mission!!! Thanks for all you do!

🙂

2014 Little Dresses for Africa Project

The WELCA ladies are making 125 Little Dresses for Africa. Thanks to everyone who came on November 9th to help with this project – lunch was served and we all were assigned a task to help turn pillowcases into adorable dresses for children! It was a fun afternoon with mostly women ~ a couple of men joined in (can you spot them in the picture below? 🙂 to cut material and put in elastic, a young lady – 11 years old, and a table full of teens also joined in to help! We learned some skills from the WELCA ladies who are extremely talented at their sewing projects! Please join the ladies to complete more dresses on Monday mornings at 10:00 am at Holy Cross!

Little Dresses Helpers!

Thrivent Little Dresses For Africa Project –

Members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church and friends gathered on Sunday, Nov. 9th, 2014 after the morning service to enjoy lunch and work on “Little Dresses for Africa.” Tables were set up to cut, pin and sew pillowcases and material into simple dresses to be shipped to the Missions around the world. With help from the Holy Cross quilting group, a total of 26 dresses were finished with another 75 in the process of completion. Seed money for this special service project to cover material expenses was provided by Thrivent Financial.

Stewardship

Stewardship involves the use of God’s varied gifts distributed among the body of Christ. It considers the broad view of the church’s gifts, skills, strengths, and resources. Stewardship involves vision and strategic planning of assets; not strictly financial. How do we use what we have to further the mission of Christ in our church?

Stewardship Update!

Thanks to everyone for your efforts with our Stewardship program!

“Go Green Sundays” seem to be off to a good start by using our glass dinnerware!
We will be refilling our ink cartridges through Cartridges and More for the printer in the church office which will cut our expense in half for ink!
Thank You! To the family who paid for the Palms on Palm Sunday, also to the family who purchased stamps for the church office!
Thanks to everyone who donated money to complete the new flooring project in the church basement! Also to all of the individuals who donated their time and talents to clean, paint, and move furniture before, during, and after the project! Much appreciation to everyone involved!
To all of the people involved in the care of the church and parsonage lawn during the summer months ~ we appreciated your hard work to make the property look so nice!
We have cut the cost of our weekly bulletins and inserts in half to help reduce expenses.

We will post a list of items that we regularly purchase if you are interested in helping with something.

Much Appreciation and Many Thanks to Our Faithful Stewards!