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Inside this issue: Upcoming Dates ..................... 2 Upcoming Events, Announcements and Happenings .................... 2 In the Spotlight ........................ 5 Photo Page ............................... 6 Birthdays and Anniversaries ......................... 7

Tes�mony of God

My name is Jim Ciurca and I am a twin-I have a fraternal twin brother. When my mom had us, the doctor thought that she was having one baby because they heard only one heartbeat. I was born in the mid 70s so back then there were no ultra-sounds and my brother and I were back-to-back in the birth canal so I must've been playing 'hide and seek’. When my mom delivered my brother, they saw my little hand so my mom had an emergency C-section to deliver me. If I had been in the birth canal for 20 more seconds, I would've died. I believe that I am a miracle! I believe that God saved my life so I could show other people His love. Growing up, my mom and dad got a divorce when I was 4-years old. My mom had to work two jobs to pay the bills and put food on the table. My grandparents helped her out a lot and when my brother was older, he had to help out with taking care of me. We lived in a two-story house and it was hard for me to get up and down the stairs so I spent most of my time in my bedroom to make it easy on my mom. I formed a lot of anger and frustrations at my situation because I was alone upstairs all the time. It was hard for me to control my anger so I had a lot of outbursts. I was even thinking about committing suicide because it was too much for me. My parents were never religious. We never went to church or read the Bible. I grew up in a home without faith and without learning about Christ. The one exception was my grandma, she would occasionally talk about God and about Christ's love, but I didn't know enough about the Bible for it to mean anything to me at the time. She taught me about the importance of forgiveness and about how God is always willing and able to forgive. But I was still an angry and lonely kid. My disability was isolating and I did not know how to handle that feeling. It wasn't until I started attending regular church services with the group home I lived in that I started to realize my need for Christ. The more I learned about Christ, the more I realized that I needed his forgiveness and wanted to live my life as a Christian. I do not remember a specific moment where I realized that I was a sinner in need of Christ's for-giveness. Rather than a dramatic conversion, I just kept attending church and realized quickly that I needed Christ in my life. I started praying daily and asking for God's forgiveness when I did something that was not in line with His character. I started to notice that I was not so angry and my temper started to fade. The more that I aligned myself with Christ and His love, the more that I changed. During nightly walks around my neighborhood I passed a church named Faith to Faith. That is where I met Pastor Ron Lennihan. When I met Pastor Ron, he was very friendly. We had a special relationship because he has a daughter with a disability. Pastor Ron is the most humble man I ever met. He not only preaches God's word, but he lives it. He taught me that no one is a good person without God's help. During every sermon he always backs up what he is saying with the scripture. The biggest thing that I learned from him is to always praise God in all circumstances. I watched him doing this for a while until one day I decided to try it on my own. Boy, what a difference!!! It not only works, but it changed my outlook on life. The more I learned about Jesus, the more I began to develop the same values as Him. He loves everyone unconditionally and forgives. I have a loving heart and I care for people. My favorite thing to do in life is to help people and to make their lives better. I have a lot more patience with people. I used to get mad at people whenever I asked them to do something and they didn't do it right away. I was thinking of myself at that moment. As my relationship with Christ has deepened, he has radically changed who I am as a person. He has made me a new man and I praise Him daily for the ways hat he has changed me. Jim Ciurca

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Upcoming Events, Announcements and Happenings

in the Life of Our Church

Events, Announcements and Happenings continued on Page 3...

the

SAVE DATE

If you or a family member are in the emergency room, or ad-

mi�ed to the hospital, please contact the church office so the

pastors can be made aware. Area hospitals no longer contact

the churches with this informa�on.

From the Office If you are not receiving emails from the church, please let the office know. Every once in a while the email list decides to drop an address and we do not know unless you tell us. Also, do we have your correct phone number? Please let the office know if you discontinued your land line and are now using only your cell phone. Thank you.

11 6:30 pm Preschool Board Meeting 14-17 Powerhouse Retreat 17 7:00 pm ALT Meeting 15 8:00 am Men’s Group 18 5:30-9:30 pm Hunter Safety Course 20 5:30-9:30 pm Hunter Safety Course 22 Wild Game Dinner 24 7:00 pm Trustee Work Night

*NOTE: Winter break February 17-21, no preschool and no Wednesday classes on 2/19

3 7:00 pm MOPS 7 8:00 am Men’s Group 8 2:00 am Daylight Saving Begins 15 10:30 am Missionaries JR & Becky Crouse 12:00 pm Covered Dish Lunch 17 7:00 pm MOPS 21 8:00 am Men’s Group 23 7:00 pm Trustee Mtg. 27-28 Indoor Sale

Open Door Meals Lunches are assembled the first Wednesday of every month for Open Door Mission. Thank you to the “regulars” who are there every month at 6:30 to help. More helpers are always welcome. Donations of juice boxes, individually wrapped chips, fruit snacks and soft granola bars are needed each month. Currently there is enough peanut butter and jelly to last a couple of months, and the bread and brown lunch bags are donated each month. 50 lunches are made and each contains two PB&J sand-wiches, one juice box, one granola bar, one fruit snack and one bag of chips. It makes the assembly line much simpler if dona-tions are limited to these items.

