For Baptism of our Lord Sunday, my mom and I drove northwest of Mesa to Lord of Life Lutheran in Sun City West. One of our Northwest Intermountain Synod candidates for Word and Sacrament ministry received full-tuition scholarship from this congregation for his seminary education at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley. I figured that since I was relatively close, I could go make the trip and say thank you. Mom and I slipped into the very end of the 8:30 am worship service and were seated in the front pew. Imagine our surprise when we looked behind us and saw the Tuckers, who we used to worship with at our home church: Custer Lutheran Fellowship in Custer, SD! On our way to coffee hour between the two services, a woman thanked me for my words and said she had been baptized at Cameron Emmanuel near Kendrick, ID where I was for the Second Sunday of Advent!! (Read on for more NWIM Synod connections).

My first Sunday in Mesa, mom and I attended Love of Christ, where several members of Lutheran Church of the Master, Coeur d’Alene came up to me and said, “You’re our bishop!” One of them was Pat Fuller. Years ago she and her husband gifted this cross to the congregation. As the congregation has just sold the part of the building where the cross hung, she and her husband offered to bring it to their winter congregation, Love of Christ!