Southern Coca Cola Cake

This southern Coca Cola Cake is a classic!

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, optional (I think the cinnamon brings out the chocolate flavor even more)
1 cup butter or margarine or two sticks or 16 tablespoons
1 cup Coca Cola (I always use regular coke and have not tried it with any other kind)
3 tablespoons 100% pure cocoa
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting for Coca Cola Cake:
1/2 cup butter or margarine or 1 stick or 8 tablespoons
3 tablespoons 100% pure cocoa
6 tablespoons Coca Cola
1  1 pound package powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pecans or nuts of your choice, optional

Instructions
For cake, combine sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a large bowl and mix well using a wire whisk.  Combine butter, the 1 cup of Coca Cola, and cocoa in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil, stirring often.

Remove from heat and pour over flour mixture.  Mix with a spoon.  Mix buttermilk and baking soda together and pour into cake mixture.  Add marshmallows and continue stirring.  (Your marshmallows will not melt.)  Add in eggs and vanilla extract.

Pour into a sprayed 9”x13” pan and bake in preheated 350 degrees F. oven for 30 to 35 minutes, testing for doneness.  Frost.

For frosting, bring margarine, cocoa, and Coca Cola to a boil on top of the stove.  Remove from heat and add vanilla and powdered sugar until frosting is of spreading consistency.  You can either stir in nuts or sprinkle on top of the cake.  Spread over hot cake.

–Provided by Tonya Lloyd

Southern Coca Cola Cake

Click here to download a printable version.

--Provided by Tonya Lloyd

Third Annual GA Camping Trip September 30

The third Annual GA camping trip will be held at Standing Indian Campground on September 30 (we will leave the church at 1:00 p.m.) and will return on October 1. Please let us know ASAP if you plan to attend by returning a sign-up sheet to Gaye, Sandi or Melanie by this Friday, September 22. We will have church services Sunday morning at the campground and will return to the church for parent pick-up by 5:00 p.m.

Flowers for Sanctuary

If you would like to provide flowers in the sanctuary for Sunday morning services, please contact Gwen Messer at  828-506-8370, or Janice in the church office to be placed on the calendar.

Open House for Preschool, Children and Youth Sunday School

Parents, please plan to pop in to the children's Sunday school room on Sunday, October 1, from 9:25 to 9:40 a.m.  There will be yummy refreshments, time to meet your child or teen's Sunday school teacher, and a kick-off for a “Parents Prayer Challenge.”  Stop in the youth room and in the nursery to check out where the preschoolers and teens "hang out."  Sunday school will follow the informal gathering.

The children's Sunday school room is located on the second floor in the corner facing the playground.  Please come visit us!

Mission Moment 9.20.23

This past year has brought to me a collection of simple, but radical truths. The more I grow, the more I reckon with the reality that I fall short, that I get distracted easily and that I can’t do everything right. Prayer for me has been a surrender that doesn’t always want to surrender. In the naked loneliness, I am met with the truth: “You are beloved,” says the One who orchestrates the rhythm of my breath. I have been coming to God, not always with something to say, but to just be with God. And that is hard. It is in this human natured resistance of wanting to work to be enough that the beautiful irony of the gospel is revealed to me. A perfect God would send God’s son to die for me. The more I sit with the realization that I always come empty-handed and wordless, whether I believe it or not, the more I crave to come back to that place. When you grip something, it creates tension and after a while you begin to ache and strain. It feels good to not hold anything. Besides, we need empty hands to be able to continue tending to God’s Kingdom on Earth. 

Pray. . .Give. . .Go.

Help!

Someone left an envelope full of great recipes in the church office but did not include his or her name.  We want to use these delicious recipes in the Church Chimes but we also want to identify the wonderful cook who submitted them.  Please email or text Cheryl Beck (cabeck@ncsu.edu) with your name.  We can't wait to use them!

Reception for Carol Cloer

Please join us for a reception
immediately following worship
on Sunday, September 24 as we thank Carol Cloer for her ministry with us. 

The Hospitality Table After Worship Is Back!

Sign up here to provide goodies and beverages on Sunday mornings after worship.

When we are hospitable, our congregation can become a church on the sidewalk after worship while munching on a cookie or sipping fruit punch. Click here and find a Sunday to host our Hospitality Table! 

Dawnings Begins TONIGHT, September 20

Our first of four congregational meetings will be TONIGHT, September 20 beginning at 6:00 PM in the Mission and Fellowship Center. A blessing for our potluck meal together will be at 5:30 PM. 

Childcare will be provided for children up through the fifth grade in our nursery. Youth are encouraged to be a part of our congregational meeting in the MFC alongside adults. 

Dawnings is a narrative-based approach for personal and congregational visioning and discernment. Our four congregational meetings this fall will help us determine together who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do. Our entire church's participation in this process is critical to our determining what our future will look like. 

"This is what God says,

  the God who builds a road right through the ocean,

  who carves a path through pounding waves,

The God who summons horses and chariots and armies—

  they lie down and then can’t get up;

  they’re snuffed out like so many candles:

“Forget about what’s happened;

  don’t keep going over old history.

Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.

  It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?" Isaiah 43:16-19

Brian Foreman, the Coordinator of Congregational Ministries for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, comments that "These last two lines of scripture are both encouragement and command. The former encourages us to remember that God is still in control. The latter reminds us of our responsibility to notice and join God in doing something brand new."

"Dawnings is a congregational resource that helps you accomplish both of these things. By leaning into a spiritual discernment process through listening and responding to stories, your congregation will open itself to its place in God's sacred story for the community."

"Congregational postures of prayer and curiosity cultivate a sense of calling, not just for the congregation, before individuals as well. What better way to "be alert, be present," and to be a part of the "something brand new" God is doing!"

Join Us for Worship!

Join us for worship on Sunday morning at 10:30 a.m. in the sanctuary! Also join us for Sunday School at 9:30 a.m. for all ages!

The CDC recommends that you wear a mask indoors.
Maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others.

Our worship service will be streamed online at firstbaptistsylva.com.