From 2009 - A Repost of DP Don Patterson's Church and Change or Die Connections. Updates Included

"While hunting in Africa, I shot an zebra in my pajamas. How a zebra got into my pajamas I'll never know."
Read - Texas Clone Wars for more details about this odious network.


District VP Patterson hunts in darkest Africa with Synodical Council member Robert Timmerman (above). Patterson is also the council president at Holy Word. Why does Holy Word need a synodical subsidy when they have money for African safaris?
No wonder WELS is broke!
Missionary Harold Johne, whose son-in-law Marc Schroeder was booted from WELS, also hunts with Patterson.
Marc is 100% Church Growth.


Patterson vicared for DP Vilas Glaeske.


Jim Radloff was the first pastor of Holy Word. Like Valleskey, he has always been in love with the Church Growth Movement.


Matt Doebler, Rock and Roll Church, their anonymous blog. He earned a drive-by DMin from somewhere and was shipped off  to the Asian mini-seminary, where Steve Witte, Church and Change founder, is the president.

 Don Patterson - hunter.

Pastor Don Patterson: "We reach out together with Christ the Rock, Round Rock, Texas. This new preaching station is an outreach of Holy Word, Austin. The group received Synod funding of $22,000 to assist in this outreach. Their hope and plan is to organize a congregation with an Early Childhood Development Center and a Lutheran elementary school. Presently the group numbers thirty-six communicants and forty-nine souls of whom five joined the group by Adult Confirmation. Presently there are four others enrolled in the BIC class. Average attendance has been 55 with an average of fifteen in Bible Class and eight in Sunday school. A Soccer Bible Camp in the target area of Round Rock had a regular attendance of 105 with 60% being non-members. A Parenting Seminar had thirty-five in attendance, 90% non-members."


Patterson is good friends with CrossWalk pastor Jeff Gunn. Pastor Gunn was busy as a bee, left alone in his hive, while DP Janke was kicking pastors out of WELS, let and right. Continuing the tradition, DP Jon Buchholz embraced Gunn and kicked out Rydecki while pretending to discuss Justification by Faith with the congregation.

Vicar Hall of Fame

Patterson's church is 30 years old, but he gets free vicars from a synodical grant aimed at "needy" congregations. Free vicars cover for him when he jets to Africa or to Church Growth conferences.

Mike Geiger


Nathan Buege and family and date.


Caleb Schoeneck


Robert Guenther: The Main Thing is the Main Thing. Seriously. He changed his website name to http://www.themainthing.us. On the front page:
Helping You Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing But he didn't keep the MT the MT - website closed.

Is he the same Rob Guenther CP who protected the Love Letter Pastor and said "Nothing happened" when Wall was fired?

Steve Prahl, son of the Western Wisconsin DP, Herb Prahl (above), vicared at Holy Word.


Andy Mueller, son of former WELS VP Wayne Mueller, is the brother of Adam, who is very active in Church and Chicanery.

Pastor Geoff Cortright


Vicar Mark Tiefel's father is a professor at The Sausage Factory in Mequon. Did Mark preside at Holy Word when Patterson took the staff to hear Brother Stetzer at the Exponential?

Other Connections

Pastor John Stelljes, Maitland, is a young Church and Changer, fresh out of the Sausage Factory. He went to the Exponential Stetzer conference. John's father is a member of Holy Word.

Pastor Ben Golish, Maitland, Florida went to the Exponential conference where Stetzer spoke.


Jim Mattek used to be a pastor. He is now CEO of Wisconsin Lutheran Child and Family Services. Patterson is on the board of directors. One person thinks the key to Church and Chicanery is WLCFS.
Mark Jeske's non-Lutheran Time of Grace was funded by Church and Change donors. Patterson promotes Time of Grace on his website.


Paul Kelm, DMin (Concordia St. Louis), has always been the most obvious proponent of Reformed doctrine in WELS. Church and Changers arranged a secretive call back to The Love Shack, their main hive.


