Looking Back on the Decade - 2004

2004

A Year in the life of FBC

Talk began in earnest of refurbishing our church kitchen. After the death of Ed Regets, Rodney Green, owner of Olde Times Restaurant, offered to put on a roast beef dinner for us to raise money for the kitchen in Ed's name. We raised over $2,000 and had fun eating our way through it. We also adopted a new system for recording the offering. Ten counters were chosen by the Trustees to work in pairs. They would count and record the weekly offerings making the work of the Financial Secretary a little easier.

Lori Lord was back as Sunday School Superintendant and Nancy Allen entered her third year as Moderator. Oliver Bray was the chair of the Diaconate and Dick Strouse was serving in his 17th year as chair of the Trustees. We also re-hired Kay Lautzenheiser to work with our youth again. Fred Green organized our second annual golf tournament. This time it was to raise money for our kids to go to Colorado to the ABCUSA National Youth Gathering. We sent nine kids out there and three of them came back and were baptized. Jaclyn Vanase, Kristina Howe and Kristen Deptulski were baptized at Beals Beach at Camp Wightman. Grace Latham, Bruce thornton and Karen Murray were also welcomed into membership.

A group of twenty five of us went to see the movie "The Passion of Christ" in Niantic and then went back to the home of Rosie and Les Main to talk about it. Our Sunday School teachers this year included Rosie Main, June Deptulski and Zelda Earle, Jacquie Jones and Emily Dutra, Lori Lord and Joanne Clubine, Curt Brockway and me. At Christmas Victor Hall played Joseph and his sister Josephine played Mary in our traditional pageant. During the year George Rezendes led opening exercises at Sunday School and Cynthia Strouse played the piano.

We began talking about the possibility of a mission trip. Rev. Evans Olibrice has been worshipping with us for about a year and he invited us to come down to visit his church. We might have gone down in 2004 or in 2005 but violence erupted in Haiti and we felt it was too unsafe to travel there.

Anna Dutrumble was dedicated at church. Pam and Mark Kane renewed their wedding vows after 25 years and Fran and Mark Rogers renewed their vows on their tenth anniversary. Nancy Sederquest and Gary Schuster were married. Amy Rezendes transferred her membership and Helen Benker, Esther Brockway, Lloyd Cochran, Joe Bubenicek, Jennifer Kane and Dave Jordan passed away.

The spare Parts won the bowling Championship and Chip Chaffee was the Softball MVP setting the single season records for homeruns (15) and RBI (69). Fred Green and James Brown coached our basketball teams with help from John Lopriest and Dave Mehlinger.

Our average attendance at worship was 101 and we had pledges of $93, 350. for the year. We took in a total of $185,484. 93 for the year.

Cal