Beginning Experience to have retreat

Beginning Experience of SW MN is offering a weekend retreat that provides an individual with the opportunity to encounter self and to grow with a purpose to achieve inner peace. The experience is to help close the door gently on the past and move on with renewed hope and purpose. The weekend retreat will be held at Shetek Lutheran Ministries and is scheduled for April 13-14. Deadline for registrations is April 7. Email swmnbe@gmail.com or call/text MaryAnn 507-828-2866 or Laurie 507-829-6692.

Jesus Cares Ministry to have Easter worship Thursday

The community is invited to: Jesus Cares Ministry’s Easter Worship at the Cross at 6:30 Thursday at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church on the corner of Marshall and Third streets.

Following the service will be refreshments (sugar free and gluten free available) and an Easter craft. Family, friends, and staff are invited to come along with you. The church is fully accessible.

The congregation of Christ Lutheran wants to reach out to everyone in the community in a way that they can understand. Jesus Cares Bible class and this “Worship at the Cross” is designed to meet the unique needs of our participants who have developmental and intellectual disabilities by helping them to grow in their knowledge of Jesus and to have an active prayer and worship life.

For more information contact Melanie Werner at 507-828-3798 or at mel.werner21@gmail.com.

St. Mary’s Tracy parish dinner is April 8

A parish dinner will be served from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday, April 8, at St. Mary’s in Tracy. Menu includes roast beef, roast pork, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, dessert and beverages. Take outs available and deliveries in city limits by call 629-3841. The cost for adults is $10, k-6 is $4. A raffle will take place at 1 p.m. with a silent auction from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Christian pastors begin fast to press for immigration reform

BOSTON (AP) — Some Evangelical Christian leaders and advocates are fasting to bring attention to immigration issues affecting members of their congregations.

Advocacy and legal services group Agencia ALPHA worked with the group of Hispanic churches to start a 40-day period of fasting on Wednesday. The pastors and their congregations will practice different forms of fasting, some abstaining from meat and subsisting on fruits, nuts and occasionally fish, others maybe eating only vegetables in honor of a biblical figure who survived captivity on that diet.

Pastors say they’re hoping to “move God’s hand” in favor of immigrants with fasting.

The Rev. Jose Rodriguez, of the Waltham Worship Christian Center, compared the stories of immigrants from his parish who are in the U.S. illegally with those of Jews persecuted in Egypt.

“People leave their lands for reasons that are very frightening,” he said, referring to violence in Central America that pushed many to seek refuge in the U.S.

Rodriguez said he hopes that the prayers push members of Congress to “have a heart.”

Pastors have been holding short home services to help members of their congregations who are in the U.S. illegally and are afraid of being detained while leaving their homes.

The Rev. Sergio Perez, president of a Hispanic fellowship of Christian pastors, said during 29 years of leading his 700-member parish in Weymouth he’s witnessed the difficulties immigrant families face.

“For them to go to work and make it safely is a real blessing,” he said.

Perez said he has known worshippers detained by local police and “handed over” to federal immigration authorities.

“That fear … that’s why for me, as a pastor, I need to represent them,” he said.

Man sentenced for threatening to burn mosque, illegal guns

BOSTON (AP) — A man is sentenced to five years in prison on multiple charges, including threatening to burn a local mosque on Facebook.

Forty-six-year-old Patrick Keogan of Wilmington, Massachusetts was sentenced to five years of prison and five more of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock.

Following the Paris terrorist attack in Nov. 2015, Keogan posted threatening images to the Facebook page of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, a Roxbury mosque.

He plead guilty in Feb. 2017 for posting an image of a burning mosque reading “Burn Your Local Mosque” to that page, and the student Facebook page of the Islamic Society of Northeastern University.