S1E62 - We're Not Dead, Yet.

This is Ben.

And this is Keith. And this is Main Street Lutherans. And for our 62nd episode, we thought we would mention that we're not dead yet.

Absolutely. At least I'm not.

Me too. Not still yet.

So it's been a while. Um, we have a lot going on.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's what this episode is going to be about mostly.

Exactly. We have a lot going on and so do other people.

That's right.

Yeah, you go first. What do you got going?

Well, so I started beginning of July being the pastoral presence at Good Hope Lutheran Church in Garden City, Michigan. That is on top of doing a lot of new and interesting work at Greenfield Village, which I am told I have to explain to folks more often by my preaching professor, Dr. Wiseman, if you're listening to this. I'm not going to explain it here either, but so we opened a house from Jackson, or from the Jackson home from Selma, Alabama on June 12th, and it's gotten lots of great reviews and such, but it's been a lot of work. So I'm working part-time at a church, I'm working part-time at the museum, and then for some reason I decided to take a full load of classes at United Lutheran Seminary, including Greek intensive for 2 weeks. And, uh, and so I've—

but you survived Greek by now.

Yeah, I survived.

So you're not dead yet, and Greek didn't do you in?

No, as far as I know. Right. I'll pinch myself and see. Um, but that on top of having, you know, a kid starting college and living at home, and then a junior in high school, um, it's been a lot. It's been actually way too much. And so I'm taking a, a month off from the museum, uh, to try to make up for some time, but it's still a lot. Yeah. How about you?

Um, I don't know if I can, I can't quantify mine as easily. We certainly are just busy. Uh, my wife is traveling for the second time in 2 months to Florida to teach a conference, uh, over the weekend. I've got a 13-year-old at home. who is in a school play that's rehearsing 2 nights a week and in dance classes that take her out of the house 3 nights a week. That does not equate to 5 nights a week out of the house. That is all in 3 nights a week. And yeah, it's— and so there's that. And then things, you know, at church, it's stewardship season. Everybody loves that. So there's lots of extra Just kind of writing and admin things that I'm involved in for that. You know, we turned the corner from summer into fall, which for us includes our annual congregational retreat, which we pivoted not exactly at the last minute, but late in planning. We decided instead of doing a 3-day, 2-night retreat, we made it just a single-day event. Which went really well, but we just didn't have the registrations earlier on to justify doing the full event. So we did just one day at Camp Nawakwa, which was— it was a beautiful day. It was a really fun day, a full day. And we had about, I think it was 60 people, not quite altogether. So yeah.

That's great.

Yeah, that was cool. And just, yeah, some projects at home. And yeah, life is just busy. I'm actually taking this weekend off while Debbie's away, and looking forward to being at home and finishing some things around the house, not preparing a sermon this Sunday, and not being in worship on Sunday. So. Yeah, that's us. And then part of the challenge we've had as far as the podcast specifically goes is that the, the one night that we used to routinely record on is no longer available to us.

And yeah, I've got— trying to find— yeah, yeah.

So trying to find another night is, is just kind of awkward. But, um, yeah. And then it's not just us.

No.

Um, you know, we're busy, but we've also— we can give you Couple of updates on, um, uh, some of our former podcast guests.

Yeah. Well, and, and it starts with, we were actually on A Mighty Fortress Is Our Pod with Matthew Longfellow. Uh, that's one of the more recent episodes. He's been doing a series with, uh, well, I think we were the second in a series of 2, uh, interviews with podcasts. And so, so that was, that was interesting. So we, we weren't cheating on you guys, our audience. We were, uh, we were, uh, that was a lot easier than making our own episode, I'll tell you that.

Um, right.

But speaking of, of Matthew Longfellow, the host of Mighty Fortresses, our pod, uh, he'll be starting an internship soon if he hasn't already. And so very excited about that. He'll be moving on hopefully to ordination very shortly.

Yeah.

It'll feel that way. I'm sure during his internship it won't feel like it's going quick, but Um, I, I'll get there.

Yeah, but he's a great guy. We wish him well.

Yeah. If you remember Justin Marquis, uh, Justin, uh, rode on his bike and, uh, talked to us about stopping in at churches on a, on a bike ride through, um, was that primarily Ohio?

I think northern Midwest.

Yeah. Yeah. I, or I think he didn't go the whole, whole distance he was planning, but but some—

Right.

About some of the places. And, uh, so he just started an internship, um, through Wartburg Seminary. I think he's in the Quad Cities. So way to go, Justin. Uh, also Ollie Berg, if you remember from the Psalmcast podcast, he was in Fairbanks, Alaska. Now he's in Everett, Washington with another child, and he just started his PhD work at United Lutheran Seminary. And so maybe he'll get to TA a class for me, um, that I'm in. That'd be exciting.

Right.

Maybe I could, you know, slip him some extra mentions and get a better grade. The other thing that's happening is somebody that Keith got to talk to, Bishop Haddad. At that time it was Reverend Dr. Ahmad Haddad, was then elected Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. Bishop Haddad is doing a tour through the United States right now. He will be in Detroit on October 10th. You might check and see if he's somewhere in your area raising awareness of what's happening in the Holy Lands and Palestine. And so got a lot going on there. We just wanted to make a short episode to make sure that you knew that we're still around. We're still trying to do the good work. And actually, we're recording on September 30th. And Keith is the first person I've seen today that was wearing his orange shirt. Um, I got an orange shirt today for Orange Shirt Day. It'll be over by the time this episode comes out, but it's good to see that we, uh, we remembered.

Right.

Point of the day.

Both got the memo. Yeah, so certainly we lift up in prayer, in awareness, in humility and respect, you know, our church and anyone connected to the former Indian boarding schools, their families, etc. And so we, we honor their legacy amongst us.

Yeah, especially in light of it being the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, noting that we are on land that was occupied by other people before we got here in some form. Yeah. All right. Well, Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote, and the show is produced by Fote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links, and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace, serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.