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And this is the way it was... Sunday April 20th, we celebrated Easter, the resurrection of our Lord, at Orangethorpe UMC.
We started off the day at 5:30 a.m. with an outdoor sunrise service. We joyfully sang "He Arose", we shared a meditation and awaited the dawn. Then the Anglo youth served us a tasty breakfast.
At 8 a.m. was the Easter egg hunt for all the children of our congregations. It was really beautiful seeing them having fun and enjoying themselves. We continued with an 11:30 a.m. service, with 85 people in attendance. The worship service was beautiful. What added even more joy to the service was the baptism of a 10-year-old boy. Then it was very exciting to see the faces of girls and boys who were eagerly awaiting the moment of their first Communion. This time there were four girls and three boys. This was the first step in their confirmation classes. There's a total of eleven children in our group starting classes in June which will continue until next year when they will be welcomed, along with all the other young people in our Annual Conference, to the United Methodist Church by Bishop Mary Ann Swenson.
 (Left) Pastora Teresa Santillana of Orangethorpe UMC, with three of the girls - Francisca, Ashley and Jennifer - who will be entering confirmation classes. (Right) Kathy, another child who is beginning confirmation classes. |  |
To top all this off, we received 10 new members into the church. We rejoice to welcome these brothers and sisters who, along with the first seven members received last year, give us a total of 17 persons who have taken vows of membership in the United Methodist Church.
We hope, with the help of God and of these new members, to continue reaching out to people all around the city of Fullerton.
Alberta is a native of Taxco, Guerrero, México. She has always been a woman who has struggled so that her children wouldn't lack anything they needed. Although she only attended school through the third grade, Alberta expresses herself very well and has a very strong personality. Guided by her great faith, she has become a leader in our church and community.
She was a Catholic for a long time, but now she belongs to the Methodist Church where she feels very happy and at home in her faith in God, and is much more active in the Methodist Church than she was in the Catholic Church. Her goal now is to study English so she can communicate better with the people in this country.
Alberta is an extremely generous person who has been moved by the situation of the poor, the sick and the hungry. She shows her compassion in several ways. She often serves with her brothers and sisters from our Orangethorpe UMC in Hot Meal Ministry, feeding needy people in our community. In addition, Alberta is involved in helping two projects in the border cities of Tijuana and Tecate - drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers for youths who have been abandoned by their families, often without even anything to eat. Some of the people in the centers are suffering from terminal illnesses, such as AIDS.
These two projects, called Alcanzar Victoria, which translates as Achieve Victory, don't receive help from any kind of government agency, but rather depend on volunteers and individual donations for their existence. Alberta invites our community to help her in these ministries. Alberta's son, Adalberto, is in charge of the Tecate project and her husband, Austreberto, is one of the leaders in the Tijuana project. Adalberto is a rehabilitated drug addict who has been trained in counseling people who wish to overcome their addictions.
Alberta has been living in the United States for about ten years and commutes between Fullerton, where she lives with another son Carlos and his family, and Tijuana and Tecate where she helps her husband and son in their ministries. Alberta has been blessed with a total of five sons and eleven grandchildren. She has an international family, since one of her sons lives in Toronto, Canada, where Alberta has enjoyed visiting several times.
The purpose of La Red is to keep members of our congregations up-to-date on our growing Latino Ministry. Its title means The Net in Spanish and reminds us of Jesus' appeal to his first disciples to become "fishers of men". We encourage you to improve your Spanish by reading each issue of La Red. If you have access to the World Wide Web, you may read an English translation along with each month's web edition of Orangethorpe United Methodist Church's newsletter, The Net.