March 2004

It Is Darkest Before The Dawn

George Frederick Handel was dogged with misfortune. He had debt upon debt, despair upon despair. He had a cerebral hemorrhage and was paralyzed on his right side. For four years he could neither walk nor write. The doctors gave up on him. He wrote several operas, but again he fell in debt.

At age 60 he thought his life was finished. Then he was challenged by a friend to write a sacred oratorio. He read the Scriptures and decided to work on the Messiah. For 24 days, without eating a crumb, he worked fanatically to produce the Messiah, which many today consider the greatest oratorio ever written.

John R. Brokhoff

Reflecting Light In The Dark Places

Alexander Papaderos, a doctor of philosophy, worked for many years trying to bring peace between the bitterly divided countries of Europe after WWII. His motivation for doing so stems from his childhood and a very odd event which took place. "When I was a small child," he said, "during the war we were poor and lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.... I kept one, the largest piece.... By scratching it on a stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets.

“It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find. I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became mature, I grew to understand that this was a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. The light or truth is there, and it will shine in many dark places only if I reflect it."

He concluded: "I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have, I can reflect light into the dark places of the world...and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise."

Brett Blair

Make Room
For God

Many years ago Oswald Chambers said to a group of students in a college chapel service: We have to learn to make room for God -- to give God “elbow room.” We calculate and estimate, and say that this and that will happen, and we forget to make room for God to come as he chooses. Expect him to come, but do not expect him only in a certain way. At any moment he may break in. Always be in a state of expectancy, and leave room for God to come as he likes.

Life is anything but predictable! Human nature is not fixed and settled. We live under hope. That hope is rested in God, not the situation.

James T. Garrett

The Empty Church

Thomas Reeves in his book The Empty Church describes this scenario. “Christianity in modern America is, in large part, innocuous. It tends to be easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, a zeal for souls. There is little guilt and no punishment.

The faith has been overwhelmed by the culture. Christianity becomes a cultural Christianity when the faith is dominated by a culture to the point that it loses much of its authenticity. What we now have might be labeled as a Consumer Christianity. Millions of Americans today feel free to buy as much of the Christian faith as seems desirable.

The cost is low and customer satisfaction is guaranteed.”

Thomas Reeves

A Dangerous Encounter

A young pastor from Zimbabwe once wrote: “I’m a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit’s power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. I’m a disciple of his. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals. I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits or popularity. I don’t have to be first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by faith, stand in his presence, walk in patience, am uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power.” This young pastor was later martyred for his faith in Christ.

Be careful around this place (church). It may look safe and comfortable, but it really is very dangerous, because behind everything here lurks that One who calls us to follow Him and fish for people. And if you hang around here long enough He’s going to get you!

Daniel Shaw

An Eye Witness Account from New York City on a Cold Day in December:

A little boy about 10 years old was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, “My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?”

“I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” was the boy’s reply. The lady took him by the hand and went into the store and asked a clerk to see some socks and shoes, and also asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel.

By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, “No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?”

As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words: “Are you God’s wife?”

Score: 14 - 0

As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first base line, I asked one of the boys what the score was.

“We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered with a smile. “Really,” I said. “I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.”

“Discouraged?” the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.”

18 Deacons Who Would Not Stand

I heard about a Baptist church that was going to build a new Sunday school building. In an attempt to help raise the money the preacher wired the seats. On the following Sunday at the end of the service he said, "Now, who will give $100 for the building?" He pushed a button and 20 people jumped up.

Then he said, "Who will give $500?" He pushed another button and 16 people jumped up.

He had a special wire going to where the deacons were seated. He said, "Who will give $1,000?" He pushed that button and the 18 deacons would not stand up and all 18 were electrocuted to death.

Thomas, A. Pilgrim

Christ Lives Here

The sure antidote to temptation is to be focused on Christ, to be so filled with His power, His salvation, His life and service, that there is no room for temptation.

