YCGL - Nov 6, 2024 - Laramie - Don't Stop the World, I Don't Want To Get Off, But It Could Slow Down a Little - Draft

 Whoa!  What a couple of weeks this has been.  

Early September-October 19th

We celebrated our 140th Anniversary at my church, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church on October 19th.  For some reason, I was on the organizing committee.  However, rather than being in charge of plates and silverware and such, I was asked to write and present a history of the Internship program which I helped start in  1995 and which lasted until 2014.  And since I was chairman of the Internship Committee for that whole period of time, it kind of made sense, and I really couldn't duck out of it.  

And I volunteered to coordinate our keynote speaker who I've been in contact with in the last couple of years.  Kristin Johnston Largen was our first intern, who, after graduating from Wartburg Seminary, went on and obtained a PhD in Comparative Theology at Berkeley.  She taught at Gettysburg Seminary for many years and became the Dean of Students.  And she is now the president of Wartburg Seminary, so has made a complete circle.  And is a really nice lady!  So I was happy to do that also.

I really started thinking about it when I got back from my trip this summer and decided if I was going to write about the program, I should get the interns' perspective as well.  I gathered the locations and emails of the former interns and sent an email to them in late August requesting information about their churches and families.  I got about five back the first week and then nothing for a while.  I sent a second letter in mid September and got about seven back that time,  In early October, I sent another letter individually to those who hadn't written and got a few more back, then a couple right before the talk (a deadline is a good time to start!) and one more afterwards.  Two are no longer rostered, so I didn't expect anything from them, and two just didn't write back for some reason.  Eugh.  So, I finally got fifteen out of the nineteen, which is pretty good.  

I had started writing my report