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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Wilmington Community Event Center. WCEC. Get used to using those letters like USA. It rolls off your tongue better when you say WCEC. And so welcome. And this is obviously in American culture we have Father's Day, so that's what we're talking about. The message is going to be "Like Father, Like Son." And that is something we can all relate to because we all have lived experience. We didn't come in a basket from a stork. So we'll get to that in a few minutes. So let's open with a word of prayer and some worship. Father, we are thankful for your presence among us this morning, for your Spirit, for your word, and for your people. Just ask that this will be a time of rest, a time of celebration, time of inspiration. We pray for so much we have to celebrate, and let us do it this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Okay, good morning everyone. Could you all please join us, rise as we worship.

Sing, "Who am I?" Who am I that the highest King would welcome me? I was lost, but he brought me into his love. For me. Oh, his love for me. Oh, the Son sets free. Oh, is free indeed. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. Free at last, he has ransomed me. His grace runs deep. While I was a slave to sin, Jesus died for me. Yes, he died for me. Who the Son sets free, oh, is free indeed. I'm a child of God. Of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. You have chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. Oh, I am who you say I am who the Son sets free. Oh, it's free indeed. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God, yes I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God, yes I am.

Sing, I am chosen.

I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for For me, not against me. I am who you say I am. Yo, I am who you say I am. Yes, I am who you say I am. Who the Son sets free, oh, is free indeed. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In the darkness we were waiting without hope, without light, till from heaven you came running. There was mercy in your eyes to fulfill the Law and Prophets. To a virgin came the Word. From a throne of endless glory to a cradle in the dirt. Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit, three in one. God of glory, Holy majesty. Praise forever to the King of Kings. To reveal the kingdom coming and to reconcile the lost, to redeem the whole creation, you did not despise the cross. Even in your suffering, you saw to the other side, knowing this was our salvation. Jesus, for our sake you died. Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit. Three in one. One God of glory, majesty, praise forever to the King of Kings. In the morning that you rose, all of heaven held its breath till that stone was moved for good, for the Lamb had conquered death. And the dead rose from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe, for the souls of all who come to the Father are restored. And the Church of Christ was born, and the Spirit lit the flame. Now it's gospel The truth of old shall not kneel, shall not faint. By his blood and in his name, it is freedom I am free. For the love of Jesus Christ who has resurrected me. We sing praise. Praise the Father, praise the Son, Praise us, Miriam, free one, God of glory, majesty. Praise forever to the King. We sing praise him. Sing praise the Father, praise the Son, praise us, Miriam. Great One, God of glory, majesty. Praise forever to the King of Kings. Sing praise forever to the King of Kings. Please. How deep the Father's love for us, beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son to make wretches treasures. How great the pain of searing loss! The Father turns His face away as wounds which mar the Chosen One bring many sons to glory. Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplish. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Why should I gain from misery? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart: his wounds have paid my ransom. But this I know with all my heart: His wounds have paid my ransom.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you this morning that we can come before you just giving you praise, giving you the thanksgiving that only you deserve. We serve. Lord, we thank you that you are a Father that welcomes us with open arms, that welcomes us into your house, that you're preparing a place for us. That's what our King Jesus has promised us. Lord, thank you for that. We pray that we would be able to honor you as the King above all, as the Father above all fathers, above all our households, above our churches, above our families. We hope that we can give all our thanksgiving to you this morning as we enter your courts with Thanksgiving and praise. And Lord, I pray that as we reflect on your goodness to us, that you would also bring to mind the ways that our earthly fathers have been good to us, the ones that you've placed in our lives that we didn't choose on our own, but Lord, you graciously gave us. And Lord, we thank you for all the good that has come from that, whether from our own lives and our own fathers, or for those who may not be in our own biological family family, but who may have treated us as a father and who have shown us the love that you first showed them. So Lord, we pray that you would bless those ones that we're honoring this morning, and we pray that you would keep that on our hearts, that we'll be able to continually show you our thanksgiving for them, for the blessing that you've given them, and for how you've shown your love to us through them. Lord, we thank you for that. We pray that you would help us to Keep that in mind as we listen to your word for us this morning. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Before you're seated, could you please take a few moments and greet each other?

