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Adult Religious Exploration

SMUUF Women's UU Friendship Society - WUUFS

Nancy Russell, DrPH and SMUUF Member, leading discussion: "Is Working with Men Different Than Working with Women?"

Think of the different situations in which you have worked with men: the home, paid employment, in church, on committees, on boards, on community events, and other projects even after retirement. Have your experiences working with men differed depending on these or other types of situations? Have your experiences changed over time? Have you observed or heard about any experiences of younger women that seem to be the same or different from your experiences? Do you have any suggestions for understandings or guidelines that would facilitate working with men? Or women? Or both?

Nancy has a Doctorate in Public Health. This degree encompasses basics of public health concerning such as infectious diseases, accidents, chronic diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases, etc. The measurement of such is called “epidemiology” and relies heavily on the statistical analysis of data concerning the characteristics of those with and without disease X.

This should be a deeply meaningful discussion. We hope you will attend. Anyone who self-identifies as an adult female is invited. Childcare will be provided.

Please contact Marissa Fehler at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested in upcoming RE. We will be revising the schedule in the New Year! 

Guest At Your Table – COLLECT DONATIONS UNTIL FEBRUARY 24

This is a gentle, little reminder that you/your family has until our Sunday service of Feb. 24 to donate funds to this year's fund-raising drive.

We are donating to support our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's work to create "Justice Across Borders". The funds raised will help fund various grassroots networks & civil organizations & local activists in places like Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador.

We have all heard many sad & wrenching stories about the immigration situation our country is struggling to deal with. Many of us can't do much actual work on this issue due to life commitments. However, we CAN support the UUSC's work with our financial contributions.

You can make a check out to UUSC and put it into the collection plate, where it will be separated out and mailed. If you'd like to just do this on your own, the address to mail the check is: Box 808, Newark, NJ 07101.

Talk to Jeanne G. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) with any questions you may have about donations. And many thanks for being a part of helping protect human rights and create social justice across borders. All of our donations put together will help make a big difference.

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MLK Day Peace Pie Social – Sunday, January 20 – Sign up this week!

MLK Day is coming up on Monday, January 21, and SMUUF have decided to have our own Peace Pie Social after our interfaith service on World Religions Day, Sunday, January 20. Jeannie Lewis, SMUUF Social Justice Chair, will have sign up sheets at church this Sunday for people to sign up to bring a pie.

So be thinking of what you would like to bring. It would be nice to know, if possible, what kind of pie you will bring. Homemade is great, but you may bring a store-bought pie instead. All our refreshments will be pie that day — with coffee, tea, juice, or water.

Google "Peace Pie Social MLK Day" and see that the Peace Pie — or Peace through P.I.E. Social — is celebrated on MLK Day in many communities across the U.S. And we are the ones who introduced San Marcos to this tradition. For several years now, SMUUF has hosted our Peace Pie Social following the MLK March in downtown San Marcos. We invited Jackson Chapel United Methodist Church (a historically Black congregation) and Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos to join with us. So it was a racially diverse and multi denominational event. Many pies were donated and severed to all who came — with many pies left over to donate to Southside, the Women's Center, and the Youth Shelter. It was always a very popular and well-received event. I hope it will come back and we can do it for the community next year.

Submitted by Jeannie Lewis, SMUUF Social Justice Chair. If you will not be at church Sunday to sign up, call Jeannie at (512) 353-2872 or email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you want to bring a pie.

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New Member Dedication and Child Dedication (see Children's RE section for more) 

Orientation Class: Sun. January 27, 9:30 a.m. during RE
Service: Sun. February 10

On Sunday, February 10 we will be having a New Member Dedication during the service. If you have become a SMUUF member in the last year or are curious about the possibility, you're invited to join Minister Krista Weber Huang at 9:30 a.mm on January 27 for a class on what being a member means. Please let us know if you are interested in joining but cannot attend the class and we will make additional arrangements.

