Pillar Concert Pictures

I was very grateful to a few individuals for sharing their pictures of the concert with me. We have some great photos here for you. Bailie Norton offered to take a number of pictures so that the church has a record of the concert. I also received pictures from a friend of one of our members. Her name is Dianna Anderson, and she is an amateur concert photographer. She places her work under the label of Swift Sunrise Photography. I urge you to check out her website. She's also done a lot of concert photography for the LifeLight festivals. Swift Sunrise Phorography can also be found as a group on Facebook.

You can find many of Dianna'a photographs, as well as those that Bailie sent me on my Flickr account. I have many many sets of pictures from Southern Hills Church events. The set with the Pillar concert pictures can be found here.

I have a very long list of thank yous that I need to make public for everyone, but I will be getting to that in an upcoming post. In the meantime, enjoy a sample of the pictures that are available at the websites listed above.

Brooke Barrettsmith

Wavorly

Building 429

Pillar

Some of Our Volunteers

E-News

Friends,

I'd like to update and highlight some information about upcoming events and activities.

"Friends" ~ You will be noticing some changes in the size of the "Friends" band leading our "Hills Alive" service. We have decided to use half of the band members each week. That will give some of the members a week to sit in the congregation and worship and not have to be responsible for leading the service every week. We hope this new method will assist us in controlling the numbers on the stage and help us to control the sound a little better. We are also planning to complete the stage wiring in the next week or so (We've had a couple of generous gifts designated for that purpose.). That should cut down on the number of wires and clutter on the stage. Bear with us as we experiment and try to make improvements.

Confirmation Covenant Service ~ Our 2007-2008 Confirmation Class will be hosting the annual Confirmation Covenant Service on Sunday, March 9, 2008. The service will be held in the Celebration Space and will begin at 5:00 P.M. The parents of our confirmation students should plan to attend, and the rest of the congregation is invited to participate. Come and support our confirmation class.

Annual Cake Auction ~ Remember the Cake Auction on Sunday morning, March 9, 2008. We will start auctioning cakes at 10:00 A.M. Bring your cakes and your checkbook to help raise money for Camp Scholarships. We raised about $1,800 last year and our goal is to raise $2,000 in 2008!

Nintendo Wii Auction ~ Trevor and Laurie Jackson have donated a Nintendo Wii for the church to auction off after the Cake Auction on March 9th. The money raised will be used to help defray expenses for concerts hosted in our Outreach Center. I already have one family who has submitted a bid. This should be lots of fun! The Nintendo Wii is a hot commodity right now, so come prepared!

Breakfast With The Easter Bunny ~ March 15, 2008 is the day! 10:00 A.M. is the start time! Come and join in the fun! Bring your friends and neighbors for games, food and crafts! This event will be held in the new Outreach Center.

"Praise The God Of Resurrection" - An Easter Cantata ~ March 16, 2008 @ 3:00 in our new Outreach Center! The concert is presented by the Sioux Falls Area United Methodist Combined Choirs and directed by Dr. Charles Canaan. A free-will offering will be accepted. Invite your friends and neighbors to attend.

Passover Seder Meal ~ Holy Thursday, March 20, 2008 @ 7:00 P.M. The Passover Seder is a festive meal during which we celebrate the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Come and learn about this remarkable meal and celebrate with the Worship Design Team of Southern Hills Church. We do need you to sign up for this event so that we know how much food to prepare.

Good Friday Service ~ March 21, 2008 @ 7:00 P.M. in our Celebration Space.

Youth-Led Easter Eve Service ~ March 22, 2008 @ 7:00 P.M. Come and support our youth as we celebrate the joy of Easter!

We still have some of the door hanger bags to deliver. We are asking each member and friend to hang them on the door of 10 homes in their neighborhood. Won't you help make the deliveries? Please reach out to your family, neighbors, and friends! Invite them to join us as we celebrate the season of Lent and the joy of Easter!

In the Master's service,
Steve

Daylight Saving Time Begins!

I just wanted to warn everyone, we will be springing forward an hour this weekend. Daylight Saving Time begins at 2:00 A.M., on Sunday, March 9. Essentially this will move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening for us. The actual shift occurs when the time goes from 1:59 A.M. to 3:00 A.M.

Don't forget to reset you clocks Saturday night. If you don't you'll be late for church.

Resetting our clocks for Daylight Saving Time is a good reminder to change the batteries in our smoke detectors. According to William McNabb of the Troy Fire Department in Michigan, A working smoke detector more than doubles a person's chances of surviving a home fire." Statistically, more than 90 percent of homes in the United States have smoke detectors, but one-third of those are estimated to have dead or missing batteries.


Here are some interesting sites related to Daylight Saving Time.

• Greenwich Mean Time's official timekeeping website for the various time zones in the USA.
• Wikipedia's article on Daylight Saving Time.

Preacher Feature

The following is the content of the
"Preacher Feature"
from the
Southern Hills Hope
Volume 13, Issue 2
February 28, 2008.