Good morning. I'm really happy on this special day be here to sharing. It's about my dad. And when I have to be honest, when I receive Paul's email and ask me share again, I said, Oh, when is my last time be here? It's about half a year ago. Maybe it's time again, otherwise he will again in a couple months, he will email me again. So plus about the fathers, that's a good topic. I can easily say something not prepared enough. So that's why I was okay, I'll do it. And that's why today I'm standing here. Speaking of my dad, he's over 80s, so his generation in China is very tough. So when he was little, about 6 years old, he lost his mom, and when he was about 17 years old, he lost his dad. And because my grandfather had a business in China, so that's put him in a very bad position during the Cultural Revolution. So, they lost everything, and my dad basically didn't have any opportunity to pursue his dream, anything. So, he end up as a worker, is really a worker. You know, in Chinese, we have a word, zhongxi, gongzi. It means loading, unloading. That's his job. So, he stay in that job for over 30 years until he couldn't do it, and he became their company's gatekeeper. Could be called that. Just receiving newspaper, mail, then send out to go to different department. And until he retired, and he back home. To a home. This is really his only one job and still keep all the way until he retire. So, I want to share is about my dad. One thing is because he lived a hard life and often he shares when he go to school, he's hungry go to school. When he went to bed, often he also hungry. So, which make him take care. When he had a family, he taught me, you need to take care of the food. Don't waste any food because the farmer take their time. They are really work hard. He often use a, "Li li jie xin ku," so to teach me that. And whenever I, I couldn't finish my bowl of rice, and he will pick up and finish them. He doesn't want to waste any food. And he always told me, "Take away how much you think, think how much you can eat, only take that much, and you always can come back for the second round," you know, like that. And that's him, one of the things. Another things, Because he living a poor life, so when he had a family, he would try to not spend money or saving, or just the saving money. So one of the things is, for today, we'll say energy saving. So in my house, daytime, there's no light. You know, my dad will be, "It's daytime, turn off the light." So we are just, I was just used to that. And then when I live America for a long time, go back, I turn the light, and then he will tell me, "It daytime, turn off the light." So I have to honor him. And that's him, is the way he live his simple life. Another thing I want to share is once I have, my own children, I took my own children back to China a couple times. And like all other grandparents, they kind of spoil them. And one thing, one day he told me, you know, especially for Ben, Ben, when he's 1 year, 2 months, I took him back to China and leave him for over 4 months with my parents. So, my dad every day would take him out and you walk around. And, you know, in our neighborhood, we have some, like, little grocery store. And at the door, they already have the rocking toy. When you put money in, they will make music, and then the little child will sit in rocking. And my dad taught him to use it. So every time Ben went to there, he will point to the choo-choo, he want to get on. So, my dad will spend 2 yuan, so it's about 25 cents back then. So, one day he come and said, "I have to take a different way to avoid that groceries because every time I go there, he will point to the— I have to spend the money." Another thing is after, you know, when he was little, when Ben is little, after nap, and my dad bought a flashcard. This is about education, you know. 1 year old, and for the 4 months, every time after Ben's nap, my dad will bring that flashcard out one by one to teach him. So by 1 year and a half, Ben speak really good those flashcards, can point every part of it. And of course, because my dad have strong accent, so Ben learned use our local word to say, like for example, do you know how buge? You know what's that? A pigeon. So it's my local word, and it's so strong. And sometimes I comment, "Dad, use the regular word to teach." But it's his way to show his love, and he spent really a long time with them and very proud of my children when they were in China. So another thing is, You know, once I'm here, I usually video chat with him at least once a month. And every time when we video chat, he will ask, "Oh, bring back Alex here. Let me see them. Let me talk with them." But my dad know any— no, no any English. So he will speak Chinese and The boys look at me and wait for me to translate or say some Chinese word. They can copy mine to answer my dad. So at the end of every meeting, my dad will tell me, teach me, tell me, teach your child, teach Ben and Alex one word each day. Then 365 days, he will learn that many words. And I feel guilty, actually, you know. It's so convenient just not teaching and just not spend the time doing that. I sent— be lazy, I sent them to Chinese school, but they still so-so there. Hopefully this year in the summer I bring Alex back. He can pick up some Chinese and satisfy my dad, you know. Currently, he is in the nursing home. He's 85, and he has the early Alzheimer's, so he remember everything back all the time, but couldn't remember what he eat in the morning. But, you know, every time when I say, "Shibai," and he have a few words always to repeat. Repeat, repeat a lot, you know, and 100 times I feel like sometimes I know what he going to next word going to say. So that's the word when we— when I have to leave, and he will say, "Work hard, take care of your family, don't miss me, I'm fine, and treat your in-laws like you treat us." and teach our children and let them be useful. So that's my dad and very simple and that generation, they don't say I love you. They don't hug you, but they use their way to show the lovers. Thank you.

