From the Desk of Pastor Marsha
What’s Happening 5.09.24
This summer I will be attending the ELCA National Youth Gathering, July 15 through July 20, with our three young people who are attending, as well as Melanie Sigafoose. Melanie graciously agreed to head up the planning of this youth gathering last year at about this time. I want to say a big thank you to her for all the legwork and planning she has done to get us where we are, and where we need to be.
Melanie first contacted some area churches to see if there was another that had a similar size number of young people attending. She found First Lutheran in Cedar Rapids had 4 young people signed up to attend and they were interested in joining with us and traveling together. She has been working with their Director of Youth and family Minister, Micheal Beckmann, whose has gone to many youth gatherings and a great help for our planning. All of us took a trip up to First Lutheran at the end of March. We had pizza and then talked about our expectations for the Youth Gathering. We will be hosting them here at Zion on May 19 to share another meal and discuss more plans about the trip.
The Endowment graciously gave us $8000 to get us a long way to traveling to New Orleans, our hotel costs, and the registration fees for the five of us. The families, of course, also contributed and we raised funds for the Gathering offering of Hurricane Relief buckets through the Lenten Noisy Offering Sundays.
As you know young people today are super busy. There are so many opportunities and expectations for their young lives, we were thrilled to have three young people interested in going. Just to give you a picture of how things have changed, a normal youth gathering before the pandemic would host between 30,000 -40,000. This year after missing the 2021 gathering, there are around 13,000 youth attending. I think that is partly due to the lack of continuity of young people who can go twice in their 4 years of high school, or siblings sharing of their experiences of a previous gathering. But I think it also reflects just how much is on our young people’s plates.
I am so glad these young people are taking advantage of this opportunity. I truly believe it is one of the best things that the ELCA provides for our youth to nurture their faith journey. It is quite an experience to see so many other young Lutherans singing in worship or participating in service together.
We will be having one fundraiser starting this Sunday. As many churches have done, we will be selling “stock” in our trip. The purchased “stock” will be a ticket to a “Stockholder’s Party” following the trip where the young people will share their experiences. For all of our members who want Zion to be the church that reaches out to youth, I encourage you all to purchase a stock or two in our “once in a lifetime” experience for our three youth.
