YCGL - Minnesota - Day 5 - Thursday, April 21- Dubuque - 79 miles

One of my goals for this trip was to go to Dubuque.  Well, actually, Wartburg Seminary...Well, actually, the President of the Seminary, Kristin Johnston Largen.  I wrote Kristin last week and said I'd like to see her and she wrote back that she was going to be in Denver on Thursday and not on campus.  Argh, too bad, but the Seminary was still there and I also wanted to see Dean Craig Nessan.  Still a worthwhile goal.  

I drove to the Miller campground on the Mississippi River and parked and then drove over to the Sem.  I got a good laugh as I drove in.  I wonder if the sign on the left was anything like Dante's sign over the gates of hell, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".  I HOPE not!!!  :))

The campus is small, primarily three buildings around the courtyard with the famous Martin Luther statue in front of the church.  Fritschel Hall, the administration/classroom/library building is peaking around the corner to the right.  Across the green from it is the Residence Hall.

I knowing that Kristin wasn't there, I asked if Dean Nessan was in, and yes, but he was in class now but would be out in an hour.  So I wandered around the floor, looking at class pictures and professors from history.  I was about to go into the library when a voice behind me shouted "Thom!".  I knew that voice well.  It was Kristin.  Her flight to Denver had been delayed so she came back to campus to Zoom in to the meeting.  Her secretary didn't know this and so us meeting up was a complete surprise for both of us.  You can't tell me that the finger of God wasn't in there pushing us together!

When I was president of the council at Trinity Lutheran in Laramie in 1994, Pastor Rohr was on the first sabbatical that Trinity had ever supported.  When he came back, we discussed the idea of Trinity starting an internship program for third year seminary students, a major commitment for a small church like ours.  However, we voted on it the next annual meeting and Ralph and I must have done a good sales job because the congregation voted for it unanimously.  Ralph sent the paperwork in the next morning and we were approved immediately.  Since I was no longer president and I was going off council and didn't have anything else to do.... I volunteered to become the Chairman of the Internship Committee.  Our first intern was a woman.  Her name was Kristin Johnston.  She was the first of the twenty interns I chaired for (and cheered for!)  After serving her first call in Arvada, CO (I think at her home church), she obtained a PhD in comparative theology with Buddhism and Hinduism.  She taught at Gettysburg Seminary for a number of years, becoming Dean there, and started her presidency at Wartburg last year.  She is still one of the most dynamic people I know.  It was so good to see her!  I think we could have talked for hours instead of the 30 minutes we blessedly had!

After we talked and she got on her Zoom, I met Paul Erbes, another faculty member interns have talked about, in the hallway.   We talked for a while when he asked where I was from.  When I said Laramie, he replied that he had served as pastor in Gillette for eight years and was the Dean of the Wyoming District during that time.  (Pastor Nate is currently the Dean of the District.)  But, while we talked, Craig Nessan had finished class and was gone.  I went up to his office and knocked on the door but I didn't  hear an answer.  I was just walking around a corner of the hallway when I heard "Thomas" in this wonderful deep voice.  He had just read a note from his secretary that I was looking for him and he caught me.  Unfortunately, he had a next class in a few minutes, so we only talked in the hallway, but I thanked him for all the help he had been while he was in charge of the internship program.  I was once called a "mini-me" of Craig.  He is 6'6" with a long beard and is a profound thinker as you would expect from a theology professor.  And a killer basketball player.  And a great guy.  In the rush, I didn't get a picture of him.  

I finally got to the library and walked every nook and cranny of all three floors.  Next to the chapel and the commons and a stroll.  It was nice and good to connect with the places I heard interns talk about for years.  

(Dirty Dark Secret.  I thought of seminary for many years from elementary school well into college.  I actually remember a conversation I had with Pastor Reck about it when I was five.  I finally decided that my true calling was engineering.  It was close, but not quite right.  My true calling came later, it was teaching engineering.  But chairing interns meant a lot more to me than I think many realized.)