Parlow went to the Babtist conference called Drive 08, led by Andy Stanley. Parlow's congregation seems to be original hive for Church and Change.
Church and Chicanery epicenters are:

1. Mark Jeske,
2. Don Patterson.
3. John Parlow.
4. The Love Shack.
5. Mequon.
6. WELS Headquarters.
7. Fox Valley AA.

***

What Have We Learned Today?
VP Don Patterson keeps his name off the website of Church and Change, but he gave the Bible study at a previous conference. The connections above point to Church and Change and influential members of the synod.

Getting rid of Enthusiasm in WELS is possible, if the efficacious Word is used, but the network has grown so thoroughly under the watchful eyes of DPs like Glaeske and Seifert, that getting rid of it will be hard work, if it is even attempted.

When The Sausage Factory asks for papers from Paul Kelm and Don Patterson about how to improve seminary education, you know the fix is in. Did Kelm and Patterson suggest even more Church Growth idiocy? Is that possible after having two seminary presidents in a row with CGM tatoos?

No one at Mequon has done anything about this for decades. Why should they? Their deluded students treat joining the LCMS as a catastrophe. At the same time their noodles are filled with Fuller and Willow Creek doctrine - contrary to the Christian faith and the Lutheran Confessions. Read this paper, which treats a WELS/LCMS split in typical hysterical fashion without acknowledging that Church Growth has taken over the congregation.

---



Little Rockers at Christ the Rock Lutheran Church.


Busta Gut started his career at a variety of Emerging Churches.
Koine will sing at Rock and Roll on April 5th.
Koine is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of Church and Change.

According to the BHM report..http://www.welssc.org/Reports/2007/2007-10%20DMB.pdf
Doebler's administrative assistant got a pay raise to 48k...(nice) with the syond cuts Rock and Roll gets a raise... As bad as AIG.


Another research report from Team Ichabod:

The COP met at Holy Word in January.. They love Patterson and Rock and Roll Doebler..


http://www.welssc.org/Reports/2009/2009-01%20DP%20Report.pdf

And look what layman, fellow Patterson Zebra hunter, Timmerman says about worship. "Are not most areas of worship adiaphora?"

http://www.welssc.org/Reports/2009/2009-01%20SC%20Report%20Page%202.pdf.

and DP Glaeske, Patterson, and now Gurgel nod their heads in approval..

Patterson still wants free vicars and he wants a free staff minister..

http://www.welssc.org/Reports/2009/2009-01%20DMB%20Report.pdf

Doebler has his hand out too.

---

Here is a report, modified from another team member:

VP Don Patterson has affluent members, so one must wonder why he has his hand out for more synod money.

Robert Timmerman owns a business called Fine Lumber (http://www.www.finelumber.com/). He was the congregational president but is probably an Elder now. He has served on the national WELS Synodical Council. He has funded safaris for Kudu Don Patterson and Missionary Johne (father-in-law of Marc Schroeder, who was booted from WELS and joined Missouri with his congregation).

Ron Stelljes is now the congregational president at Holy Word. They sold their luxurious house to Holy Word so Patterson could have it as his parsonage. Their son John is in Floria.

-Treasurer Lew Rabenberg is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. His wife is an attorney.
-Financial Secretary Allan Gebert is a self-employed CPA. His oldest son, Zack, currently is studying to be a pastor.
-Elder Bill Starke works at IBM as an engineer.
-Elder Gary Franke works for the Round Rock Express, the local AAA baseball club.
-Elder Nathan Steinke works for Intel as an engineer.
-Property and Maintenance Committee member Tim Moll owns some kind of electrical/lighting company. He provided all of the lighting to the new church built around 2002.
-Property and Maintenance Committee member Clint Rogas has a son (Clint, Jr.) who used to be a highly-paid technical consultant. He gave it up to study for the ministry and now has a congregation in Michigan.
-Staff Minister Chad White used to work for Motorola, but he gave that
up to become a staff minister.

The Elders at Christ the Rock in Round Rock:
-Andy Alff is a geologist, and his wife has been a teacher at Holy Word School for years.
-Tony Previti and Mark Smith both work for Dell Computer. Mark's wife, Kelly, is the daughter of Staff Minister Bob Hill. Her brother, Ryan Hill, used to be the principal at Holy Word until he took a call up to Michigan.
-Joe Krohn, the Rock and Roll blogger, is a friend to Patterson (isn't everyone in Church and Chicanery?). Joe probably provided the anonymous and smug comment that the COP approved of Rock and Roll Church, that they got another grant.