That's a hard act to follow. Let's stand and read the scripture together. It's very short today. This is from Philippians 3. Let's go. Brothers and sisters, imitate me and pay attention to those who live by the example we have given you. This is written by Paul. And again, a few verses later, he writes, but we are citizens of heaven where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. May sit. That is the word of God. So like father, like son. You may not have looked at it this way, but Moses had two fathers. So if he was like father, like son, which one is he going to be like? He had his birth father who was from Israel, was one of the slaves in Egypt, and that father had no status. He had no— we don't know what education he had, but he had little to his name. But at least he was— he knew Moses and he loved him. His other father was adopted. Remember when Moses was put in the river and the Pharaoh's daughter found him in the basket and brought him in and adopted him? He had an adopted father. Now, we don't know much about the husband of Pharaoh's daughter, but we know that he was very high status. And in fact, the movie— one of the movies made about Moses calls him the Prince of Egypt. He was one of of the princes because he was in the Pharaoh's household, and therefore that relationship, he was really something. He had a lot of status and must have had tremendous education and all of the comforts that you could possibly want. So which one was Moses like? Well, in Hebrews it recalls that it was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, Moses grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to share the oppression of God's people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. So he made a choice to choose that father over this father. Now we probably don't have such a stark choice in our lives, but we will see in a minute that we too have We have our natural birth father and we have a spiritual father, and there always is going to be a tension of what we choose to do. This record in Hebrews goes on to say that he, Moses, thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ— of course, he didn't go by that name— but for the sake of the kingdom than it was to own the treasures of Egypt. For he was looking ahead to his great reward. And it was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the One who is invisible. So there is a dual, a nature that he has, this two fathers, but he also has these two kingdoms. He has a kingdom of Egypt and the kingdom of Israel, which is going to rise up. And we see in this verse that there is— the citizens of heaven is calling us citizens of heaven. What does that mean? It's talking about a spiritual reality that's right now. It's not just talking about heaven after you die.

He's—

we're citizens where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. So we have— we're citizens of wherever our passport's at. Says, and there were citizens of wherever our baptismal certificate says. So this discern— this dual character, dual citizenship is built into creation right from the very first verse. It says God created heaven and earth. So he created spiritual and the physical. Jesus prayed that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And when they asked him, "Should we pay taxes?" He acknowledged, "Of course we pay taxes on earth," but he says, "Also render the things to God that are God's." And we've seen in the previous verse about how Paul wants us to imitate him, and that's kind of what we're doing in imitating our fathers, but we're also imitating others within the church. Tradition is the way that God's influence is spread from generation to generation, from fathers and parents to their children, and within the church, from the more mature people in the church to the less mature. So we are going to, uh, want to use discernment like Moses did in how we accept those influences and whose influence we want to follow and whose we do not. We— even people who aren't in the church will also get influences from their parents, but we want to bring in the spiritual influences from God that will help us to enjoy the life as he intended us to do. Now look at the next slide very closely. That's a joke. One day in September of 19— 1983 in Guangzhou, China, I met Stacy. Now she's not here, she's in the kitchen, so I have a little bit more room to tell the story the way I would like to tell it. But in the interest of time, I'm going to skip through a lot of the juicy details and just say that I liked her and she liked me, but we had a problem. Her parents had told her her. Never marry anyone whose parents were divorced, because if the parents were divorced, then if you marry the child of someone divorced, then they'll probably want to divorce you when you grow up, right, or get older. So that was her— that was what she had inherited from her parents. Well, my parents are divorced, so now she had a problem. So a few years later, when I asked her the question she had to decide: is she going to accept the influence of her parents? If so, she should say no, but she said yes. She decided that my father's past would not determine my future. So she had to make that discernment, kind of like the way that Moses did. Now, we're told in the Bible we should honor our father and mother. So was she being disobedient in that situation? We have to learn what does it mean to honor your father and mother. Now, when