GLOBAL MISSIONS
A group from Trinity is in Tanzania until Nov. 4. They are working to upgrade water pumps and navigate an expansion plan of the water system at our partner congregation in Mwatasi. The first water system was installed there in 2005. Please pray for the safe travels of our team and their efforts at providing sustainable access to clean water! Follow their trip on the Tanzania Trinity Stillwater Oct 2024 blog at: https://trinity-tz-2024.blogspot.com/
Trinity has a long history of outreach. We practice compassionate action by accompaniment. Explore the many ways to serve–both here in the St. Croix Valley and beyond all the way around the globe.
Tanzania
The focus for international mission has three primary elements currently centered in walking alongside our Tanzania mission partners: our Companion Congregation relationship with the Mwatasi Lutheran Church in the rural high country of the Iringa district; providing Secondary School and College Scholarships for students from Mwatasi; and the medical ministries started by the late Dr. Mark Jacobson in Arusha. We also maintain involvement with partner organizations such as Iringa Hope (savings & loan, agriculture cooperatives), St. Paul Partners (water engineering), water projects in Mwatasi village as a whole, and Global Health Ministries (more information at www.ghm.org).
Scholarships are a critical need and are welcomed throughout the year in any amount. Secondary school scholarships average $450 per student per year. We have been committed to sponsoring about 26 students each year from our partner congregation in Mwatasi. Scholarship payments are made each December for the coming year. Please contact Michele Hermansen.
Kuambatana: The Mark and Linda Jacobson Story
For 38 years, Mark and Linda Jacobson have worked in the health field in Tanzania, becoming the ELCA’s longest-serving missionaries. In partnership with Tanzanian leaders, they’ve developed the Arusha Lutheran Medical Centre, started the Widow’s Might craft project and more. Their powerful story is featured in the new 30-minute documentary “Kuambatana,” which means accompaniment in Kiswahili. You’ll hear the Jacobsons’ story and see how your support for ELCA missionaries is making an impact.
A brief message from an Evangelist during the ambassador visit to Mwatasi, Tanzania in August 2020.
Good heavens, what HAVE you done?!?
On Wednesday evening, the Adult Faith Lab group set off on a Lent project: writing a faith story. Guided by Britta Levenhagen, we began by plotting a timeline of our life and looking for themes or a story to focus on. The writing commences and in a few weeks we will...
New Youth Faith Formation Coordinator
Welcome Dana Kruse!
It is with great joy, an awesome hiring team of key stakeholders, and through the discernment of the Holy Spirit that we welcome Dana Kruse as Trinity’s new Coordinator of Middle School and High School Faith Formation.
Dana is a self-starter, an eager learner, a clear communicator, with gifts for organization and curriculum creation. She leads with grace and authenticity, uniquely equipped to connect with youth across different ages and stages. She brings an expansive track-record of working with parents, key volunteers, and ministry leaders—both at the local church level and collaborating with other churches across the North Carolina Synod. We are so eager to partner together!
Blessed are you who weep
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
Saving and Savoring
New Year Blessings, Trinity Friends. 2025. How the days and years turn! A new quarter century marked. Millennia in the making. God’s world still being saved and savored.
I heard this great quote recently on a segment on purposeful aging:
“Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.”
– E.B. White
Expectations
Expectations, expectations.
In the days before Christmas, I was part of several conversations about expectations. Expectations for family and gatherings. Expectations for gift giving and using the proper recipe for cranberry sauce. Expectations of growing old with friends, kids finding their way, people being reasonable. And, of course, the expectation and anticipation of the Christ child.
God Bless Us, Every One
A few weeks back, we rushed tickets to a preview of A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie Theater.
It was the first time, for our family, seeing the show and it both thrilled and delighted:
“God Bless Us, Every One!”
Every. Single. One. Tiny Tim.
Every. Single. One.
Such a great line and vision for Christmas. God joining the mess of the have and have nots. The flipping of those in power and the voice of truth ringing out with crutch in hand.
So Jesus-ian, Charles Dickens.
Love Took a Risk
Author, poet, and theologian Madeleine L’Engle writes:
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor & truth were trampled to scorn –
Yet here did the Savior make His home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn –
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
Please Make a Plan to Vote
Do you have a plan to vote? Ted, Sam, and I had a plan to go to the Washington County Government Center to vote and then go out for breakfast—making an event of it and celebrating the liberty of exercising this powerful right as citizens and duty as people of faith. Covid recovery kept us from breakfast, but we kept our date to vote and proudly wore our “I Voted” stickers!
And yet, it seems like every election cycle we must revisit the question of the intersection of church and state. Folks have STRONG opinions about this and different visions for what it should or should not look like.
Rebranding River Room
Rebranding and Rebuilding and Recording in the River Room
Even before the pandemic raised the attention of technological opportunities for the church, I had been asked so many times by folks: “Pastor Peter, is this session being recorded?”
This had definitely been a request for our Sunday Faith Forum speakers that have blessed us over the years, but also for so many other all-in congregational events and annual meetings and important community conversations—all convened in the multipurpose shared community space at the bottom of the stairs next to Trinity’s Gym. So many amazing milestones and sacred moments in the Garden Room (now the River Room).
Imago Dei People
It is possible that we are an imago dei people?!
Jesus was good at many things but perhaps the most astonishing thing he did during his ministry was to see, acknowledge, affirm, heal, and welcome all who had been rejected by the religious leaders, by the community, by cultural norms. Rejected because of their heritage, gender, physical characteristics or infirmities, religion, birthplace, and more.
Jesus saw each one as someone worth seeing. He touched them with healing. He lifted them from their pallet or the dirt where they begged. He fed them. He asked them what they wanted. He complimented their persistence and their faithfulness. He saw them with compassion and love.