***

GJ - I have to wonder why Holy Word in Austin needs to take away mission subsidy money from others when the members are well established in the professions and in business.

Even stranger is wasting all that money flying the Conference of Pussycats into Texas so they can agree to do nothing. I have already seen Patterson's network go into a series of denials and huff-huff emails. Doubtless even more happens when the subsidy money is threatened.

There is your offering money at work. Read the links and weep.

Kingdom Workers = Jeff Davis, Board Member, Church and Change on their board. Isn't that sweet? And no one knows who the secret supporters are. No wonder WELS has discussed a synodical split and who gets the loot.

PS - Corrections are always welcome, as long as they are signed with a real name.

---

A correction or addition just came in, but I forgot the researcher's name already:

Holy Word member Mr. Paul Mattek http://paulstherapeuticfurniture.com/pauls.htm , lay rep on the Board for Home Missions (BHM).

http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?2617&collectionID=1332&contentID=87291&shortcutID=29637

They are the ones who give out free vicars and staff ministers.

***

GJ - When the COP met with Rock and Roll at Holy Word in Austin, did anyone think they would drop-kick Patterson into Barton Springs Pool?

One observer cannot understand how Kudu Don went over to the dark side. His own congregation is "normal," and so are the ones he helped start in the area. But now he is behind Rock and Roll, Church and Chicanery.

In Columbus, Floyd Luther Stolzenburg got to the money man. I heard that businessman tell Marc Schroeder (son of Salty) to get rid of the liturgy and creeds.
Given Timmerman's lack of understanding of Lutheran theology, the same thing could have happened at Holy Word in Austin.

---



Holy Word in Austin and Christ the Rock in Round Rock
need synod subsidies.
They must know how to po-mouth...or network.

From our research department, based on published information:

Austin is in Travis County (http://www.traviscad.org), and Round Rock is in Williamson County (http://www.wcad.org).

Paul Mattek's home is at http://www.traviscad.org/travisdetail.php?theKey=142144 . It's valued at a little over half a million dollars.

Looking under Robert Timmerman in Travis County, you'll see he owns three properties. His business location is worth $350K. The other two homes are worth a total of $650K. He's got some kind of ranch property in the Texas Hill Country as well.

Ron Stelljes is in the Williamson County listing for only $180K. The researcher thinks it is undervalued.

Tim Moll's home is 2/3 of a million dollars.

Bill Starke - $280K.
Lew Rabenberg - $254K.

Allan Gebert - $195K.

Nathan Steinke - $182K.

Gary Franke - $170K.

Andy Alff - $170K.

I found a "Joey Krohn" at
http://www.traviscad.org/travisdetail.php?theKey=584345 , and he's got a home listed at $276K.

And Pastor Doebler's home looks to be worth about $165K.

It looks like Holy Word sold the parsonage to Pastor Patterson on Nov 30, 2006. It's appraised at over $200K. You can get this information from the "Datasheet" PDF link on http://www.wcad.org/appraisal/publicaccess/PropertyDetail.aspx?PropertyID=162930

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Why Is the Patterson Network On Synod Welfare?":

You also neglected to unearth Patterson's own ranch that he owns out in the Hill Country.

***

GJ - Doebler, at Rock and Roll Lutheran Church has a assistant, who requires a salary of $48k! Patterson, who gets free trips to Africa with Timmerman, needs a free vicar. Timmerman in his report that the synod is in decline. Doubtless it is - after 30 years of Church Shrinkers in charge. The Shrinkers have skimmed all the budget money for themselves while telling the real mission pastors, "Too bad, so sad, we don't have enough money for your mission."

The amount of money wasted in WELS is simply phenomenal. Estimate the lease and overhead for the Popcorn Cathedral of Rock in A-Town. Add the salaries and benefits of a pastor and a pricey executive assistant. That is a staggering amount of money for a "mission" no one wanted, for a white elephant theatre, for two people Tweeting about how hard they work: one service a week during Lent, a half-hour service followed by a three-hour party, with an official launch date based a rock band and a performance platform being built. The Sunday evening services allow local WELS members to attend to make the "mission" look like it has real attendance.

