March 2025: Upcoming Red Cross Blood Drive

“Always give 100%. Unless you’re giving blood.” – Bill Murray

Did you know that since the beginning of 2025, the Red Cross has lost over 75,000 units of blood?

After many natural disasters this year in the United States alone, the Red Cross is desperate for the help of those willing to donate blood. 75,000 units of blood is too much to lose, because one unit of blood is enough to save 3 people. That means 225,000 people could have received that amount of blood!

We talk about being a good steward a lot at this church – whether it be your time, your talent, or your tithe. Consider a fourth option: your blood.

On Monday, March 24, Holy Trinity is partnering with the Red Cross for a blood drive! Our blood drive will begin from noon until 4:30 PM, with the last scheduled time at 4:15 PM. Use this link to sign up, or contact Mark in the office. We only have 37 spots open, and they are starting to fill up.

Almost anyone can donate from the ages of 16 and up, with no age limit after 16yo. You can also donate your blood no matter what health condition you have, unless your health condition involves a direct issue with your blood, like Blood Cancer. If you feel healthy and your doctor hasn’t told you that you cannot donate blood, you are very likely eligible to donate blood. For questions whether or not you qualify, call the Red Cross at 1-800-733-2767.

If that isn’t enough to convince you to donate, you’ll also receive a $10 gift card to Amazon.

Please consider giving blood for a good cause, just not 100% of it.

December 2024: Double Check your Contact Information

The most important part of my job in the Church Office is Communication. Without the ability to communicate directly with individuals or groups of people within our Church, messages can fail to reach people in a timely manner and you may miss out on important Church updates.

Over the last year, we have noticed a large number of addresses marked as Return to Sender, phone numbers reached as disconnected, and email addresses as unreachable.

That’s why I’m asking the congregation for a VERY important favor.

Please go to the online directory within Elexio, and double check you and your family's contact information: Address, Phone Number(s), Emails, and any other details you are comfortable filling in.

You can go directly to Elexio by using this link (https://htelc.elexiochms.com/) and logging in using your personal username and password. If you forgot your Username or need help, please email office@htelc.com and Mark can help you out.

Help me make this Church as efficient as possible by taking five minutes of your time to look through your Church Directory profile on Elexio. This will not only help the Church Office, but also the other people in our Church who use our directory.

Thank you.

June 2024: Boom Chicka Move

How do you feel about Camp Calumet?

As a Lutheran who lives in New England, I hope your answer is “I love Camp Calumet and I hope to support it so they can stay open for decades.”

What a coincidence! That would be my answer too! If only there was some way you could directly support Camp Calumet while simultaneously getting more exercise. Wait a second…THERE IS!!

Every summer, Camp Calumet hosts an annual fundraiser to raise money for the wonderful ministry that they are, such as Confirmation Camp & Youth Gatherings, Retreats, Campground Activities, and simply enjoying nature. This year, their fundraiser has been renamed “Boom Chicka Move” (formerly known as “Walk the Walk”)

The concept is simple: From July 1 - August 31, you can join Team Holy Trinity and report your miles walked (or biking, swimming, or any other way you stay active) to your Team Captain. For the fifth year in a row, I will be Holy Trinity's Team Captain. During these two months, I will send regular email reminders fo you to send your miles to me, and in aggregate, I will report our team’s miles thus far to Camp Calumet. Across Calumet Nation, they would love 800 people signed up and a total of 151,000 miles walked.

To sign up, please visit their webpage and click on the green button in the middle of this page: https://www.calumet.org/boomchickamove. You will be directed to an online form to sign up. When selecting a team, write in “Holy Trinity - Newington, NH”.

There is a donation of $25 per person to sign up, which helps support Camp Calumet financially. You can also increase your donation to $37 per person to get a phenomenally designed t-shirt that you can wear to brag that you supported an awesome summer camp. Dogs are welcome to join too, but you will need to sign them up yourselves, because most dogs are unable to access the internet.

If you need help signing up, please see me after worship on Sundays.

March 2024: Sound System Updates

Two weeks ago, we had the professionals at New England Mobile Audio in our Sanctuary to work on our Sound System and Livestream. New England Mobile Audio is the company we’ve hired and worked with over the last several years to install and maintain our sound system needs. They were also the ones who installed our livestream system in 2020, to give us an alternative way to watch the worship online because of the pandemic.

We called them recently to seek their advice and make several tweaks to our set-up. Unfortunately, parts needed to be ordered before we could make the adjustments. Tomorrow morning, I am excited to have them come back to complete the following improvements for our livestream:

The installation of two additional mics towards the back of the choir, to increase of the volume of their already powerful voices.