Shortly after the Reformation, some young followers of Martin Luther wrote him (kind of like an original Ann Landers) with a question, saying, "We are harassed by many temptations which appeal to us so often and so strongly that they give us no rest. You don't seem to be troubled in this way and we should like to know your secret. Don't temptations bother you? Are you somehow immune to sin?"

Luther wrote them back in reply, saying, "I, too, know something of temptation. But the difference is that when temptation comes knocking at the door of my heart, I always answer, 'Go away! This place is occupied. Go back where you came from, for Christ is here.'"

Lee Griess

Vacationing
in China

Keri Henkel

It’s not so much the places you go that make traveling exciting; it’s the people you meet. You can see beautiful scenery and interesting museums, but the images of such places fade after awhile, when you see more beautiful scenery and interesting museums in another time and place. The people you meet, however, somehow embed themselves in your memory, and when the years pass and you look back on your traveling experiences, perhaps it will be the people who came in and out of your life so quickly that you remember the most fondly.

“Five American women embark on a journey...” ~Melissa Simon, fellow traveler

It was around six in the morning when Cliss, Rachel, Sarah, Missy, and I stumbled sleepily into two taxis and went to the airport for the first part of our journey. Destination one: The county of Jinghong in the Xi Shuang Banna region of Yunnan province. Geographically, Yunnan province is like America’s Texas, in that (and only that) it’s in the south-central part of the country. It borders Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. To get to Xi Shuang Banna, we first had to fly into Kunming, the capital of the province, and then catch a very short connecting flight—so short you barely take off and then you land. We decided to fly to the major destinations of our trip instead of bothering with trains and long-distance buses, as these methods of transportation in China are incredibly time consuming and chaotic, as you will see in the chapters ahead.

Xi Shuang Banna is a tropical region, complete with palm trees and pineapples, very much like one of the cities in northern Thailand I visited last year. The Mekong River runs through most of the province and into Burma. Since it’s winter, the temperature was around 75 degrees, and the locals were wearing long pants and sweatshirts. Many of the people who live in the city are of the Dai minority group. China has 56 minority groups, and about a third of them live in Yunnan province.

Jinghong isn’t really much of anything at all. A few main streets lined with small shops and restaurants with outdoor seating is all there is to look at. Yet, tourists seem to like it, since we saw more foreigners in Jinghong in a week than we see in our section of Beijing in a year. Most of the foreigners we met are also teachers in China vacationing in a warm place. The main attractions in the Xi Shuang Banna region are the countryside, the minority groups, the terraced fields, and the highly endangered rainforest. Tourists seem to hang out at the two cafes featured in the Lonely Planet Guide. We, of course, being loyal to Lonely Planet, also checked out the cafes. We ended out frequenting one more than the other after our breakfast at the one took about an hour and half to make one morning.

“You can call me Zhou.” ~Zhou, our trekking guide

Our main purpose in visiting Xi Shuang Banna was to go trekking through the jungle and into some minority villages. We weren’t exactly sure how we were going to find a guide, so when one of the cafes advertised having a trekking guide, we immediately asked for information. As it turns out, the main trekking guide was off in Vietnam, but the owner of the cafe said she knew someone else who might be able to help us. That’s how we met Zhou.

Upon first glance, Zhou looked like anything but a trekking guide. Tall and thin and elegant, it was difficult to imagine her leading us through the jungle. But she was all business. She told us in bits and pieces throughout our journey that she studied tourism in college and, as she came from a city four hours away from Jinghong, decided to try her hand at leading treks in this popular tourist area. She’d been out with only four other groups before ours, but guaranteed her route was the most interesting and we shouldn’t tell anyone the way she would take us because trekking guides had to have their secrets. No problem. With my sense of direction, I don’t know where I am two minutes after I set out. After Zhou agreed to be our guide, she took us to the supermarket to buy some food and flashlights. I at this time had no idea why we needed flashlights, but they turned out to be very useful later on.

