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A MARTY HAUGEN CONCERT
WITH ROBERT ROBINSON, MARC ANDERSON, MARY PREUS AND A GUEST APPEARANCE OF THE ST. JOAN OF ARC CHOIR


This is a TWO WAY concert. Twenty dollars buys you an evening of soul stirring music and the money goes to strengthen the Southside Nurturing Center, a holistic family treatment agency that for 32 years has reached out to young families in crisis.

November 18, 2007 at St. Joan of Arc gym – 7:00

Marty Haugen is a liturgical composer from Eagan, Minnesota. For the past 15 years he has presented workshops across North America, Europe, Australia, and Central America for both Roman Catholic and Protestant liturgical ministers. His communion setting, Now the Feast and Celebration, and his vespers service, Holden Evening Prayer, are well known among Lutheran congregations, while his Mass of Creation is arguably the most widely used musical setting of the Ordinary among English-speaking Roman Catholic parishes. Together with David Haas, he began the popular GIA psalm series, Psalms for the Church Year. Marty has over 250 separate titles published through GIA Publications on more than twenty recorded collections, including such songs as We Remember, Shepherd Me, O God, and Gather Us In. His music appears in numerous GIA hymnals, as well as hymnals produced for Canadian and Australian Roman Catholics, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and numerous other Protestant denominations. (From the Augsburg Fortress Press)

Singing for a nurturing cause

The music of Marty Haugen has been sung many times at St. Joan. On Palm Sunday Robert Robinson along with the St. Joan Choir sing Marty’s “Wondrous Day of our God.” Marty’s wife Linda Haugen along with two other visionary women saw a dramatic need among young families while she was working in child care. Many families are in crisis and that crisis puts young children at serious risk. Linda, Jean Christie and Bev Blinde in 1974, in the basement of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, started to weave together a program of intervention. Today the Southside Family Nurturing Center opens its doors every week to 20 toddlers and 28 pre-school children in the morning and to another group in the afternoon. These children and their parents stay with this program for as long as it takes to remove the stress, fear, anger and abuse that seeps into families in crisis or serious trouble.

Located at 18th Ave in South Minneapolis, The Southside Family Nurturing Center works out of the old Holy Rosary convent. It has all the earmarks of a normal child care center with wild displays of very young artists, very tiny chairs and tables, and the voices and sounds of children. But this is not a child care center; it is a treatment center that has a very dedicated and licensed staff of workers and volunteers who do everything in their power to give these children and their parents a way back to a more normal life.

How do you teach a child not to be afraid, to adjust to food from a different culture, to hear other voices that do not scream or threaten you? And then comes the daunting task of attempting to teach each child survival skills and their letters, numbers and readiness skills so they can tolerate a school setting. The Southside Family Nurturing Center is really a miracle-working center and is seen as a model for similar centers around the country. What made it unique was its mult-generational caring-giving. They work with children, but also with the parents and families, and they do home visits and run support groups. Of course it has a waiting list and never enough money so that is why a group of caring ecumenical folk led by the voice of Marty Haugen agreed to create a concert that raises money for a wonderful place with great big pink doors that have etched in the window glass the words –“ Peace to all who enter here.”

Call 612-721-2762  #220  to purchase tickets   (also available at the door).                            Info at www.ssfnc.org



and
Chuck MacDonald currently serves on the parish Personnel Committee and on the Peace and Justice Committee. Chuck can be reached at Chuckmacdonald@comcast.net.


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