Spring Retreat

Spring retreat is quickly approaching! We are very excited about this year. Carey Scott from Crossroads Covenant Church in Loveland will be our speaker.

Carey is an inspirational speaker who is honest about her walk with God - stumbles, fumbles, and all. Women will easily relate as she discusses life's heavy issues with transparency, insight, and humor. Carey challenges and encourages women to take the next step in their relationship with God. For those women in MOPS you will have the chance to preview Carey on Feb. 23rd at your MOPS meeting! For more information visit her website at http://www.careyscotttalks.com/.

We are thrilled to welcome Sara Bieri back as our worship leader.

Sara led our worship at the Advent Brunch. She has been leading worship since high school, throughout college, and now in the youth and adult services at Lifespring Covenant Church. The love of music has reached many areas in her life, but the ability to lead others to God through the blessing of music is her favorite part. She is currently a student ministries associate and places to attend seminary in the fall of 2010 to obtain her masters degree in the area of youth and family ministry.

The retreat will be held at Aloft hotel in Broomfield. Check out these amenities!!

DATES:

March 12-13, 2010

The retreat will begin Friday evening at 6 p.m. and go through Saturday at 4 p.m.

COST:

Cost for Early Registration (2/14 - 2/28)

$79 for those not staying at Aloft

$69 for those who have a room at Aloft

Cost for Late Registration (3/1 or later)

Add $10 to above pricing

Please drop your registration off at the Family Life Center between services or at the office during the week.

MEALS:

The cost of the retreat will include three meals.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

Overnight accommodations are available at Aloft at a group rate of $79 per night (2 queens). If you choose to stay overnight please reserve your accommodations at Aloft Broomfield and mention the Arvada Covenant Women's Retreat to receive the group rate.

We hope to see you there!

Contact Cheryl Meakins (cmeakins@comcast.net) or Kinsey Ringenberg (kringenberg@gmail.com) with any questions.

Advent Brunch Update

On December 5, our Women Ministries’ annual tradition of an Advent Brunch was welcomed by 175 women in attendance. The Family Life Center was adorned with old fashioned Christmas attire of evergreen garland and the tables were dressed in traditional Christmas reds and greens. This year we encouraged the women of our church to bring their friends by offering discounted tickets. Our best count told us that over 60 women in attendance were from outside our church! With our speaker, Linda Evans Shepherd, this event was truly a front door opportunity to connect women in our neighborhoods in relationship with each other and point them towards a relationship with Christ. Linda Shepherd beautifully retold the Christmas story from Mary’s view point and encouraged our hearts to remain unguarded towards God as He calls us to serve Him. Amy blessed us with a special Christmas song that reminded us all of being home with our families. We ended with meaningful worship led by Sara Bieri of Life Spring Covenant Church. Her worship experience was just a taste of what the Spring Retreat will be like in March. Our national cause “Break the Chains” was featured in a small fundraising effort and we were able to gift over $300 to furthering the ministry of freeing enslaved women in North America. All in all, the Advent Brunch once again caused many women to set aside time to come before the King of Kings and remember what a great gift was given to us all on that first Christmas night. Take a look at our pictures from this event!

Lynn providing wonderful music from the hammered dulcimer as people arrive:

We appreciate the men who willingly volunteer to serve us during the meals:

Ladies before the brunch:

Linda Evans Shepherd:

Sara Bieri:
It was such a blessing to see all of you at Advent Brunch. What a great way to start the holiday season.

Advent Brunch

Advent Brunch is quickly approaching! The event will be held in the family Life Center on December 5th from 9-11 a.m. The event will include an awesome breakfast, worship, fellowship, and teaching. We are very excited to have Linda Evans Shepherd speaking at this event. She is an author, speaker, radio/television host. She will be speaking about Mary's Christmas. The last chance to buy tickets is on November 29th between services at the Family Life Center. Tickets are $12, but if you bring a friend from outside the church the tickets are 2 for $20. We hope to see you there!!