Contact: Minister Krista Weber Huang (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

FUUDies (Fantastic UU Diners)

This week: Italian Garden, 415 N. LBJ Drive, San Marcos, 78666

The Fantastic UU Diners eat together after church at a different local restaurant almost every Sunday. They love to have new folks join them! See Jeannie Lewis or Lee Bricker after worship. They’ll save you a seat!

Hospitality Teams get it done every Sunday! 

Members of Hospitality Team 7 are serving in January. Thanks to these folks for making coffee, providing refreshments, greeting, and generally making the church ready for worship and fellowship!

Dear SMUUF Families with Children,

As you may or may not know, rather than baptize or christen children, most Unitarian Universalist congregations have a ritual commonly known as “Child Dedication”. On Sunday, February 10, as a part of our regular 11:00 am Sunday morning worship, we will hold such a Child Dedication Ceremony and a New Member Ceremony. This service will also be intergenerational, therefore children are invited to stay in the service and some may take part in leading. There will still be child care available for little ones after the dedication portion of the service.

To call this “Child Dedication” is a bit of a misnomer. Indeed, each child is individually blessed during the ritual, but the primary purpose of the ceremony is for the congregation to dedicate themselves to helping nurture and guide these children as they grow up within our particular church family.

Children of any age - from infants through teens - may be dedicated. If you, the child’s parent(s), is/are not an official SMUUF member but are an active friend who feels a part of our congregation, your child or children may still be dedicated. If your child was dedicated in another UU congregation you attended before coming to SMUUF, you may re-dedicate your child, if you wish, to signify that your family now calls this congregation your home. If your child was dedicated at SMUUF in the past, when Brian was your minister or before, you will probably not want to re-dedicate them, as the congregation has already promised to nurture this child, BUT, if you want to do it again now, for any reason, that would be fine, too. There are no hard and fast rules about this! Basically, anyone who feels a part of our congregation and for whom this ritual would have meaning at this particular time is welcome to participate.

If you’d like your child or children to be dedicated on Feb. 10, please let me know ASAP via email, text message, or a private Facebook message, giving me the names, current ages, and birthdates of those of your children you want dedicated.  If you have any questions about anything, also feel free to contact me.

This ceremony doesn’t require anything much of you, except to present your children to the congregation, and nothing of the children, except to stand up front and let me bless them by touching them with a rose and saying some words.
Then, similar to the way we welcome new members, the congregation will stand and promise to help nurture and guide these children. The Child Dedication ceremony can be a very meaningful ritual in the life of our church.

We’ll have at least one, if not two, Child Dedication ceremonies every year, so if you choose not to participate in this one or can’t make it to church on Feb. 10, there will be another opportunity. YOU DON’T NECESSARILY NEED TO REPLY IF YOUR CHILD WILL NOT BE DEDICATED ON FEB. 10, ALTHOUGH YOU CERTAINLY MAY IF YOU WISH.

Thank you for being a part of the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and for bringing your children to church! Our congregation is greatly blessed by their presence among us.

Light and love,

Laura Haygood, DRE

P.S. CHILDRENS' RELIGIOUS EDUCATION TEAM MEETING SUNDAY AND WEDNESDAY JAN 16TH IS PIZZA/GAME NIGHT 6:30 PM. JOIN US! 

RE Class Time

Children meet downstairs right after "Time for All Ages". Parents are asked to help children pick up their name tag at the top of the stairs and go into service. Children are welcomed into service in order to help them link with our larger community. They will be sung out after the story and met by teachers to go downstairs.

Room and Teacher Assignments:

Here are some upcoming events to mark in your calendar:

(A calendar is posted downstairs with dates and themes)

SEE YOU SUNDAY!!

Week of Friday, January 11 - Thursday, January 17

Check the SMUUF Calendar for current listings of activities

SMUUF Choir

Sewing Guild

Meets Wednesday afternoons at 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
The Allen Family home in Martindale

We currently have 63 quilts ready to be delivered and 156 quilts that are are "in the works". 700 quilts have already been delivered!