The CORE's two blogs, from two full-time people, are D.O.A.

Rick Gunn has a similar deal in CrossRoads Lutheran in Phoenix, with a staffer at $50k. That hand is outstretched for grant money too. And yet, there are experienced, faithful pastors who would be glad to receive that much compensation.

Most pastors have an unpaid staffer, named Frau Pfarrer (the pastor's wife). The vast majority of wives are lucky to get a little income as the church secretary or school teacher. I wonder what these wives think about Church and Chicanery missions needing $50k staffers when there is so little to do and even less is being done.

I proved to a local professional that a little blogging would bring in new customers. She and her husband did a little more with the blog I set up for them. They landed a new customer just like that, for free. The Internet is a phenomenal method for broadcasting the Word for little or no cost. I find the Shrinkers are ga-ga for useless overhead but numb to the efficacious Word.

Look at the silly website for The CORE. A lot of elaborate eye-candy techniques are designed for people with short attention spans. But nothing has been done in publishing good content since it was launched with a three-hour party. Given the need for three days to recover from a three-hour party, a website could easily have dozens of worthwhile items on it by now. But, WELS members should be glad, the offensive new material is published at a glacial pace. Twitter uses up so much time and energy, dontcha know.

---

Anonymouse has left a new comment on your post "Why Is the Patterson Network On Synod Welfare?":

You will be judged by your own standards, Ichabod.

***

GJ - Actually, WELS is being judged by its own standards, by its own members. They are appalled at: the COP protecting false teachers: throwing money at wasteful self-indulgent, non-missions; and soft-pedaling the Stetzer gig at Church and Chicanery's conference.

 Anonymouse - your own UOP professor judges you via the Word.

Against the UOJ Liars - Luther and the Scriptures

 The synodicals point to themselves and their glorious history,
as long as their multiple felonies and doctrinal pratfalls are kept from the somnolent public.

The prices available for The Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume II, are found at this link.

One member wrote this -

Dear Pastor, Thank you so much for the beautiful copy of "The Sermons of Martin Luther".. I just started reading it I don't want to put it down.

A long-time reader just ordered six copies of Volume II at the author's price.

The point of this publishing avalanche is to get Luther in the hands of readers at a reasonable price, not to make money. So many faux-Lutheran entities have blocked me that the normal retail channels are locked tighter than the books of the Clinton Foundation.

Theologian Frank Fiorenza, now at Harvard University, told me in the car as I drove him home from our class at Notre Dame, "It doesn't matter how much you write or how good it is, Greg. You need distribution."

Perhaps these Concordia Publishing House glasses
will hide the pastor's Church Growth Eyes.

"Discerning the Body begins with Church Growth eyes. Unfortunately, this is what many leaders, many Christians, do not have." Donald A. McGavran and Winfield C. Arn, Ten Steps for Church Growth, New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p. 63. 1 Corinthians 10. GJ - Only a moron would take McGavran seriously. Lutherdom is led by such morons.


"Growth Awareness Kit...'Church Growth Eyes' game. An enjoyable growth simulation game for large or small groups." $39.95 
Dr. Win Arn, President, 1989-90 Church Leadership Resource Catalog, 2670 S. Myrtle Avenue, Suite 201, Monrovia, CA 91016 Church Growth, Inc. p. 9. 800-423-4844.

The Concordia Publishing House shot glass honors
the style of leadership that has dragged Lutherdom to depths of degradation.

Blocking does not bother me, because the synodical avarice in selling Luther doo-dads has only motivated me to continue such work and encourage others to do the same. Reading a book is one thing, but working with it for weeks in editing is quite another. People have generously donated their time to help, and they have gained so much in reading Luther already.

Years ago, I suggested that two of our members obtain the old red set of Luther's Sermons, which was easily found for $40, in eight volumes. Now that set is double the price on the used market and not easy to find. Although the Grand Rapids Lenker set was attractive and portable, it was difficult to read, due to its compact small print. The larger volumes being printed now are matches for the content of the old red set, minus a lot of extra material, such as the content outlines. They are also easy to read and enhanced with Norma Boeckler's illustrations.

 Every time a reader reviews a volume,
an angel earns his wings. See below.
The Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume II.

