VACANCY PASTOR AND NEW WORSHIP SCHEDULE
Pastor Mark Rieke, First Lutheran, LaCrescent, will be our vacancy pastor. Due to the shortage of available pastors, he will serve both First Lutheran and St. John’s on Sundays. Feel free to call Pastor Rieke about hospitalizations or any other pastoral needs. His cell phone number is 608-881-4041. Email: MarkWRieke@gmail.com
St. John’s will have only one worship service at 10:30am.
9:00am will be Bible Ed Hour, as scheduled – Fellowship Hour will be the first Sunday each month.
Other WELS congregations have earlier worship services.
8:30am at Trinity, Wilson and Zion in Hokah
9:00am First Lutheran in La Crescent and St. Luke’s in Pickwick
6:30pm on Mondays at First Lutheran, La Crescent
6:30pm on Thursdays at St. Luke’s, Pickwick
7:30pm on Thursdays at Grace, Ridgeway
If you attend any of these churches and give your offering in a St. John’s offering envelope, it will make its way back to St. John’s in Nodine. You can also send offerings by mail. Our services will continue to be posted on YouTube.
Please be prayerful and patient, attend congregation meetings, read newsletters, bulletins, and emails as we continue together forward in faith with the ministry at St. John’s. Contact Pastor Rieke or the school office phone or email with any questions. office@stjohnsnodine.org 507-643-6440
Easter Changes Things
I know that the April newsletter will likely arrive after Easter. But I have two related Easter memories that I want to share.
This year Easter is early, March 31. That was the date of Easter in 2002 too. My family and I were still living in Malawi (Africa) at the time and sometime in mid-March I got a phone call…from my mother’s doctor. It wasn’t good news. They had found cancer…at an advanced stage…and she didn’t have long to live. I headed back home, to Tomah, a few days later. And every day I drove mom over to Gundersen Lutheran for cancer treatments, until they realized it wasn’t helping. The time alone together in the car was special. But more special still was celebrating Easter together – with my sister and her family, with three of my kids who were at Luther Prep at the time, and with mom. Easter reminded us that when she left this earth, it wouldn’t be the end. We heard Jesus’ words, “I am the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25) and, “Because I live, you also will live,” (John 14:19). We cried, but we were comforted. A few days later, I left to go back to Africa. I knew when I left that it would be the last time that I would see my mother on earth. But I knew that it wouldn’t be the last time I would see her. I knew that I would see her again in a much better place, feeling and looking a whole lot better than she ever had before. It was one of those great ironies that less than a year later, I was called to serve as a pastor in La Crosse. Mom would have loved that! But we’ll be much closer than that one day.
About ten years after that, I received and accepted a call to serve in India. India is not a place that is very hospitable to Christians. But that has made believers there resilient. And that resiliency shows itself in some beautiful ways. One of them is that early on Easter mornings, while it is still dark, Christians gather in cemeteries. They whitewash the tombs of their family members who have been buried there (remember most Indians are Hindus who cremate their dead). And then they place light candles on the graves of their relatives whose souls are now with the Lord. They hear the Easter story read. They sing Easter hymns. They are comforted.
Easter changed things. It changes how we look at death. It also changes the way we look at life. It gives us comfort in both life and death. What happened in 2002 and what happens in India has led me to understand and appreciate that more. It has also led me to treasure the prayer that is on page 60 of the red hymnal: For the faithful who have gone before us, who have shared with us your good news, whose souls are now at rest in your heavenly kingdom, we give you thanks, O Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen!
Pastor Mark