FROM THE PASTOR
Heart Warmed
My pastor’s heart is beaming. Two of our wonderful high school students stretched themselves to participate in ministries of the larger Lutheran church this summer – and from what they’ve shared with me, they have no regrets. In fact, it transformed their faith in lasting ways. ***heart-warmed***
Hear from Maddy about her experience at Lutheran Summer Music during the month of July at Valparaiso University…
“LSM was such an incredible experience! It taught me humility and community like I’ve never seen before. I have grown to appreciate my faith even more and I have such a deep sense of gratitude for the program and the people.
At the full session choir recital, which also happened to be my last night, we sang a beautiful song called Ngothando. The song is about how love conquers barriers, and it is so well composed. Singing it for the last time with such an amazing choir community brought tears to my eyes that continued throughout the evening prayer service. Saying goodbye through the sound of such divine music is something that will stay in my heart forever.
I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested and cannot wait for next summer! Thank you to everyone who contributed to funding for me to attend this amazing program, and a special thank you to St. Luke’s for your amazing generosity!”
And hear from Spencer, who attended the ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans with 16,000 other youth and young adults…
“The youth gathering was really fun and I couldn’t have done it without your support! We went with three other congregations and, without them too, we probably couldn’t have made it by ourselves and it would have been nowhere near as fun.
The mass gatherings were really fun and insightful. One woman talked about “anyways” -people do things anyways even when they’re scary or difficult. Also, we explored the city and found a lot of really tasty food. We had an app called goose chase, where we ran around the city to find specific things as a group. It got kinda competitive but was really fun. We ended up finding almost everything and got very exhausted! I will continue to think about this experience for the rest of my life.”
For many of us, it is shocking to remember that this is the first gathering since 2018 and a few generations of our youth weren’t able to participate. The next Gathering will be in 2027 in Minneapolis, MN and I can’t wait to go with a whole slew of youth!
God’s peace,
Pastor Kyle