• Eliminate a hissing noise found exclusively on our livestream video.
• Install a program to adjust the volume levels solely on the livestream, including Pastor’s Mic and all of the musicians’ instruments. I hope you take the opportunity to watch our livestream on YouTube when you can’t make it in person. It’s not perfect, but we’ve made it much more enjoyable to watch compared to what it was in 2020 when first we began this project. The sound tech from NEMA watched an example of our online Worship Service, and he told me that our livestream looks and sounds much better than his church’s livestream!

If you don’t have time to watch the full Sunday service, you can still enjoy parts of our service in shorter forms.

Every Monday, the Gospel Reading and Sermon is uploaded to YouTube & to our Podcast. You can find the direct link for our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzhZzW_Vhi_u-LF7SSpXxZQ

Our Podcast is easy to find! Simply search “Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church” into your podcast app of choice, and you’ll find our podcast with our famous logo on the cover.

I’m always open to suggestions about how to help you stay better connected to Holy Trinity, whether that is with our livestream, our sound system, or any other aspect of communications.

Women's Retreat at Calumet March 1-3

Is your life a maze or a labyrinth?

Join us for a fun filled weekend at Calumet just about an hour north of HTELC on beautiful Lake Ossipee. The cost for the weekend is $190 that includes 2 nights lodging and meals. Please see the attached link or the poster in the gathering area for all the details. Sign up by getting the registration form to Leslie Carson by February 18. Also checkout the video attached for more information about Calumet. Questions? Leslie Carson at carsonsl@maine.rr.om

Prayerful Easter Eggs: A Time Capsule of March 2020

In March of 2020, Holy Trinity closed down due to the Coronavirus lockdown. For the first time in our 60-year history, our church building remained empty that following April during Holy Week and Easter Sunday, as uncertainty loomed for how long everyone would have to social distance.

Our Council President at-the-time, Cristina Dolcino, had an idea to bring us back to church during Holy Week. With the help of her husband Mike, she set up a table outside with a plastic bin filled with children’s Easter eggs and a small piece of paper for one to write on with uplifting or positive messages. Once written, you could put your paper inside an Easter egg, and hang it on the tree outside our entrance for everyone to see. It was a small, but very uplifting gesture, and soon our tree had dozens of eggs hanging on it.

It was our hope to display what everyone wrote once the pandemic was over and done with. Three years later, COVID-19 is still infecting people, and now it seems like another unfortunate part of life that we have to face.

This year, during Holy Week, we decided to display what people wrote. It’s a time capsule into the minds of our congregation member when we were all stuck at home and unable to worship together, or to visit our loved ones. While Holy Trinity isn’t back to what we 100% were before March 2020, we still believe in the hope, love, and guidance that Jesus Christ gives to us daily.

You can read the original announcement from Cristina, below:

Missing your drive to Holy Trinity? Well, you now have an excuse to go and add some color and joy to the outside of Church. To the right of the front door is a cute little tree yearning for some words of prayer, hope, and rejoicing. There’s a bin of plastic eggs with strings attached and pieces of paper inside.
All you need to do is write or draw on one piece of paper your thoughts for Holy Week. Fold up your paper, put it inside the egg, and hang the egg on the tree.
Just think how lovely our Church will look when we return all together?
Gloves, colors, and pens are all there, but you are welcome to bring your paper or egg from home!
Please consider taking a spring drive, spend some time outside of Church, and share your Easter drawings or words of praise!

A Thousand Words

Posted by Mark Donahue on Thursday, September 7, 2017 @ 11:15 AM

If you stopped by my office over the last month, you may have noticed something intriguing on my desk. It’s brought on some interesting conversations and insight into the past of Holy Trinity, and I’ve learned so much about Holy Trinity’s 60-year history in one short month.

Working with the Church Council Secretary, we discovered thousands of photographs hidden in the music office and in the basement. These photos vary between the new Sanctuary construction, anniversary celebrations, Calumet trips, Confirmation classes, the Steeple installation, newspaper clippings, and artwork of Holy Trinity. Last but not least, I found photos and articles dating back to 1957 when Holy Trinity was first established, including a photo of Holy Trinity’s very first bulletin on October 27, 1957, when the church was dedicated.

The task: To scan every photo and save them to the office computer as a backup. In the beginning of August, I began scanning the photos immediately after Pastor George left for Tanzania. As of this week, I’m less than 50% done with the project. I’ve estimated there are around 4,000 photos I need to scan, and 1,200 photos have been scanned so far. I’m aiming to finish by the end of the September, earlier if possible, because I want to share all of the photos with you!

Beginning mid-to-late September, I will begin a new weekly blog titled: “The Weekly Photo Remembrance”. Every week until the end of the year, I will hand pick one photo from the last 60 years of Holy Trinity. These photos can be viewed in multiple ways:

• · The Weekly Email Blast linked to our webpage
• · The paper copy of The Tidings (2 photos per issue)
• · On Facebook every Saturday

All of these photos are stunningly beautiful, and I cannot wait to share them with you. As the idiom states, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, but by the end of the month, I’ll be finished with the equivalent of a novel.