you're 14 years old or 8 years old, it may mean different things. But when you get to be her age and she's choosing a spouse, to honor father and mother, it means you should listen to your parents, what they have to say, but don't do what they say. Necessarily, right? That's not honoring to your father. We respect them and give them a listen to what they have to say, but not necessarily to do it. Now, it's been mentioned that today is Father's Day, but I want to ask, do you celebrate it? Because I lived many years of my life in China, and at the early years they didn't have Father's Day, and later they started to have it, but it was only the stores that were promoting it. And why would they promote it? The restaurants and the hotels would all have, you know, special Father's Day packages. So it's really not, I don't think even to this day, much of a big deal the way it is in the US. So I'm not really in the habit of celebrating it. But how do you, how do you celebrate it? Are you going out for lunch today or out for dinner? Picnic. That's right. Church picnic. For me, I'll get a phone call from my sons. That's it. I'll call my stepdad, the one who's remaining. That's it. You make a phone call and that's the duty. And it's good. I'm not complaining about it. However, I have a kind of— I'm sort of anti-Father's Day, Mother's Day, and all those days. And I'll tell you why. And it's a coincidence that this morning's two testimonies both spoke of fathers who lost their mothers when they were very young. Pagee's mother died when— grandmother died when she was— her dad was only 6. And then Lee Ann, I think, said her— she didn't say how old she was, but the oldest sister was 14 when that mother died. Well, my dad's mom died when he was 5. And he told me because of that, he said, "I always dreaded Mother's Day because on the week leading up to Mother's Day, guess what they did at school? All the children would go to art class and they'd all be, you know, modeling something or making some craft to give their mother on Sunday. But what did my dad do? He would mope or he'd make something for the maid because he didn't have a mother. And that's why it was the saddest of days for him. And therefore, I always hesitate to bring, you know, to make a big deal of Mother's Day or Father's Day in the church because I know in a group this size, we must have people who've lost your fathers very young or people whose whose fathers were, you know, alcoholic or abusive, or they have negative memories, may even outweigh the positive memories. So we have to remember that as we're looking at this subject. And in fact, even the Lord said to Abram when he called him, he said, "Leave your native country and leave your father's family." You think Abram's father was in favor of him going off and taking half of the household servants with him? Probably not. But God told him to leave. Now, I don't want you to apply this. I want you to stay in Delaware for your whole life, you young, young men, okay, and young ladies. Don't leave Delaware. This is not applicable to our situation. However, it's indicative of how God has built, you know, families to work. And there is a time when it comes time that you will become a new family. And he also has that principle right from the beginning of Genesis, that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. So why are we celebrating Father's Day if the Word is also telling us we have to leave our father? Now, I couldn't go into this topic without mentioning my own very briefly, my own grandfather really starts with his— he has a lot in common with Pei-Ju's father and Lien's father because he grew up in Greece and he was also very poor. He lost his— he lost his mother too, you know, now that I think of it. And his dad remarried a new lady, and so he had two children from the first wife and then several more children from the second wife. And the older, my granddad felt sort of oppressed by this new mother and he decided to leave Greece at the age of 17 and tells this great story, had no money to pass over to the U.S. He'd heard about what a great place it was, so he stowed away on the ship and he tells about how he hid on the ship and everything. Anyway, he arrived with $7 in his pocket and we found this out from the immigration records records that you can still— they're all digitized now and you can look up online people who came in those days and they had to fill out how much money they had. So my granddad became a candy maker. He made chocolate and ice cream and had a good life compared to his father who was an olive farmer in the mountains in the islands of Greece. And he did that in Buffalo, New York. He lived to be 98. He was a great, great gadad, but his shape was that what you could expect of a man who made candy and ice cream for most of his life. He was kind of shaped like a root beer barrel. Then my father had grown up in the candy store and he knew all about making candy, but the last thing he wanted to do was to stay in Buffalo and make candy. So he got out as quickly as he could and he went off to be a lawyer with my dad's— with my granddad's encouragement. Dad's encouragement and he had ended up in Washington, D.C. area and he was very involved in the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, he was a part of getting that church— they built a Greek church in the suburbs and that was a big part of what he did and this is where he is