MARCH 27 - 8:00 am-5:00 pm

MARCH 28 - 8:00 am-2:00 pm

*Proceeds go toward the Ireland Mission Trip in August. *Items may be brought to the church beginning Feb. 2 and placed in the Deats Classroom on the lower level. Place them under the windows. PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK THE FOOD SHELVES IN THE CORNER. *Please do not donate electronics or clothing. *Furniture and other large items may be brought the week of the sale. Furniture donations need to be pre-approved by the sale team. This can be done by taking a picture of the furniture pieces.

Coming in April...

April 5- Palm Sunday April 8-6:30 pm The Passover Seder Meal April 10-7:00 pm Good Friday Service April 12-9:30 am Easter Breakfast; 10:30 am Worship

School 43 - Update Thank you for the donations of coats, gloves, scarves, etc. to School 43. Your donations are helping to keep some children warm this winter. (See photos on page 6.)

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Events, Announcements and Happenings continued from Page 2...

Women’s Ministries The Wednesday evening women’s study will begin a new twelve-week series, Pursuing God-Encountering His Love and Beauty in the Bible. This simulcast by Marilyn Feinberg will focus on the books of Genesis and John. Marilyn explains how Genesis and the Gospel of John are written to spark your desire to pursue a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. As always, we will have a time of sharing and prayer during the evening. An evening of fun and fellowship for the women of the church will be coming soon. Keep a lookout for more details!

Darlene Pulice

New Day Preschool The preschool will be learning about fire safe-ty concluding with a field trip to Greece Ridge Firehouse. Treats made by the children will be given to the fire-fighters as a thank you. Photos on page 6. We will also be celebrating Dr. Seuss in March as well as getting ready to celebrate He Has Risen, Jesus resurrection. New Day has begun registration for the 2020-2021 school year. Please help us spread the news. Registration information is on our bulletin board. We continue to be blessed with wonderful families and their precious cargo.

Judi Marino, Preschool Teacher

Powerhouse Powerhouse Youth had a great advent season beginning with Heart to God Hand to Man. Fifty-two youth participated from Crossroads, Powerhouse, Powerhouse leadership and members of Houghton college men’s and women’s soccer teams. It was a beautiful night and sitting around the fires and playing cap-ture the flag, and football made for great fellowship. After our supper of quickly eaten pizza, before it froze, we had a time of worship and a friend of the Mitchells came and spoke about his experiences as a homeless teenager and also about what Open Door provided for him. It was very enlightening for most of us and made what we were doing collecting coats more mean-ingful. Sunday morning Jeremy Tyler cooked us a wonderful breakfast of eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon donated to us by David and Carolyn Stiffler. It was very welcome after a long cold night. Again we had thick boxes to use to sleep in donated by Century Mold. The Friday night before Christmas we had our birthday party for Jesus. We played party games and ate cake and ice cream. It’s a good reminder for us all on where the focus lies for us during this much commercialized holiday. Now it’s the new year and we are gearing up for our Winter Retreat on Valentine’s day weekend. Help us get the word out to any teens you know who might enjoy a great weekend of fun. There are flyers in the Narthex on the table in the back. We are also looking for those of the church body who are willing to help sponsor a teen to go, either in part or in full. The cost for the retreat is $100. We will also be seeking those who are willing to pray specifically for those who are going. We will hand out prayer cards the Sunday before we leave. Pray for seeds to be planted, lives to be changed and deeper commitments begun. Lastly, Powerhouse/Crossroads Sunday morning group have taken a different approach this year for study. We are working through the book of Genesis. Reading a chapter over several times and then discussing and sharing thoughts on things that stuck out to us. There have been some great exchanges and we have been finding such interesting things that since September we have only gotten to chapter three. Again this week we vot-ed to decide on do we move on a little faster or remain in chap-ter 3 because there is more in there we want to talk about. We decided to stay in chapter 3. God’s word is so rich.

Debbie Mitchell

Crossroads We are currently going through a series from Francis Chan called Greater Than. This goes through difficulties he faced as a child to help us understand that God is greater than any pain or hardships we may face in this life. This comes with many thought provoking questions. We hope to get our group together over the February break for games and great food with many pictures to follow. With the full schedule most have at School and after school activities we are happy to see everyone here Wednesday nights for a break from the everyday events that can wear us down.

