If you're interested in serving as a lector or usher at either of the Sunday masses, we'd live to have you. Serving is easy and it's a wonderful ministry to assist with worship. If you're interested and willing to be scheduled once a month, please contact the parish office or email Kate Williamson at katewilliamson@mac.com.

We'll be kicking off our planning for this year's Blessing of the Fire Trucks shortly after Easter, and we're going to need plenty of volunteers to help plan and organize the event. If you're interested in helping, please contact Kate Williamson at katewilliamson@mac.com.

April 26, 1877: Residents of Minnesota observe a state-wide Day of prayer, asking deliverance from a plague of grasshoppers that had ruined thousands of acres of crops. The plague ended during that summer.

April 26, 1992: Worshipers celebrate the first Russian Orthodox Easter in Moscow in 74 years.

April 27, 1667: Blind, bitter, and poor, Puritan poet John Milton sells for ten pounds the copyright for Paradise Lost-a book that would influence English thought and language nearly as much as the King James Version and the plays of Shakespeare. The theme of the epic appears in its opening lines: "Of man's disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe, / With loss of Eden."

April 28, 1789: In the South Pacific, a band of hedonistic sailors stages the famous mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers then sailed to uninhabited Pitcairn Island, where they soon fell into drinking and fighting. Only one man and several women (taken earlier as slaves) and children survived. The man, Alexander Smith, discovered the ship's neglected Bible, repented, and transformed the community. The Bible is still on display in a Pitcairn church.

April 29, 1607: English settlers establish the first Anglican church in the American colonies at Cape Henry, Virginia.

April 30, 304: The last and most punishing anti-Christian edict during Roman Emperor Diocletian's reign is published. The ensuing carnage was so horrific that it was said even the coliseum lions got tired. The man behind the edict,Augustus Galerius, finally issued an edict of toleration on April 30, 311-just Days before dying of a disease known as "being eaten with worms".

April 30, 1822: Hannibal Goodwin, rector of the Episcopal House of Prayer in Newark, New Jersey, is born in Taughannock, New York. Though his main passion was making the Bible "come to life" for the children in his church, he dreamed up 24 inventions during his life and received 15 patents. Today we remember him primarily as the father of celluloid film for photography. (He was also Rector of Christ Church Bordentown).

May 3, 1675: A Massachusetts law goes into effect requiring church doors to be locked during services. Officials enacted the law because too many people were leaving before sermons were over.

May 3, 1814: Thomas Coke, the first English bishop of the Methodist Church, dies. John Wesley sent him to oversee the American branch of Methodism in 1784; he later handed that responsibility to Francis Asbury.

May 3, 1861: The Southern Congress approves a bill installing chaplains in Confederate armies. The American military did not normally employ chaplains, but they became a permanent fixture during and after the Civil War. Between 100,000 and 200,000 Union soldiers and approximately 150,000 Confederate troops converted to Christianity during wartime revivals.

May 6, 1527: An army of barbarians who had been sent-but were no longer controlled-by Emperor Charles V sacks Rome. Many Protestants interpreted the attack as a divine rebuke, and some Catholics agreed: "We who should have been the salt of the earth decayed until we were good for nothing," wrote Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's adversary. "Everyone is convinced that all this has happened as a judgment of God on the great tyranny and disorders of the papal court.