today. He died in 2015 and, you know, I imitate him in many ways and I learned so much. For example, he always said, "Don't smoke cigarettes." cigarettes. So when all my friends were smoking cigarettes and say, "Hey, try cigarettes," I'm like, "I don't smoke cigarettes." Even from age 12, 13, 14, 15, completely uninterested in cigarettes. Why? Well, because he had just told me over and over, "One thing I hope you never do is smoke cigarettes." He taught me to be generous. And one thing he didn't do is he didn't spank me very much. And I think that was actually a bad thing that he didn't— you know, I heard that Leanne said, "Dad's very strict." My dad was the opposite of strict. And that has— I'd like to maybe on a future date I can share what's wrong with that. There's problems that come if you don't get spanked enough. It makes you less severe or strict with other people. When I had a company, the people would— do the wrong thing and then I wouldn't come down hard enough on them and then other people in the company would complain that I'd let this person get away with things that they shouldn't have gotten away with. And I think my dad worried about— he was too anxious about certain things because he had lost his mom at age 5 and I think that had a lasting impact on his psyche. It made him feel nervous about things. Things, and that impacted his personality. But one thing I didn't do like my dad is I didn't get divorced. So I'm glad to say that I'm my own person. You know, I'm not just like my dad because I have two fathers too, just like Moses. And we all have two fathers. And that's like the song that we were singing today, that you could say God is like our backup father. So he knows that no father is going to be able to live up what we hope for, expect a father should do. And so we have that— both God as Father and our spiritual community that's going to back it up. And so it says Paul— no, this is not Paul. This is Jesus making that point where he says, your fathers— that means their birth fathers— if they— if your children ask for a fish, do you give give them a snake? If they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? And those of us that are here today, we've learned that lesson, and we've learned to embrace and to expect things that we wouldn't necessarily ask our earthly father for. We can ask ask God for it. And therefore, we give God the respect that we would also give to our parents. Now, you have to also know, I think we all know, that sometimes you don't get what you want. And so I thought that was so funny about the granddad, Li Peiji, telling who was paying the 2 renminbi each time the kid went to the supermarket, leading him around another way. I think God sometimes leads us around another way so that so that we won't get in trouble. So sometimes we have to accept discipline, and just because we have a spiritual father doesn't mean we always get what we want. Now Paul is describing himself as a father to the church. He said you don't have— I'm sorry, that's the next verse. He's also encouraging us to be like fathers within the church. So he's saying, I'm writing to you fathers. It's sometimes translated those mature in the faith, as he does just the next verse. I'm writing to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I have written to you who are mature in the faith because you know Christ who existed from the beginning. He's describing the community that he wants us to be fathers to each other. And I'm going to I'm going to skip here. And it reminds me a bit of how Moses was told to delegate authority within the nation of Israel when— remember when all the people were lining up to hear— have Moses hear their cases and his father-in-law Jethro said you should delegate authority. So he had rulers of 1,000, rulers of 100, rulers of 50, and rulers of 10. And he created this organizational structure And you could say that in the church we also have, or in the Kingdom of God, also have some organizational structure. So we share the responsibility. People get their needs met more quickly and each person can handle the burden. But, you know, this isn't quite good enough, is it? Because if there's a weak link in the chain or if somebody doesn't do their job well, then you can have a lot of consequences. And I thought about how this chart is based on the language— they're called neural networks that are used in artificial intelligence in these large language models. And you can see instead of just one person, like, reports to one person and one person reports to them, there's like a many-to-many relationship. There's all these connections kind of like nerve cells. And there's this phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child." That's not in English. In the Bible. But the idea is in there that we have the family of God or the kingdom of God where we've got multiple people all acting to take God's influence and get it to his people. So he's not relying on just one, not just relying on the pastor. And that's really why you'll see— I kind of take delight when I see people, for example, in the testimonies, or we have musicians, we have elders, we have a kind of division of responsibilities and that includes each one of you that is a part of what this— even in the greeting time, right? If you see during the greeting time, you couldn't just have one or two people go around and greet everybody, right? This is a picture of what greeting time looks like, isn't it? And there was a time when Moses also, he designated 70 people to be recognized as leaders, and then later in Paul in Ephesians, he puts it like this. