Join us Sunday February 1st at 10am for our next weekly service! “Building a New Way: Being a Global Ambassador” with guest speaker Anise Jasman-Sayers, from the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire. Anise is the International Visitor Program Director for WACNH, and she will be talking about her work as a global ambassador, inviting visitors from around the world to New Hampshire so as to build new connections with our global community, and how we can have an impact on world affairs at a local level here in Manchester and the state.
After our service we will meet downstairs for Fellowship hour, where our volunteers have prepared coffee and snacks.
Announcements
This Week In RE
All month long, we are exploring sources of resilience. This week, we are exploring how we find resilience through nature, and we will continue our work planning an event for the congregation!
Winter Weather Information
As the winter weather season is upon us, there may be times we will move Worship to zoom only. In the event of a storm, we will send announcements by email, and broadcast over WMUR Weather cancellation notices, as well as on our Facebook page.
Please keep these resources in mind. Also, feel free to join our zoom service any time the weather may be iffy, we have a vibrant group online!
Welcome To Planning Center!
One of the perks to being a member to the UUCM is an invite to our church management platform. Over the past several months, our office administrator Tess has been working hard in facilitating the switch between Breeze and Planning Center. Over this past week, all members should have received an email with an invite link, a QR code for easy access, and a single page introduction guide for how to navigate through the new website/app. If you are a member of the church and did not get that email, please email admin@uumanchester.org to get that set up. Even if you are not actively using the platform, ensuring your address and information are correct helps us keep our church running smooth! Data safety is a priority of both the software as well as the admin. Your information will not be published without your consent.
What the heck is Church Center?
Following up from the last announcement, we are officially moved over to a new platform, which brings many new opportunities to incorporate a new series of tools into our workflows. This also involves having to learn new tools. Join Tesseract on February 8th at noon in Fellowship Hall for a class on Church Center, the new church calendar, and the key features of the new church management platform! She has spent the past few weeks both setting up the new software, as well as creating guides and lessons as she progressed in the setup. The class will follow coffee hour in the same Hall, and all are welcome to join!
This first class will cover: login, how to install the app, profile setup, website and app navigation, and if there is time we will go over Groups and how committees can start to use the platform to connect to each other. There will be multiple classes, so if you cannot make it to this first one, don’t worry! There is also a fully detailed multi page guide, so if you don’t make it to class but still want some detailed explanations, please email admin@uumanchester.org for the PCO Class Guide Packet.
Hospitality News
Thanks to everyone, we have achieved a great deal in our kitchen practices this year! But for 2026 we must move forward with the next phase to maintain our kitchen license.
These changes are:
- Gloves are a must when handling food, clean or dirty dishes. They should be changed between new tasks or if touching your body or other surface.
- Hair coverings: Staff must wear hair always covered, whether a clean baseball cap, hairnet, or other cap. Long hair must be tied back and hat worn. Hair nets are on order. If you choose a cap, we can keep them at church in a zip lock bag with your name on it. I will find a location for them
- Monthly manager inspection: Each month I must observe and document hospitality conditions, practices, sanitation, and dishwasher temperature. Forms are filed in the kitchen and checked during a Health Department inspection. I’m not an ogre, please don’t be afraid of me!!
- Illness Agreements are to be signed by volunteers and kept on file. It indicates volunteers should not come to work if they are sick with a communicable illness, including flu, Covid, vomiting, diarrhea, and open sores. If you have not completed one, they will be kept at the end of the food table. I am communicating with UNH Cooperative Extension to hold a food safety and sanitation in-service for volunteers and other interested congregants. Hopefully it can be a Zoom presentation. More to come with details.
Anyone new to doing hospitality can contact me for “on the job” training.
Barbara Dagenais
General Assembly Update
This year General Assembly 2026 (aka GA 2026) is completely virtual and will be held June 14-21, 2026. GA is the annual meeting of the UUA where participants gather to worship, witness, learn, connect, and make policy/faith-practice decisions for the entire (this includes UU Manch) Association through a democratic process. While anyone can attend, we must certify our voting delegate(s).
In 2024 Alice Veenstra and Rev. Kali Fyre were our voting delegates. This past year, 2025, Rev. Kali and I (Carol Veenstra) have been your voting delegates. Although (in my opinion) 2025 was not as tumultuous as 2024, (brought us Article II and Shared Values/Covenants) nevertheless 2025 has brought us timely guidance for the daily challenging events facing our democracy. For example, on September 12, 2025, we approved an “Action of Immediate Witness”, actions that included but not limited to non-violent civil society action. *This “call” is most recently seen in Minneapolis, MN where UU ministers and members joined thousands of people for public and prayerful witness against the actions and presence of ICE. This “Action of Immediate Witness” caries one clear message; that UUs side with Love, not hate. UU Values/Covenants of pluralism, interdependence, generosity, and justice are not just words spoken on a Sunday morning – UUs live out these Values/Covenants every day of the week. In times such as these, UUs have shown once again that they know how to be the hope that we’ve been waiting for. *Source: UUA: In Difficult Times; 1/16/2026.
Now is the time for the members of our Beloved Community to consider service by becoming a *voting delegate to GA 2026. Alice and I are proposing the creation of a congregation based “Task Force” of 3-5 members. We will meet regularly until GA 2026 to: 1. Understand the process of GA; 2. Understand what (recent) previous GA’s have done (highlights); 3. Present information on the issues present at 2026; and 4. Get a reading on the congregations opinions on actions/votes you might be asked to take. Alice and I will mentor you through all of this. It really isn’t a lot of ‘work’; it is a lot of learning. The ‘work’ takes place during the week of June 14-21. We know from experience that it’s best to start early.
If you are interested and would like more information please contact Carol Veenstra at cflavinveenstra@gmail.com.
Topics: Justice