July 5th, 2026
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Vacation Bible School July 13th-17th, 9 am till Noon, for all youth 4 years old through 6th grade. Completely free! Run by Luther Park Bible Camp. See the attached registration form. Fill out and return to church so we know how many youth to expect. Looking for snacks and snack helpers. See sign-up in the Narthex or call the church office to sign-up.
TACO’S FOR KIDS! Starting on July 7th, every Tuesday until August 18th, we are going to be doing Taco’s for Kids! We will be making 25 beef & cheese tacos and 25 beans and rice tacos every Tuesday for the youth of our community, along with some apple slices and cheese sticks, to hand out, as a way to provide some sustenance during summer when many of our youth don’t often have a reliable source of food. These are simple taco’s that provide a delicious snack to help our vulnerable youth. So what can you do? You can sign-up to come help put the taco’s together at 11 am on those Tuesday’s. If you want, you can even provide the Taco meat at home and bring it here for us to use it in the taco’s. Then, come help us hand it out from Noon to 2 pm over on Main Street by the library. Questions? See Pastor Brad or Heidi Kothrade and more importantly sign up in the Narthex or call the church office to sign-up.
Fellowship Servers needed for the summer! Please sign-up in the Narthex or call the office if you are willing to serve!
Lagers with the Lord, July 13th, 6 pm at Buckshot’s.
The Women of Trinity is currently updating the Service Groups. Please share with the office any updated phone numbers. Also, we are looking for volunteers to help call people to help serve for funerals. Please contact Heidi Kothrade, Sandy Wheeler, or Deb Holmlund if you are willing to be a caller.
Looking for mowers! See the sign-up sheet in the Narthex to mow the church lawn this spring and summer!
You can use Venmo to make your gift to Trinity! You can find us using: @TrinityLutheranBoyceville. If it asks you for a phone number, use 1349
MUSINGS FROM PASTOR BRAD
As we celebrated the 250th birthday of our nation yesterday, I couldn’t help but think throughout the day, in between naps (we had come back from Disneyland on a red eye flight that morning) of one of my favorite Presidential quotes of all time, spoken by President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” It is a call to arms, to service, to pull together for the sake of the common good of our nation. I remember first encountering this quote as a boy when I came across a book about Kennedy my parents owned in our basement library. This quote has always stuck with me and some of that has to do with my parents, who emphasized to my sisters and I that it wasn’t enough to just do your job and then go home. You had to use your gifts out in the community, to give back in whatever way you could, whether that be through the church or other organizations. It was something that was expected, and despite their busy schedules, it was something they both did, modeling it for their children. You were to be engaged in the world around you and if you could do something, you did. You didn’t worry about what you get out of it, your call was to serve in the way you could.
It is the reason I do the things I do in our community because I care about the community but also to answer that call and expectation. And that call comes not only from how I was raised but from our God, to be involved in the world around us. We are called to use our gifts in whatever ways we can and to try to make a positive difference. Some of those ways are very visible and some aren’t. A great example of the subtle ways people make differences is the member who stopped in recently to drop off some hamburger for our “Taco for Kids” program that starts this week. They just came to make a donation to help out in a way that they could. No fanfare, no nothing, this was just the way that they could help. Same with the person who made a monetary donation for the program. We have others who will be here on Tuesday for the first one, giving of their time, helping in their own way.
We often live in a world that wants to know what they are going to get out of something before they commit to it or they want to know the end result before they will give of their time. But true service is being willing to say yes to the call to serve for the sake of others no matter what you may receive or even what the outcome might be. It is answering the call to try to lift up the whole, to see a need and try and meet it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the reward isn’t in the outcome. The reward is in serving something greater than yourself, in having a purpose that is bigger than you and knowing that you may have touched and helped the life of at least one person.
How can you touch or help the life of one person today? Where is God calling you to use your gifts to serve to the best of your ability? As it says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, “Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, 5 and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” I pray that you will discern how to use your gifts to not only serve this country, but your community, your church, and the wider world. For in doing so, you might change someone’s life, even for one day. And that is a blessing. Speaking of blessing, may God bless you today and always!