The Rev. Barbara Grace Ripple, founding pastor of Saipan\u2019s Immanuel United Methodist Church, will be the guest preacher at this Sunday\u2019s 9am worship service. Her sermon title is \u201cAre We There Yet?\u201d Former long-time residents, the Ripples arrived earlier this week for a 10-day visit with family and friends.<\/p>\n
Ripple is IUMC\u2019S founding pastor. Together with Korean-speaking Immanuel Methodist Church\u2019s Pastor Lee Myung Taek, Ripple held the first service on Palm Sunday 1992. In April 1995 IUMC was officially chartered as a local parish of the California-Pacific Annual Conference\u2019s Hawaii District.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring these early years and continuing to the present, there were two main reasons for IUMC\u2019s existence: a place to worship God in a mainline Protestant tradition; and a base for addressing many of the needs we saw around us,\u201d Ripple recently wrote.<\/p>\n
She was invited to be the guest preacher at IUMC\u2019s 10th anniversary Celebrations earlier this year. However, family medical difficulties prevented her coming.<\/p>\n
Her husband, Jim Ripple Sr., remains a prominent and well-remembered figure in CNMI\u2019s recent history. Originally part of the Trust Territory government, he headed the Commonwealth Development Authority until the Ripples left here in 1996.<\/p>\n
Pastor Ripple was the Hawaii District Superintendent from 1996 until her retirement in June 2004. During that time, she frequently returned to Saipan and other parts of Micronesia for official and family visits. Following retirement, she served as the Interim Senior Pastor of Honolulu\u2019s Crossroads United Church of Christ.<\/p>\n
Persons with no church home or unable to attend their own religious services are warmly welcome to join this Sunday\u2019s 9am worship and special time of fellowship with the Ripples. IUMC is located in Koblerville, just beyond St. Jude\u2019s Catholic Church. For further information, call Pastor Bud at 322-6158.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Rev. Barbara Grace Ripple, founding pastor of Saipan\u2019s Immanuel United Methodist Church, will be the guest preacher at this Sunday\u2019s 9am worship service. Her sermon title is \u201cAre We There Yet?\u201d Former long-time residents, the Ripples arrived earlier this week for a 10-day visit with family and friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}