Or, start with the Author's Page.

Number-Crunching the WELS Fiasco: Against Luther, Against the Means of Grace. For Fuller Seminary, Nasty Pietists at the End of Their Rope

Such love - for whatever is wrong.

What was found:

• Nearly 800 of 1200+ congregations have less that 100/week attendance
• There were 37 congregations listed with 0 attendance in 2016
• The trend over the last 3 statistical years is more churches with 100 or less attendance per week
• WELS attendance is less that 42% of their baptized members
• The last 3 years of attendance figures point to attendance in 2017 dropping below 150,000/week average for the year.

WELS average attendance is under 150,000 or roughly 41.4% of their baptized members.

Vacancies

 Averaging 80 over the last three years.

They don’t have enough pastors to cover the churches.  Since that number is staying about the same, the Synod is not making any progress on this.  The vacancies are just moving around.  That’s why they want to talk about closing some of those under 50 member churches.

2014 – 80 6%

2015 – 72 6%

2016 – 81 6%

WELSians love to say, with a smirk,
"In our circles, it means..."

Tiny Congregations

There are also over 300 congregations with less than 50 average attendance.  That is the issue because they can hardly pay for pastor and church let alone synod moneys.

The hip WELS churches make the Resurrection of Christ
all about the Easter Bunny. "Pet live bunnies!"
Ask DP Kudu Don Patterson for tips.

Schmauk on Ignoring the Ideal - From Alec Satin

Ignoring the Ideal - Quote from Theodore Schmauk - Comfort for Christians:


Ignoring the Ideal - Quote from Theodore Schmauk

4 minute read
As is the case with every other noble work of God and every other noble product of time, it is possible to write down the Augsburg Confession to the level of a mere historical document, transient and temporary, and filled with the imperfections, the lower motives, and the ambiguities of its occasion. But this attempt, like that of all similar effort to weaken and disfigure the great and authoritative monuments and abiding instruments of the race, such instruments as the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, by overlooking the permanency and overestimating the occasional character of their causes, is a historical perversion.

I am looking for Objective Justification
as the great treasure of the Reformation, the Chief Article,
the Master and Prince, the judge of all articles of faith.
Nope, not there at all. Just the opposite is true -
the OJists and UOJists are roundly condemned.
No wonder they hate the Confessions and love Pietism.

The attempt to drag down and cheapen the great Confessional standards of our faith, by pointing out and emphasizing the human passions and motives that may have animated the men who were active in their formation, by elaborating and laying stress on the incidental occasions, which, in the hand of Providence, are often slight and minor or even unworthy, instead of upon the real underlying cause; and by surrounding the real standard of Truth attained and confessed, with the great multitude of inferior, unfinished and unsuccessful propositions, and the counterfeits, which nearly always swarm round about a genuine and great work of truth, is not a worthy one, and is not writing history in the true sense of the term.

This attempt has been made against every standard of historical greatness. In our own country, George Washington has been written down to the level of a common, coarse, and unworthy humanity. Cheap side-lights thrown upon the framing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States often have set these instruments in the glare of an unworthy and common-place coloring. The attempt has been made to reduce the divinity of our Lord to an elevated humanity by gathering round about Him great men, e. g., the religious founders of a hoary orient, who apparently stand forth as His equals. The same attempt has been made to write down the history of Israel and its religion to the level of the other ethnic communities around it. The Sermon on the Mount itself, has, according to these depreciators, been proven to be no more than a chrestomathy of the choicest sayings of pagan antiquity.

In any sphere, it is nearly always possible, by judicious selection, to raise up a multitude of the second best and the counterfeit productions of a people or a religion in such a way as to disparage, and apparently to take away the supremacy of the original. For the original, despite its greatness, its truth and its purity, cannot escape, so long as it is in this world, showing some contact with the sin and weakness of human nature.

But the great question in deciding on the real merits of an acknowledged standard is not how far it can be weakened down, or how near it comes in certain points to its inferiors. To attempt to show this is not in accord with a true historical method, but is essentially the method of skepticism, used for purposes of undermining faith in that which is really good. The question is not whether the foundation is covered with the shifting sands of time, or is strewn with the defective spawls2 and rejected boulders of the workshop, but the question is whether, beneath all these, the real solid rock is still standing. The effort to level and destroy men’s faith in the Word of God, in miracle, in the Person of Christ, in the Lord’s Supper, in the great and wholesome political, historical, or Confessional foundations of the past is at the very least pessimistic, and owes its origin to something outside of genuine Faith.