At ten the next morning, we set off down the river in a rubber dinghy.

The Mekong River, since we visited it during the dry season, was well below its banks. The water was a murky brown, yet up and down the river we saw women washing their clothes against the rocks in the brown water. The very small yet very strong owner of the dinghy paddled us past pineapple and sugar cane plantations high up the sides of the mountains. Bamboo forests colored the mountains green on one side of the river. On the other side, thousands of rubber trees hibernated for the winter. Zhou informed us many times that no, the rubber trees were not dead. In the sandy areas where the water had receded, tiny green peanut plants dotted the sand, the winter crop.

Several kilometers down the river, we went ashore to explore a Dai village. From what I understand, Yunnan was in the 8^th century part of the Thai kingdom; therefore, the Dai people are of Thai descent. The most recognizable feature of a Dai village is that all the houses are built on stilts. Zhou said this was because the Dai at one time believed themselves to be the most prosperous of the Chinese minorities and, therefore, built their homes above all others’. The homes are all built of wood, and the thatched roofs curve up at the corners in traditional Chinese style. Because of their Thai descent, the Dai people practice Buddhism. Each village has a temple, and you can tell the status of the village by how ornate the temple is. Near the temple is a large drum that at one time was used to alert the villagers of important or tragic events or to call a meeting. The Chinese government has now given each village a loudspeaker system, though I’m not sure what good it does if the village has no electricity, as some villages do not.

The first Dai village we visited was built a little ways up into the mountain. When we entered the village, all the chickens walking the streets scattered in various directions, but there were no people to be seen. Zhou said they were resting inside, as it was the hottest part of the day. Fruit trees—banana, papaya, pomelo, orange—were weighted down with fruit ready to be picked. How I would love to walk into my front yard and pull a piece of fruit off a tree and eat it!

Fifteen or so more kilometers down the river, we stopped in a small town to have lunch and catch a bus to our next destination. We had to go to the market and buy some meat for our dinner, as Zhou told us the village we were staying in did not have meat. The outdoor food market was several blocks long and sold all sorts of delicacies...you’ve got your pigs’ feet and snouts; your chickens’ feet, on or off the chicken; beans and nuts of every shape and size; a variety of dried animal skins, without the fur of course; fish heads...are you hungry yet? Along the side of the main road, women were selling bundles of sugar cane. Some of the sugar cane stalks were maybe 6 feet long. People would buy the stalks and strap them to their motorcycles and drive off through town with three feet of sugar cane sticking out both sides. You best get out of the way when you see a motorcycle carrying sugar cane coming your way.

After a hang-onto-your-seat two-hour bus ride through the mountains with a crazy driver and potholes the same size as the bus , we arrived at the Dai village where we would be spending the night. Zhou managed to lose her lunch on the bus ride, and the rest of us barely held on to ours, if you know what I mean. Before we explored the village, we entered the government-protected forest and made our way to the mouth of a cave. By this time, most of the light had left the sky, and the reason for the flashlights suddenly became clear.

When you’re inside a cave, it’s very easy to lose all track of time and space. This particular cave (I wish I could tell you what it’s called, but I never found out its name), was huge. It had once been equipped with electric lights, but that soon turned out to be most impractical, as the maintenance guy had to constantly change the light bulbs even though very few people actually visited the cave. We were able to find our way by following the electric wires. When I call the cave huge, that’s exactly what I mean. There were areas when I would shine my flashlight to the ceiling and yet never see the ceiling because it was out of the reach of my beam of light. There were also parts of the cave that were very tight. We squeezed between boulders and sometimes had to take off our backpacks and send them through ahead of us, that’s how small the spaces were. Since the cave had water running through it, as well as several deep pools, we leapfrogged from rock to rock to cross the water, and sometimes the rocks were slippery, which also made for an interesting adventure. The only part about the cave I didn’t like was climbing down a rusty ladder that was missing several rungs while looking to the right of me at a deep expanse of which I could not see the bottom, and I could only grip the railing of the ladder with one hand because the other was holding my flashlight. Oh, and let’s not forget the bats flying around my head.

