Dear Middletown Reformed Church Family and Friends,

Grace and peace to you in this season of Ordinary Time!

Beloved MRC people, we have been given a wonderful opportunity in the areas of learning and serving. This year we will have an intern at our church, Grace Modla. Raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, Grace is currently a Member-in-Discernment in the United Church of Christ (UCC). She is a 2nd year seminarian in the Master of Divinity program at Drew Theological School, Madison, NJ, with the eventual goal of ordination in the UCC. 

Grace is an award-winning mixed media artist. Born in Northern Italy, her family emigrated to the US when she was a child, and thankfully discovered that art was a way to bridge language barriers. Whether expressing Nature, Birds, Angels, Figures, and Abstracts, her body of work explores the spaces where the physical and spiritual worlds intersect and play with vibrant color and a dreamlike timelessness. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, theaters, solo shows, juried group shows, fine arts festivals, and private collections in the States, Canada, and Europe, and can be seen at gracemodla.com.

Creativity has always been at the heart of her life, channeled in the fields of Communications and the Expressive Arts as an educator (college-level ESOL and Italian), writer, performer, and a justice activist. She creates daily posts of art and inspiration at Walking the Path: Our Daily Journey 2022.

She lives and works in Holmdel, New Jersey with her husband, two sons, and their quirky Sheltie.

You will see Grace leading worship, preaching from time to time, at committee meetings, and teaching a Bible Study in the spring, perhaps even during the Advent season. Please join me in warmly welcoming Grace to MRC as she discerns her call from God. I look forward to our learning from her and she from us!

Come to worship this Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost in person or on Facebook live. Tom Martucci will be leading us in song as we worship our God through the gift of music. I will be preaching from Lamentations 2.10-13 and Romans 8.31-39 as we remember, lament, and hope on this twenty-first anniversary of 9/11 and my sermon title is The Power of Hope.

See you Sunday!

In gratitude for the joy of being your pastor and the holy call of loving you,

Pastor Trish