Chris and Debbie Wolff Jason and Wendy Strong

Children’s Ministry The children, joined by Cross-roads, put on a great Christmas program in December. Thank you to Sara Soule for directing. Currently Children's ministries has a need for additional help on Wednesday evenings in the nursery and for an assistant in Kid's Club. Please contact the church office if you are able to help.

Powerhouse Youth Winter Retreat

February 14-17

Powerhouse youth leaders are looking for sponsors to help some of the teens go on the retreat. The cost is $100 per per-son. If you would like to fully sponsor a teen, or give a partial scholarship, please make checks payable to :Park Ridge Free Methodist Church: and put “Retreat Sponsor” in the memo line. Thank you.

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Worship Ministries We are in the midst of training our technical and audio team on the use of our new ProPresenter 6 platform. All is going well and we are finding many new enhancements/features that will continue to improve our overall experience with the song lyrics, etc. Thank you team! We continue to look for sound engineers and video specialists. Additionally, we are forming a new live-streaming team. We have initiated stage one of live streaming on Facebook Live and need team members in-terested in this technology and willing to serve. If you have video or live-streaming experience or interest, we’d love to talk with you. We will have an informational/organizational meeting for this on February16th, immediately following the morning service. Please contact me if you are interested.

Pastor Randy revsfreeman@rochester.rr.com

Park Ridge Men’s Ministries Our men’s prayer group continues to meet every 1st and 3rd Saturday mornings at 8:00 am. Our group has been small, but a real blessing. We are truly creating a sense of community and invite all men in the church to consider becoming a part of it. We meet most Saturday mornings at Panorama Restaurant in Gates. Occasionally, we meet at the church. Men… all are invited! Come check it out.

Pastor Randy

The Gatherers We want to thank everyone who has gener-ously donated hats, scarves, mittens and gloves for our Giving Tree. They are very much appreciated! This project will be on-going throughout the winter season.

Joyce Gallagher, June Harris, Sue Henry, Chris Kelley, Marchia Miller, Morna Moore

Trustees Need Help! One or two people are needed to serve on the board of trustees. Contact Jeff Meyer if you would like to be a trustee or would like more information. jdmnmm@me.com

Sincerely, Your 2019-2020 Trustees:

Bert Buettner, Joyce Gallagher, Craig Jarvis, Jim Lunden, Jeff Meyer, Kevin Soule, Wayne Strong, and Isiah Twardowski

3rd Annual Wild Game Dinner

We will be hosting the PRFMC 3rd Annual Wild Game Dinner on February 22 at 6:30 in the Fellowship Hall. A meal will be provided that includes unique wild-game recipes. Smoked ham from Schrader Farms will also be on the menu. You won’t want to miss this event if you love the great outdoors. Our speaker will be Brad Lockwood. Brad is lead pastor at Egypt Free Methodist Church in Brookville, PA. He is also a successful entrepreneur having launched several small busi-nesses. He owns his own archery shop and he hosts the TV show “Love of the Hunt.” More information is coming. Be sure to get this on your calendar.

Discipleship - Growth Track: Real Life

Beginning in March, we will be launching a new Sunday morning discipleship series that is a continuation of our Pur-pose Drive Life series this fall. PRFMC's Growth Track: Real Life guides you to discover your redemptive purpose and live the life God created for you. The Growth Track is made up of four steps that equip you to 1) connect to the church, 2) discover the strengths of your purposeful design, 3) develop your personal leadership, and 4) use your God-given gifts to make a difference in the lives of others. Ultimately we desire that all who come to Park Ridge (regular attenders, occasional attenders and guests) Know God, Find Freedom, Discover Their Purpose and Make A Difference. Growth Track: Real Life will run immediately following the morning worship ser-vice in the Fireplace Room. We will launch on March 8 with Connect to the Church. Each Sunday in each month we will cover one of the four steps. Each first Sunday of the month we will have a special gathering to meet the pastors and other key leaders in the church. Our first gathering will be “Pie with the Pastors” on March 1 immediately following the morning service. There will be refreshments, fellowship and an oppor-tunity to ask questions and dialogue about the morning. This is intended especially for guests, but is open to all in the con-gregation who wish to attend. Look for more information coming in the bulletin and email blasts.

Sunday Hospitality Helpers Needed Help is desired to make coffee on Sunday mornings, clean up following Sunday morning fellowship and to provide Sunday snacks. Contact the office if you are able to help on a regular basis or just occasionally. Snacks are welcome any Sunday!