When we emerged from the cave two hours later, a little dirty but otherwise unscathed, night had come. As we walked through the forest back to the village, Zhou told us to turn off our flashlights. I was a little reluctant to do this, as I’ve never wanted to be in a forest in the middle of nowhere in the dark, but when we turned off our flashlights, we found there was enough light coming from the sky to light our way—millions and millions of stars so dense in the sky you could barely tell where one ended and another one began. Perhaps it was then when the realization struck me once again: here I am looking at the sky filled with more stars than I’ve ever seen in one place before, walking through a forest thousands of miles from where I’d ever thought I’d be, listening to the river rippling lazily nearby...how blessed I am! How many other people have done this? Gives me goose bumps to think about it.

Back in the village, Zhou had arranged for us to stay with a local family. This family was the wealthiest in the village, yet walking into their home was like stepping back in time one hundred years...sort of. We climbed up the steps to the second level of the house where the wife was waiting for us. The house consists of one big room divided into the kitchen—a wok for cooking placed over a fire on the ground; the dining room—a small table surrounded by short bamboo benches; and the living room—an open space. The house has electricity, and a single bulb barely illuminates the room. The heat comes from the fire in the kitchen. Here’s what’s so interesting: the house has a television set and stereo system. A small room off from the living room is where the family sleeps, and visitors are not allowed to enter that room.

The family is, Zhou said, a typical Dai family. The husband works as a farmer, and the wife stays at home and takes care of the house. She was spinning cotton into thread on a spinning wheel when we came into the house. The couple has three children—two boys and a girl. Their oldest son had just been married and was, according to Dai tradition, living with his wife’s family for several months. Then he and his wife would come to live with his parents. Their two daughters, ages 16 and 17, were both married, and the 16 year old had a baby of her own. The wife is 39 years old.

Zhou cooked us dinner over the fire—fried peanuts, cabbage, smoked pork, and rice. We then made a group trip down to the community restroom before we went to bed. Let me just describe this restroom to those of you who will never have the privilege of using one quite like this. It’s a stone building a little ways outside the village and down a steep hill. One side of the building is for men, and the other is for women. Inside the building is a narrow gutter with water running constantly through it. Three short stone walls divide the gutter into “stalls.” To use the restroom, you just squat down over the gutter and let the running water wash whatever you do away. No problem. No privacy, of course, but with no light, no one can see you anyway.

That night, we slept on thick mats spread out on the living room floor and covered up with heavy blankets, as there would be no heat in the house after the fire went out. The next morning, at around 5 a.m., all the roosters in the village began crowing at the same time. Now, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time around roosters, so to me this was a most interesting phenomenon. After the roosters awakened the farmers, the village sprung to life, and sounds of chickens clucking and men talking and children laughing trickled into the house through the cracks in the walls.

For breakfast that morning, we had the same as we had for dinner the night before, only with sticky rice instead of regular rice. Sticky rice is rice cooked with very little water, so it sticks together easily. To eat it, you just take some in your hand and make a ball and eat it. It doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor, but it’s fun to eat. After breakfast, we bid farewell to our hostess and started out on our five hour trek.

The first part of our trek took us up the mountain near the village. Along the mountain path, we met an occasional water buffalo, but otherwise, the mountain was our own. After climbing up for a considerable time, we started to go down the mountain, and we soon approached a Yao village. The Yao are another Chinese minority group. The village we visited was considerably poorer than the Dai village. Zhou said sometimes the Yao are thought to be lazy because they only harvest enough rice to eat and none to sell and make a profit. Since we were only the second group of foreigners Zhou had brought to the village, we immediately attracted the attention of the whole town, and they followed us as we made our way through the village. We stopped first at the school, which, since the students were on vacation, was a resting place for local pigs. The school is a one-room wooden shack with a beat up chalkboard and no desks or chairs. The houses in the village are simple wooden structures with fenced in “yards.” Not grassy yards, but yards of dirt and stone. Chickens and pigs roam the village freely, and adorable little piglets, too, along with water buffalo. Zhou said two of the homes in the village had electricity.