If the comparative method is to be applied to the Augsburg Confession and the Symbols of the Church, let it bring forth the clear distinction between the genuine Confession and the defective compromises that were constantly being put forth by wavering confessors within the Church.

He is a poor interpreter of pure art who would set up the perfectly chiseled and immortal statue amid the partly hewn and rejected blocks that had been its companions previous to its completion; and would strew it over with the chips and the dust which had fallen from it in the sculptor’s shop, and would say to us: See, it is no more and no better than the varied and motley stones from which it has sprung.

-Theodore Schmauk. The Confessional Principle. Chapter 19, Providence and the Augustana. pp. 428-430.

The Confessional Principle is now being prepared for publication as an e-book.

Originally published at: Comfort for Christians"



'via Blog this'

Published - The Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume II, Lenker Edition.

The full color edition of The Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume II, is now published.

The author's price is $21.57 without shipping and taxes, about 1/3 the retail price. Shipping goes up very little with multiple copies sent to the same address.

The Kindle e-book version of The Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume II,  is also available, and naturally, it is full color too. The Kindle costs $5.99.

The no-excuses edition of Luther's Sermons, Volume II, black and white interior, is also in print now.

The author's price is $4.40 without shipping and taxes, also about 1/3 the retail price. Shipping goes up very little with multiple copies sent to the same address.

The author's price is much less than the retail, especially in the full-color version. I used the retail links because clicking on them will increase visibility on the Internet. Everyone has a book about Luther this year, but clearly, few are reading his sermons. The professors are the worst in this category.

Question - How do I get the books at the author's price?

Answer - Tell me which volumes and how many you want, by email. I will order them and tell you the total. You may then send a check. You can add other titles from the Gregory L. Jackson author's page.
Email - greg.jackson.edlp@gmail.com. Label the field - book order.
Include your mailing address in the email.

Posting a review will greatly increase the results of Google searches. Some are doing posting their reviews.

So will clicking on my Gregory Lee Jackson Amazon Author's Page.

I will sending out copies of Volume II now. I was waiting for the black and white one to finish - another glitch - but settled. When all the print titles are done, the full color versions will be named

• The Sermons of Martin Luther on Amazon.

and the black and white student economy editions will be named

• Luther's Sermons on Amazon.

Lutheran scholar Martin Marty on faith, Luther, the state of religion | Chicago Sun-Times

Marty and I attended the Martin Marty lectures at Notre Dame.
MM endorsed my book/dissertation on A. D. Mattson.
LCMS-WELS worthies would say MM is a liberal,
but he teaches the same UOJ as WELS-LCMS.
His son Peter is an ELCA pastor,
and his radio show was Grace Matters.

Lutheran scholar Martin Marty on faith, Luther, the state of religion | Chicago Sun-Times:



"Martin Marty, Lutheran pastor, retired University of Chicago professor, author, has a new a book on Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” as 500th anniversary approaches, believes that a new Reformation, spanning denominations, would have to focus on “a recovery of love and justice.”

Ordained a Lutheran minister 65 years ago, Marty taught for 35 years at the U. of C. Was once editor at The Christian Century magazine and won a 1972 National Book Award for “Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America.”

He’s retired but still writing, including a new book on Martin Luther called “October 31, 1517 — Martin Luther and the Day that Changed the World.”"

 Bishop Martin Marty, St. Meinrad's Seminary.
Martin Marty gave lectures there and posed with the
portrait of Martin Marty.

'via Blog this'

ELDONA Is Not From This World

ELDONA sells various. items with this logo.
American Evangelical Lutheran reminds me of the Disciples of Christ calling all their congregations "Christian."

 ELDONA World Headquarters

Happy Birthday, Brett Meyer

Happy Birthday, Brett Meyer. 

Our Moline High Classmate Gave Us a Tour of the LCMS Holy Land

Debbie Mitchell Gahah, MHS 66, served as
the mayor of Perryville, Missouri.