Chrismons Event

A week ago Covenant Women did a craft night where we made Chrismons. Chrismons are symbols that represent Christ. We had so many women who made this event possible. Thanks to Jan and Jenna Krankota, and Jessica Branaugh for the idea and vision for this event. Thanks to the Women Ministries team for organizing and setting up for the event. We had over 50 women (from every age group) at this event! It was great to see grandmothers, mothers, and daughters working together at this event! We hope to find ways to incorporate more mother/daughter events in the future. Enjoy some of the pictures from the evening!!

This may be the first of many Christmas craft events to come!!

October Hike

In October, several of our women gathered to go hiking in Evergreen! We hope to do more events like this in the future! A special thanks to Diane for leading the hike!

Next Event: Chrismons

On November 8th from 6-9:30 in Sustad Chapel we will be making Chrismons. What is that???

Chrismons are ornaments that symbolize the names of Christ. Just as monograms are a sign of combined initials of a person’s name, A Chrismon is a sign to symbolize the Biblical name given to Jesus Christ. White represents light, peach and joy referring to our Lord’s purity and perfection. Gold symbolizes His majesty and glory. There are 25 ornaments that can be made. At our event we will be doing two and sending home with each of you the patterns and instructions to complete your set if you choose. What a great way to start the holiday season. These ornaments have rich meaning and can be a great way to discuss the meaning of Christmas to your kids, family, and friends. We hope you will come and bring your mother, daughter, sister, neighbor or friend. The cost is $5 and tickets are on sale in between services in the Family Life Center on October 25th and November 1st. Hope to see you there!!

Example of a Chrismon:

Get Connected!

Getting connected with one another seems to be the theme this fall! Not only did we have a great sermon series on community but we also were able to talk about relationships with one another and with God at our Fall into Fellowship.

Our festive table decorations:

Getting set up for the event!

DiCicco's provided a great atmosphere and amazing food for this event.

Our Chair and Co-Chair, Cheryl and Kinsey, give us the scoop how to get connected with Covenant Women and in our church. In Covenant Women we have upcoming events like Chrismons, Advent Brunch, Triennial, and Break the Chains, just to name a few. In our church there are over 20 small groups, activity groups, and Bible studies for women. We appreciate all the women who lead these groups. They are providing ways for us to be in community with one another and to get connected in our church. Each leader present was able to share about their group!

Cheryl shared a great message on Proverbs 4:23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." God calls us to guard our hearts, but there is a difference between guarding your heart and being guarded. Cheryl took us through this verse word by word to get a deeper understanding. Here's a piece of the talk that hit home with some of the women.

Past hurts with God and others can cause a break in our community and relationships with one another. Cheryl used the analogy from Proverbs 4:23 that our heart is our well-spring (our stream) to further apply the message to our lives. When you think about sitting by a stream one of the first things that comes to mind is the sound. The sound of a flowing stream is so peaceful.

We will all get rocks in our streams from our hurts and disappointments in life. Yet those hurts (rocks) can be something God can use to form and shape our streams. Those rocks can also be an experience in our lives that God uses to draw us closer to him and to minister to others. God can use rocks to change the course of our stream and thus our lives. While this process can be painful, think about what makes the stream sound so peaceful? The water flowing over the rocks!

God wants to be our water and flow over our hurts, insecurities, and disappointments. When we allow God to flow through those hurts, we can then be available to guard our hearts, yet not be so guarded that no one gets in! We challenge you to allow God to flow over your rocks and make the sound of a peaceful stream. It will never be easy, but it will be a worthwhile journey. It is our hope that we can continue to foster friendships and community with the women in our church and community. You may get a rock or two thrown in your spring along the way, but thankfully that is not the end of the story for our "stream." It is just part of the journey.

Enjoying the food, the speaker, and the chance to meet new faces!

Getting Connected:

A special thanks to all the women who helped with this event! We had several people help set up, clean up, serve cheesecake, showcase our fundraiser, take photos, and the list goes on! We appreciate you! We also appreciate all the women that come to these events. Thank you for making the effort to connect with other women in your life!