Good morning! For those that do not know me, I am Rebecca Darwin, also known as the preacher’s wife. I am the mother of two teenage girls who are away at boarding school, a Deacon here at church, and serve on the Boards of Spoleto Festival USA and the Institute for the Arts & Humanities at UNC. I sit in the back pew – have been for 15 years ever since we came here – and in my spare time, I run Garden & Gun magazine. I travel a lot, but I treasure this place and miss all of you when I am not here.

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That is why when Cress asked David Savard and me if we would chair Stewardship this year, I said yes. And thankfully, David did too!

A couple of months ago during the summer, Sarah Craven gave a sermon based on the scripture, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I was not in town that Sunday, but David was and quickly emailed me that I should take a listen to it on our website. I did and David and I decided that that would be the message on which we would focus.

So our question for each of you this Stewardship season is, “What is your treasure?”

Of course, ultimately our goal is to encourage all of you to give cheerfully and generously so that we can meet the financial goals and needs of Second Presbyterian. But beyond that, we want to take this time to all get to know each other better and to learn through other people’s experiences here at Second Presbyterian Church – what they treasure and how each of us might become more involved in the life of this church.

So that is why I told you a little about myself in the beginning. Every Sunday we will have a “Meet a Member” moment where a longtime member will introduce us to another member or family, who will share what their treasure is. Also, during the week, we will be sending short emails with reflections from a variety of our members.

I hope that you will use this season to reflect and to get to know each other.

With that, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Sue Henderson.