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Hello from the Dorrs! You may see a spirited little redhead running around church followed by some very tired parents and a cute little blond bouncing along behind. Yep, that’s us. Lydia is the redhead. She is three years old coming up on four years very soon. She currently attends New Day Preschool at the church, which she loves. She is our social butterfly. Her little sister is Esther who is almost two years old. She is our little goofball and a very happy little girl who loves her mommy and sister very much (she thinks her Daddy is okay, too, when Mommy isn't around). As a family we enjoy going to zoos, playing outside, games, cooking and eating good food. Tim and I feel very blessed that God has entrusted us with these two lovely little girls. Now for the parents... Tim grew up in Rome, New York. He went to college in Utica and Syracuse to obtain a degree in Wildlife Biology. Then he landed in Rochester as a high school science teacher at NorthStar Christian Academy. He now works in the purchasing department of a local company, Klein Steel. For fun, Tim enjoys camping, birdwatching, hiking, fishing, and anything that involves being outside. He also loves bringing home a variety of very interesting pets. And then there is Kellie, that’s me! I grew up in Northern Michigan. I graduated from Liberty Uni-versity's online program in Biblical Studies. I work as a Dental Technician at Hybridge Dental Lab, which is how I ended up in Rochester. For fun, I enjoy sewing, quilting, canning, handwritten letters, and anything old fashioned. I enjoy studying the Bible and walking away challenged from a good mes-sage. Tim and I met at Pearce Memorial Church because I was late for church and the only open seat was next to a very handsome young man. Please don’t ask either of us what the message was about that night because we do not know. We both spent the whole sermon working up the courage to just say “Hello”. The rest is history. We were later married at Pearce by Wally Flemming. After trying out a few other area churches, we are now here at PRFMC. We feel very blessed to have found such a won-derful church family where we can bring our girls to learn about Jesus. Thank you for opening up your arms to our family.

… to help us learn and recognize the many ways these people and families are enriching the Park Ridge congregation.

Tim, Kellie, Lydia and Esther Dorr

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On Sunday, March 15, JR & Becky Crouse will be at Park Ridge. They are Free Methodist missionaries in Ecuador and one of the missionary families sponsored by our church. Come hear them at 9:30 am for a combined Sunday adult class and then they will be sharing during wor-ship. At noon there will be a covered dish lunch and time to fellowship with them. Please bring a dish to pass: soup, stew, main dish, pasta dish, salad, side, dessert, etc. If you have a great Latin American recipe consid-er bringing that!

h o t o P s School 43

New Day Chris�an Preschool

The Crouse Family - Missions Guests

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We try to recognize all the birthdays and anniversaries, but

may be missing some. If you think your birthday or anniver-

sary is missing from our list, please e-mail the church office

and let us know the dates. Thank you.

March Birthdays

If you see someone whose special day

has already occurred, please wish them well.

Feb 02 Bethanie Porterfield

Feb 05 Katie Buettner

Feb 06 John Bowser

Feb 08 Craig Jarvis

Feb 11 Pastor Deano Pulice

Feb 14 Jason Strong

Feb 14 Jeremy Tyler

Feb 14 Samantha Williams

Feb 15 Bob Luce

Feb 16 Yvonne Strong

Feb 17 Kevin Soule

Feb 18 Ray Miller

Feb 19 Janet Lincoln

Feb 22 Joyce Thomas

Feb 22 Paul VanGraafeiland

Feb 23 Adam Jarvis

Feb 25 Karen McDonald

Feb 26 Eleanor Dalaba

Feb 28 Mildred McKeown

Mar 04 Andrew Meyer

Mar 08 Nate Williams

Mar 10 Elliott Rodwell

Mar 11 Cindy Mull

Mar 13 Billy Donofrio (Mullen)

Mar 14 Annabelle Abram

Mar 15 Esther Dorr

Mar 16 Pam Rende

Mar 18 Bret Matthews

Mar 21 Ellie Strong

Mar 26 Susan Solt

Mar 28 Belle McDonald

Mar 29 Lydia Dorr

Mar 29 Mary Jane Strong

February Anniversaries

Feb 14 Rick and Patty Stoffel

Feb 16 Paul and Debra VanGraafeiland

Feb 13 Jeremy and Deirdre Tyler

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February Birthdays

March Anniversaries

Mar 06 Ray and Patty Miller

Mar 21 Chris and Debbie Wolff

Mar 02 Dick and Joyce Gallagher

10 Straub Road

Rochester, NY 14626

Phone: 585-227-0990

Preschool phone: 585-720-0733

E-mail: office@parkridgefmc.org

PastorDeano@parkridgefmc.org

Fax: 585-227-0964

Look for us on the Web

Park Ridge Free Methodist Church

www.parkridgefmc.org

The Park Ridge Free Methodist Church is committed to becoming a family of believers who love God wholeheartedly, love others unconditionally,

and make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Matt. 22:38-39, Matt. 25:34-40, Matt. 28:18-19

Ministry Leaders and Staff

Senior Pastor Deano S. Pulice Associate Pastor Randy Freeman Associate Pastor Scott Bassett Youth Pastor Lance Mitchell Administrative Assistant Patty Stoffel

Sunday School: 9:30 am Sunday Worship: 10:30 am Wednesday Family Night: 7:00 pm