When the mothers in the village saw we had cameras, they quickly dressed their daughters in their traditional clothing to have their pictures taken. The traditional clothing is too warm to wear all the time. Person after person lined up to have his or her picture taken. Digital cameras are great in situations like this, as those being photographed could see themselves immediately.

After we explored the village, we set out once again. We walked through the fields terraced into the side of the mountain, crossing paths once again with water buffalo but no farmers. Most of the fields were bare, as the growing season for certain crops had ended. We stopped for lunch beside a stream and lathered up with insect repellent before venturing into the rainforest.

Because of past land use policies, researchers have found the rainforests in Xi Shuang Banna to be highly endangered, and much of the wildlife that used to live in them has gone elsewhere. We followed a narrow dirt path through the forest that led us up and down and over and under and through until we finally exited two hours later. I don’t remember anything especially impressive about the rainforest, aside from trees that have roots that grow upward instead of downward and trees and vines intertwined and joined together over hundreds of years. I had to spend a lot of time looking down at the path to avoid tripping over the rocks that sometimes seemed to pop up out of nowhere.

“I think I just lost some of my hearing!” ~ me, on Chinese New Year’s Eve

Finally, we made it back to the village and caught another bumpy bus back to Jinghong. I was much in need of a shower and a nap! That night was the eve of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). One tradition of Spring Festival is to set off fire crackers and fireworks. This tradition is very noisy! We tried to go to bed, but when the clock struck midnight, fireworks erupted everywhere, so many, in fact, the building we were staying in seemed to be shaking. When we were out walking the next day, we saw a tree that had caught fire, and red paper from the fire crackers littered the streets. The most enjoyable part about Spring Festival for me was seeing all the families out walking together during the day. It seems like in Beijing, it’s a rare sight to see a family together—either the child is away at school, or mom and dad live or work in different cities or even different countries. These families I saw in Jinghong were just enjoying each other and enjoying not having any stress, at least for one day.

At last it was time to leave the tropics and head a little ways north to Guilin...
(to be continued)

Small Group Bible Study

Cross-Eyed Warriors will be studying 1 and 2 Thessalonians sometime in the very near future. Watch for a specific start date in the Sunday church bulletin. This is set up as a nine-lesson study by Prof. David Kuske. Please join us. We meet Monday afternoons from 4:00 to 5:00pm.

Harold Brown, facilitator

Outreach Committee News

We have several events coming up to be aware of:

March 7 is the snow tubing outing. Please see the sign up sheet in the narthex.

March 20 will be our annual English Tea. This year’s theme is "Fruits of Spirituali-tea". Jane Murray has a committee putting this together and she could really use some help if anyone is so inclined. This is a wonderful event to invite a friend to.

Sometime before Easter we will do another knock and drop event to continue canvassing our neighborhood. No better time than Easter to talk to our neighbors. (More announcements on this later.)

May 6: Red Cross Blood Drive

May 22: Annual Plant Exchange

Please put these events on your calendar.

Additionally we will be working on the mission statement and strategic plan for the Outreach Committee. We will start by reading the “Purpose Driven Church” and praying for guidance. Please pray for us and better yet please join us!

I have been nominated to the St. Croix Lutheran High School Board of Regents, and my term as committee chairman is coming to an end. I have decided to accept the nomination to the St. Croix board and not run for re-election (I will continue to serve on Mount Olive's Outreach Committee efforts). Please consider running for this important position on our church council.

