Thank you for all your support and help in making all our events such a success. Faith and Fun with Father Bill was well attended in November, and enjoyed by parents and kids alike.

Family Worship on November 30th was also a joyous occasion. The children did so well as greeters, ushers and readers and those that took advantage of the Children's Basket in the Narthex seemed to enjoy the activities provided too. I would love to receive any feedback as to how it went for you as individual families as we want to make Family Worship a regular part of our calendar. There is no Sunday School on December 28th, but the Family Worship is not going to involve the children taking on any roles. There will be lots of carols sung however that children should enjoy.

In January we will try to start the Parent's Support Group that received support at the Parent's Meetings this year.

Lucy Templeton

Director of Youth Formation

Parenting Support Group

There was overwhelming support for a Parent Support Group at the consultation meetings and we will work to start this program in the New Year.

The group will meet bi-monthly to listen to a speaker discuss the issues of a given parenting issue. We will follow this with discussion time to share how individual parents deal with the issue and help suggest ideas for parents to try and resolve current issues at home. The most popular time listed on the survey was immediately after church, so we will provide a light lunch for those participating as well as childcare.

If you are interested in helping form this group, or have suggestions of topics that you would like to explore with other parents at Saint Matthews, then please contact Lucy Templeton.

Parents Night Out

As a direct result of the Parent Consultation Meetings, the first Friday of every month will be allocated as Parents Night Out!

The initial idea is that parents will volunteer to babysit one month of the year at Mathes Hall. We can each pay a little to cover some extra baby-sitting helpers if required. The remainder of the parents, drop off their children and then have a night out. Some months we may go out as a group, others we may just meet for drinks before going our separate ways.

The next Parent's Night Out will be Friday December 5.

If you want to participate, please sign up on the Sunday School Notice Board in the Narthex or email Lucy Templeton to request the month that you would prefer to babysit. Hopefully we will get enough takers that we can all take one night of duty and have the othe 11 months out on the town!

There was a second suggestion that we could fill in some of the gaps in the schedule by inviting groups such as High School Cheerleaders to come and babysit for us and we can make donations to their fundraising efforts. This would still be cheaper than organizing babysitters at home, and would give us chance to socialize as a group.