By Heather Melton, UTO Staff Officer

January 9 marks the feast day of our founder, Julia Chester Emery. Her feast day often gets lost in the post-holiday shuffle, but she was a remarkable person, so we want to make sure we remember her. Please join us for a zoom Evening Prayer honoring Julia Chester Emery on Monday, Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. We will share some of the stories that were shared at her memorial service, in addition to images of her. (This is in a PowerPoint format, so you can download it from here and use it in your own congregation if you do a weekly service on the saints.) We’ll also give away some amazing bookmarks featuring the Julia Chester Emery icon created by Kristen Wheeler as well as some items with the Chris Corbin image.

In her honor, we will be releasing some retro UTO items in January as part of celebration. A big thank-you to Dani and the folks at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Columbia, Texas, who found and shared a copy of the vintage coloring book that you can download and use in your congregation! We also recently were sent a ton of vintage UTO Blue Boxes that were stored in the basement of a church. As always, we want to be good stewards of our funding and the environment, so these boxes will be available until they run out from the distribution center. These fun, throwback boxes are a great way to remember the longevity of UTO and bring back a box that many will remember from a few decades ago when UTO celebrated its centennial. 

We’ve also created a two-question online survey regarding the 2022 icon project being turned into notecards that we hope you’ll take a moment to fill out: https://forms.office.com/r/4PPVuz3eBW

We hope to see you at the online Julia Chester Emery Feast Day Celebration, but if you can’t make it, we hope these three vintage offerings will help inspire your congregation, in the words of Emery, to “find great cause for thankfulness to God.”

Register in advance for the Jan 9, 7 p.m. Eastern Time Evening Prayer