Michael Stadtmueller's blog

Greetings,

We are fortunate to have Pastor Paul Schairer working as a Senior Pastor interim with us. Besides filling a pastoral void and assisting at church as a half-time minister, he will be assisting us in visioning. As an interim pastor his leadership and experience will help us in making our plans for the future. I want you to know that personally I couldn’t be happier with having him join us.

There's always somebody needing help. And we do a tremendous job as a congregation of helping out. We raised over $700 for Catholic Charities on the last weekend of April. We had over $6,000 come from our congregation for the earthquakes in Haiti. We regularly step up and give.

As we begin the new year, I encourage you to consider reading upon an issue that affects us all.
Six new Books centering on the struggles in Israel and Palestine for peace have been added to our
Library and are available to be checked out. The titles of these books are:

• Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Phyllis Bennis
• Witnessing for Peace by Munib Younan
• Occupied with Nonviolence by Jean Zaru
• And Christians and a Land Called Holy by Charles Lutz and Robert Smith

It was a difficult weekend. Jim Rasmussen who has been the pastor at Trinity, passed
away. The congregation not to mention his family was caught completely off-guard. Please put
their congregation in your prayers.
I had the privilege of proclaiming the promise of Christ Jesus in the midst of this crisis .
Due to the short-term circumstance of his passing (he died Friday night), and being the only ELCA
congregation with 2 pastors, I was asked to help the congregation through this difficult time.