We have wanted to visit Perryville for many years, because that is one location for the start of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Zion on the Mississippi describes that story in great detail, making me wonder if anyone has read the book.

The Loehe group organized first and asked the Perryville/St. Louis people to join them, which developed after talks.

Zach is a member of our church, so we get together with him from time to time. The last meeting was in scenic Joplin, Missouri. Since his mother lives in St. Louis, we discussed various nearby meetings. Cape Girardeau was on the list first, but Debbie offered to give us a guided tour of the historic sites on the date we selected. We scrapped Cape and the Limbaugh Shrine in favor of staying in Perryville at the Off Ramp Inn.

Chris' short-cut through the Mark Twain Forest Preserve slowed us down a bit, but we arrived Sunday night and had our big day on Monday.

Debbie arrived right on time and we started out in our new/old Voyager, 2002. I have known Debbie since we were in the flute section together at Calvin Coolidge Junior High. We were also in other classes, but those rosters are a blur to me, except Chem-Physics. We linked up on Facebook and met again at several Moline High reunions.

Chris has gone to all of my reunions and she has always been treated as one of the class members.

 We gave away books to the LCMS congregation in Perryville,
and also to the historical museum in Altenburg.
Pastor Jackson, left, Chris Jackson, Anita Engleman, Zach Engleman.
Distinguished Mayor Emeritus Debbie Mitchell Gahan
is in the second row.

Lutherans should visit the sites around Perryville, because they involve a significant amount of history, which is well represented in the Frohna site and the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center.

We were leaving the Frohna site - the Saxon Lutheran Memorial - when Chris noticed the tail-light being gone, popped out on its own. We had been bragging about how new the car looked because of our Army Ranger neighbor fixing it up before selling it. All the parts were new. So we started off in a brief rainstorm and the windshield wipers began flying off and tangling.

The rain stopped and Debbie found us a place where they put new wipers on. We also had lunch with her, and everyone needed a nap afterwards.

We were especially graced by Debbie's work in the city, part of the tour. No one expects such a small town to have so much going for it. She described her efforts at getting businesses to work together and social agencies to maximize their service to various groups of people. Those things do not happen by accident, so Moline should be proud of their distinguished graduate.

Anita Engleman, Pastor Jackson, Chris Jackson, Zach Engleman.
CFW Walther is in the second row, Frohna.

Sassy Updates

Sassy is doing well. She just had a good vet's appointment, where she proved to be very healthy. They are a little afraid of her, because she can make some very quick snapping motions, but she never bites. Sassy is so kindly that she cannot hold her fierce look long - it turns into a smile.

Everyone notices that smile. Sassy does have a habit of barking too loudly when excited about meeting someone. She even thinks that barking in the face of a cat is a warm and friendly gesture. Those who know her realize that all they have to do is say, "Come here, Sassy!" and she is all wiggles and happiness.

Her latest entertainment is to howl during new songs about her. She gets buggy eyed when I start to sing - not from pain, I hope - and howls for the chorus, with her muzzle in the air.

Sassy has a regular routine, which she expects to be followed:

1. A sunrise morning walk and an afternoon walk. No excuses, except rain.
2. Two meals a day, plus tidbits here and there.
3. Night-time begins with a dab of ice-cream, which we call Frosty Paws, a cheap ice milk sold under that name for pets. She gets very little, but she expects it and makes a lot of noise until it is delivered with great fanfare.
4. A treat has to follow the Frosty Paws. Normally it is a training bit of food or a little bacon flavored wafer. We though Frosty Paws would substitute for the treat, but she insists on both.
5. She always has a lovey time before going to sleep. Sometimes she growls and demands it. At other times she comes forward on the bed and gives each of us a big hug. She smiles while we pet her and tell her what a good dog she has been.
6. No animal videos are allowed on the computer, especially dog videos. No matter what I do, she spots them and barks them away. She tolerates graphics but growls at ones that do not please her.

 Sassy took Chris to an estate sale a block away.
That was Chris' first walk after her surgery.

Sassy attended the 50th Moline High Reunion, Class of 1966,
visiting with Toby, Guy, and the Country Style crowd.