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. What a sentence. The poor translators that take these really long sentences sentences in ancient Greek and have to put it into English. But I think that translation says it pretty well. That God wants to influence his people and his church and he does it through his people and he does it in a way that kind of looks like that. And I'm really pleased to be able to share that privilege and responsibility with all of you as we delight in this congregation and how each person is making a part of that that influence. That's why we— and that's really the way WCC is set up with our elders sharing responsibility and also even in the preaching. We don't have the same person speaking every week that you can have a different take on what the scripture is and what the— what preaching or what the message is that particular week. Just this week, Michael and I we're looking at the organizational structure of our English ministry and how it fits in with the Mandarin ministry. And we borrowed the tools of the corporate world where you have a chart, looks a little bit like that Moses chart, where you've got one person here and then you got this guy reports to there, and then you have a department, and then you have somebody under him, and then somebody under, under her. And so I tried to to illustrate what we have. And Michael was like— because this is by email, we're going back and forth— like, that's not quite right. What about this? And what about that? I was like, no, OK, let's try to rearrange it. And then, no, that's not quite right either, because what about this? And what about that? And so any structure, if you use that kind of black and white version of authority structure, it falls apart. So we need something more like that neural network diagram for our WCC leadership. Okay, let's, let's finish with prayer. We're gonna have a special song from the kids and be done. Father, we're thankful for your word, the way you have spoken it. It's complicated sometimes, but we know that it is powerful and alive, and it has served in the past for many generations, in many cultures, in many countries. And it will serve for many generations. We trust in your word. We trust in your spirit. Just pray that each of us has a way to both receive the influences of your word and your people and your spirit, but also to pass it on, to give your influence, and to have our own sphere in which we play an important role. Thank you for all the influences in our lives and for our Father's perfect will that we can remember the good things and that we can discern the things that we need to change. We pray for all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Ah, okay, we had to switch. So yes, announcements. We have the Father's Day picnic this afternoon. There'll be some details on— I don't know if it's before or after the other— oh, sorry, I always forget sometimes. Any visitors here today, if you're here for your first first time to the WCC English service, we would like to give you a welcome gift. So if you would, just raise your hand and we'll get that to you. And so if not, as I was saying, we have the Father's Day picnic this afternoon. Hopefully, just like yesterday, it was predicted to be a rainy day. There were all these graduation parties that were able to be celebrated because the rain held off. So we'll see about this afternoon. There is a pavilion there, so if it is rainy, you know, that you can not get wet. And I heard somebody say you might want to bring some extra lawn chairs if you're going. There are some— like I said, it's a pavilion with tables and chairs underneath it. That's in Kennett Square. It doesn't cost anything to go to the park, unlike a lot of places in Delaware. So please join us if you like, 3 o'clock. Also, I I need to let you know, or I have to let you know that a brother of ours has died. Bill Halton died a few days ago, Nina's husband, and there'll be a memorial service next Saturday. Did I get the date right? The 21st, 10:00 AM here in the chapel. And so then also the blood drive on the 28th. You can see Stacy. Down cooking. And the Vacation Bible School is there. The information is there for you. Fourth of July, we have this Hokkaido parade. If you'd like to join that, talk to Paul. And then more details are in the bulletin at the website there, wcc.churchcenter.com. Yes, Don? There is a sign-up sheet for VBS out in the hallway. Ah, yes, they're in the hallway. Yes, yes, thank you. And also something else that I keep forgetting to mention is that Dwight recorded and posted the messages from the retreat, and they're on the WCC website. So if you'd like to see— you missed the retreat— and there's some really excellent messages on, on what it means to— what community means. So I think that's it. If you would please rise for the doxology.

Benediction is from Psalm 23. May the Lord shepherd you and make you lie down in green pastures. May he restore your soul and lead you in paths of righteousness. And may he be with you and comfort you. May he anoint your heads with oil and bestow his goodness and mercy on you all the days of your life. And may we live in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. Thanks for coming.