Dear Friends,

There are a few things I would like to share in this short article. Ross Stromseth has been hired as our new Maintenance Manager of Buildings and Grounds. We are delighted to have him on board. He will work 40 hours per week. Please be sure to welcome Ross to the staff! His skill set will provide us with the opportunity to do some needed maintenance and additional construction. He will also be charged with cleaning the facility after lots of hard use. Welcome, Ross!

We had a wonderful night at Southern Hills last Monday. This congregation hosted 350-400 people for the concert featuring Pillar, Building 429, Wavorly, and Brooke Barrettsmith. The folks who attended the concert raved about the facility and the music. The bands and their manager said this was the most hospitable place they've played and the most organized show they've participated in. It's an incredible thing to be able to reach out to the community and offer an opportunity for that many young people to gather, share their faith, and enjoy some great music. You should be proud of that! Our Dream Team did an awesome job of planning and working the concert. Congratulations! We will need to evaluate the whole event and make necessary changes for the next event, but it went very well.

On Thursday, we will host the first night of Church League Volleyball. We have enough people registered to have about four teams. It should be great fun for everyone. We will continue to expand the program and hope that you will register for the league. I think Southern Hills has enough registered for a couple of teams. Asbury has almost enough for two teams. Individuals from other churches have also registered, so we think it will be lots of fun.

Palm Sunday will provide us with an opportunity to host the community and our sisters churches in the Sioux Falls area. We will be hosting the United Methodist Combined Choir concert that afternoon at 3:00 P.M. It should be great fun and allow us to utilize the Outreach Center to its full potential. Comet to the concert and enjoy.

This is an incredible place! Keep up the awesome work!

In Love, Steve

2008 Lenten Services

We have been blessed with the opportunity to host the Lenten Services this year for the East Sioux Cluster. The services so far have been very good. Before going into the schedule for the last couple of weeks I'd like to say two thank yous. First to the Outreach Team. They have done a fantastic job of providing an incredible supper each Wednesday. I know my family and I look forward to this meal every week. Second, to Ali Blake for preparing the Power Point slide shows which are shown on the screen during each service.

And now, here are the next two "Questions for Lent."

March 5, 2008
5:30 P.M. ~ Light Meal (in the Multi-Purpose Room)
6:30 P.M. ~ Lenten Worship (in the Celebration Space)
Speaker: Pastor Ron Kramer
The Discipleship Question: Do you wish to go away?
John 6:60-71


March 12, 2008
5:30 P.M. ~ Light Meal (in the Multi-Purpose Room)
6:30 P.M. ~ Lenten Worship (in the Celebration Space)
Speaker: TBA
The Cross Question: Am I not to drink this cup?
John 18:1-11

Upcoming Events

There is a lot going on at Southern Hills Church in the next several weeks. We hope to see you at some or all of these events.

Mother Daughter Banquet
Planning Meeting

The first planning meeting for this year's Mother Daughter Banquet will be held at 8:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 5. The meeting will take place at the church.

Southern Hills Annual Cake Auction
March 9, 2008 at 10 A.M.

Bring your favorite cake or other baked items to be auctioned off. The proceeds go towards scholarships to help get our kids to camp. Being a participant in a number of Methodist church camps I can vouch for the impact these experiences can have. Please help us support more of them.

A Nintendo Wii has been donated to the church to be auctioned off at the end of the cake auction. The proceeds from the Wii will go towards deferring the cost of future musical events, like the recent Pillar concert. Be sure to bring an open wallet to support this one. The console alone is selling for $250 at www.bestbuy.com...when it's in stock. Most of the prices I encountered on Ebay and other online game stores were much higher.


March 9 is also Camp Sunday. Be sure to wear your camping clothes. I would suggest more of a Storm Mountain in the winter attire instead of a Lake Poinsett in the summer.

Breakfast With the Easter Bunny

We are still in need of individually wrapped candy donations for this event. Please drop off a bag in the designated basket in the church lobby.

Casting Pearls Pictures

Hello friends, we've been pretty busy lately so I haven't had a chance to update the Online Newsletter with much information. That will hopefully change this week. There's a lot of things coming up at Southern Hills in the near future, especially with Holy Week just around the corner. Plus I want to share some of the incredible pictures I've received so far from Pillar's For The Love Of The Game Tour. We had an incredible show with Pillar, Building 429, Wavorly, and Brooke Barrettsmith this past Monday night. I will be getting a post with some of those pictures up sometime this week.

If you were at the concert and happened to take pictures during the event, or during any of the set-up process I would greatly appreciate getting some copies for the church to hold onto. You can email me at kanteker@gmail.com

Before I get ahead of myself, however, I want to share some pictures that were taken during the "Hills Alive" service on February 10. This is the service where Casting Pearls provided the worship music for us. It was an extremely exciting worship service and we were very glad to see so many new faces worshiping with us that morning. The three pictures below were taken by Bob Maxwell. As I mentioned for the Pillar concert above, if you have some pictures of Casting Pearls when they were at Southern Hills please forward those to me, as well. We'd love to get as many photos of church events as possible.

I believe that Casting Pearls will be back in the Sioux Falls area on Sunday, March 16, though I don't know at which church they will be leading worship. If I manage to get that information I will pass it on to all of you. In the meantime, enjoy these pictures.