Greg Schuyler,
Outreach Committee Chairman

English Tea

Women of Mount Olive and their guests are invited to our fourth annual English Tea. It is being held on Saturday, March 20th, from 2-4pm, here at church. The theme for this year's tea is "Fruits of Spirituali-tea". Your participation and help would very much be appreciated. May this day be special time to spend together with our friends and to share God's love with each other. If you are able or unable to come, please pray for this event, that it may be used by God for his glory, and may be an opportunity for us to invite others into our fellowship.

Jane Murray

Lenten Worship

Lenten Worship continues each Wednesday in March. Pastors Norb Meier and David Ponath will be joining Pastor Henkel in delivering the Lenten messages. Come for the 5:30pm supper and stay for the 6:30pm worship service!

Here is the schedule: “Let Me Learn of Jesus…”

March 3: "Learn of Him to Serve"

March 10: "Learn of Him to Speak the Truth"

March 17: "Learn of Him to Pray"

March 24: "Learn of Him to Forgive"

March 31: "Learn of Him to Bear the Cross"

Please make it a priority in your busy schedule to join us for supper and worship each Wednesday evening during Lent. You will be blessed, and your presence will be a blessing to others.

Spiritual Renewal for Women

The annual Spiritual Renewal Weekend for Women retreat will be held from Friday to Sunday, March 26-28, 2004, at the Radisson Hotel in Rochester. The theme this year is A Celebrate of God's Love. Please call the church office for more information.

Tax Help

Tax Assistance is being offered by AARP. On each Wednesday in March, you can receive help filling out or checking your tax forms for 2003. This is a free service provided by trained AARP members during daytime hours. This program is available to individuals over the age of 55 or lower income families. Please call the Merriam Park Community Senior Program, 645-7424 or 645-0349, to make an appointment.

Get Excited About Church!

Bloomington Lutheran Church is hosting its annual Evangelism Workshop on Saturday, March 27th. The topics and presentations will be exciting and stimulating. Topics include:

· Creating a Sanctuary Experience

· They're Coming to America

· Making Sense of Your People Puzzles

· From Across the Street to Across the Sea - World Evangelism

· Be Prepared to Give an Answer-to the Skeptic, Agnostic, Amoral

· Collegiates in the Crosshairs - Welcome to Campus Life

· Developing a Drama Ministry

· Musikgarten -Reaching Out to an Early Age in a Real Neat Way

· Building Bridges and Removing Barriers - Relationship/Lifestyle Witnessing

This is a wonderful way to spend a meaningful and beneficial Saturday. You won’t be disappointed!

Descriptive brochures are available in the church narthex. Please register by March 20, 2004. All welcome!

Spring MLC Auxiliary Meeting

The Spring Area Meeting of the Martin Luther College (MLC) Auxiliary, St Croix Conference, will meet Saturday, March 6 at Christ Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge, MN, with registration at 9:45 AM. It is the goal of the Auxiliary to raise awareness of Martin Luther College and to fund projects that will benefit faculty and students that are not a part of the regular budget of the college. Christ Lutheran Church is located approximately two miles east of the 65/95 Cambridge intersection just off Hwy 95 on Vickers St. Professor Paul Wendland will bring us up-to-date with happenings at the MLC campus. (Please remember the MLC Married Students’ Food Shelf. You may bring your food donations to the Fellowship Hall. These will be taken along to Cambridge on March 6^th.)

- Jean Brown

Tubing Fun!

A Congregational Tubing Party at Green Acres has been scheduled for Sunday, March 7th. We will meet at church at 2:15pm. Price includes 2 hours of tubing (3-5pm), tow rope pass, and an inner tube. We can warm up afterwards in the main chalet with a cup of hot chocolate, cider, coffee, cheeseburgers, hot-dogs, cheesy nachos, hot soft pretzels, etc. Cost is $8 for children aged 6-12, $12 for adults. (Not recommended for children younger than 6.) Please sign up today in the narthex. Contact Nicole with questions at 763-862-8009.

