Lord of Love Lutheran Church ELCA – Omaha, NE

Happy New Year!  I have enjoyed my rest from Lutheran Campus Ministry activities as students have been home for winter break.  We are planning a new format for our Washington University Bible study, and we are starting a series at St. Louis University called “Faith and Headlines” where we look at different current events and discuss how our faith intersects.  Our students are actively fundraising for our service-learning trip to Guatemala through selling fair-trade crafts, writing letters to family and friends, and selling concessions at the SLU basketball stadium (we call it evangelism through popcorn and soda sales!).  We have eleven students and three chaperones (including myself) for a grand total of fourteen flying to Guatemala City in March for a week of building three houses for families.  You can learn more by going to our website at www.lcmstl.org.  We are excited to build deeper relationships with our students, many of whom have never traveled outside of the United States and of whom many more have never traveled to a developing country.

            At Bethel, Advent and Christmas was a busy time.  I preached four times in December, including one time on Christmas day, which is a lot more than I had been preaching.  I enjoy the regular discipline of studying the texts and discerning what God is saying to us through those texts.  The study on Romans which I started in November is going strong, with about nine regular attendees.  Our Green Team got off the ground, with a focus on recycling for January.  We will be offering a tour of a local recycling center for congregation members, distributing a brochure on how to recycle more and use less at home, and redeveloping our recycling practices at the church, which had kind of fallen by the wayside for a few years.  My seminary, LSTC, has been distributing a lot of environmental stewardship resources for congregations as part of its “Green” Theme Year.  I have been using these resources, available at www.webofcreation.org, and we are hoping as a Green Team to have Bethel become an official “Green Congregation” by our next annual meeting, in June.

            Also in December, I was able to take my first week of vacation, starting after worship on Christmas Day.  Rich, my fiancé, and I traveled to his home town of Parsippany, New Jersey for a week spent with family and friends.  We are probably on our way back as you read this!

            In closing, I would like to thank everyone once again for their generosity in supporting Paula and me at our fundraiser in November.  I wish I was able to make it to Lord of Love in person, but my thoughts and prayers are with you in spirit.  Thank you for your ongoing support!  The seminary journey can seem long at times, but I am really seeing on internship how much I am benefitting from my education.  Blessings to all of you in 2010!