Friday "Talk, Then Walk" - 

Meet at Redbud Roasters, 169 South LBJ Drive @ 10:00 a.m.

Enjoy good company, conversation, refreshments and a healthy walk. We usually walk about 45 minutes around the San Marcos River, Lower Purgatory, Ring Tail, Spring Preserve and other nature trails. Hope to see you there!

For more information, contact Garrie Borden at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Southwest Unitarian Universalist Women’s Conference

Good news: there's one more week to get our Early Bird registration price of $200, or to apply for a scholarship! The deadline for both has been extended through next Friday January 18, 2019!

The Southwest Unitarian Universalist Women’s conference is coming up February 22-24 in Hot Springs, AK. These conferences offer an enjoyable and inspiring opportunity to learn, expand, relax, and connect with other UU women from all over our region. Hot Springs is a colorful and vibrant tourist destination, and we can carpool to make the trip easier and less expensive (contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). The deadline for early registration is Jan 10; Feb. 6 for all registration. Click this link for all the details! https://www.swuuw.org/conferences/2019

UBarU Camp & Retreat Center Upcoming Events

There are some fun events coming up at UBarU Camp & Retreat Center! For more details and to register please go to www.ubaru.org. If you want to rent a cottage for a quiet weekend not during a retreat, email Robyn at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dec 18-31: Winter Family Camp - Come and enjoy a winter holiday weekend in the Texas Hill Country. We will have both kid and adult programming as well as multi-generational activities. Winter holiday rituals and camp fires are a must as we enjoy the celebrating the end of the year together.

Feb 15-18, 2019: Fiber Arts Weekend

March 1-3, 2019: Astronomy Weekend

A week of camp at UBarU is a time to make new friends and reconnect with old friends. We will swim in the beautiful limestone swimming tank, ponder the Milky Way on clear evenings, do some community service, walk the labyrinth, and take field trips to enjoy the gorgeous Texas Hill Country. And of course, we spend some time having fun while we deepen our UU faith.

Joys and Concerns

SMUUF Social Justice Team Selects Donate-the-Plate Recipients for 2019

The SMUUF Social Justice Executive Team met Sunday morning, December 16, to review the applications for Donate-the-Plate recipients for next year. There were 18 applications for only 10 slots. We usually leave two months open for unexpected situations like Hurricane Harvey, which we donated to and the backpacks for the homeless that we are donating to for December.

We were actually able to select 11 recipients because we combined PFLAG (San Marcos) and WFLAG (Wimberley) to share one Sunday and split the donation 50/50. The recipients selected were:

The recipients are all very grateful. We are busy now trying to schedule them into months that are best for their schedule.

This Donate-the-Plate monthly giving program in SMUUF has created strong alliances with local nonprofits and gained great respect in the community. I frequently hear from community members that they appreciate what we do in the community! -Submitted by Jeannie Lewis, Social Justice Chair

Sermon Podcasts

Our most recent sermons are available on the website under the Past Sermons tab, and as podcasts from iTunes and Stitcher. Click the links to go to the SMUUF channels and subscribe. If you would like to listen to a past service not in the list of podcasts, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Automate Your Pledge

Tired of writing checks for your pledges? There are three ways you can avoid check writing, and never miss a monthly gift.

1. If your bank has bill pay, you can set up an automatic monthly check to SMUUF directly from your bank. It's simple, and it costs you and SMUUF nothing, it should be a free service if offered by your bank.
2. You can authorize a regular withdrawal (known as ACH) directly from your bank to ours.
3. You can authorize a regular charge on a credit card that SMUUF can process.

For the latter two options, use our donation app to set up recurring payments either by credit card or direct deposit. It's painless!

Give

Legacy Society

 If you have joys or sorrows, church or community news you would like printed in the Flash, or Sunday announcements, email the SMUUF Admin email account: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..