Nicole Burkhardt

Band Festival

West Lutheran High School in Plymouth is hosting the WELS West Regional Band Festival on the weekend of March 12-14. Many students from SCLHS will be participating in this event. The festival concludes with a mass band concert on Sunday, March 14 at 2:00pm in the WLHS gymnas-ium. You are cordially invited to attend.

Prayer Journal

The 2004 LWMS Prayer Journal, available for purchase through the LWMS Central Office, is packed with daily prayers for missionaries, their families, and their fields of service. It is recommended for use in the home, by Sunday Schools, ladies' groups, and Christian day schools. What a great way to direct your prayers throughout the year! To order your copy, contact the Central Office by phone at (414) 321-6212, or by e-mail at lwms@execpc.com.

In a Recent Letter:

Dear members of Mt. Olive,

Greetings from WELS Kingdom Workers (WKW). What great joy I have in sending this letter to you! Did you know that a student from your congregation, Kory Henkel, will share time and talent over spring break to serve one of our mission congregations in Cary, NC? The team will assist Tree of Life Lutheran Church by reaching out to the unchurched of their community. Witnessing and mailing opportunities will be a part of their experience, too. What a wonderful opportunity Kory will have through this hands-on ministry…

Coming In April

There are many discontented and unhappy people in our world, and in our churches. That’s true of you and of me . . . some days, more; some days, less.

It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race. To believe that if we just had more money or more time or more something for ourselves that we would be happy. We would be contented. So we spend and go into debt. We run faster and get more tired. And along the way we are less and less content and more unhappy.

But godliness with contentment is great gain, says God (I Timothy 6:6) True contentment is not found in worldly things. It is peace that comes from knowing God is our Savior. It is security drawn from Christ who is in control. It is learning to be satisfied with the blessings we have . . . to live for God and for others . . . to share and generously give. It’s a great life!

Beginning in April, Mt. Olive will be starting a stewardship campaign which will encourage us again to focus our lives on God and to pursue godliness with contentment. It will help us re-order our lives so they are in agreement with God’s values. The focus is not on how much we give to God, but rather how much God has already given to us and what our heart-felt response should be.

Please join with your coordinating council, stewardship committee and our church members as we pray for God’s blessing upon our upcoming stewardship emphasis. Please include in your prayers all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, that we eagerly desire to live cheerful and productive lives, to God’s glory.

Your servants in Christ,
Stewardship committee
Ryan Jacobs, Chairman

VBS - 2004

Our summer VBS –2004 program will be held July 26 through July 30. This is a little earlier than previous years for a number of reasons. Plan now to participate! The theme for Vacation Bible School this year will be "Bird Tails". (Job 12:7)

Kevin Marschel

Memorials

Once again we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the following memorials to the congregation:

Building & Maintenance Fund

…In honor of Aunt Martha Ball's 100^th birthday from Art & Maxine Schmugge

Treasurer’s Report

A couple of items from the congregational assembly I wanted to reiterate.

As reported, the 2004 budget has been finalized. The council determined to reduce our synod support by the costs we incur by supporting the Chinese congregation. We used a rather conservative number of $300 a week as the cost of supporting the Chinese church. Those costs are offset by the amount of rent we receive ($400 a month), leaving a difference of $10,800 for the year. We will use that number to reduce the amount given to support the synod. We still give 19% of every dollar contributed towards the support of synod or the Chinese congregation.

Here are some actual numbers.

Year Synod Support

2001 $27,600

2002 $26,950

2003 $25,900

2004 $20,200 (budgeted)

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Another question that was asked at the congregation meeting was the percentage of the budget used for community outreach. That amount is $3,700, or 2% of the budget. This figure seems low, but there are other budgeted items, such as Vacation Bible School, that are also used for community outreach that is not technically included in the Outreach budget.