Southwood Lutheran Church

A Thank You from Iraq

I received this email from a Southwood member, Dan Moss, who is deployed in Iraq. Dan recently received a Military Care Packages prepared and sent by a team of Southwood members. Dan's message is below. If you have a message of encouragement for Dan and our other deployed service members, share it in a comment to this post. I will make sure they get your messages.

Pastor Ryan,

Thanks to you and the members of Southwood that sent the cookies, magazines and newspaper. We are still living in a tent so we really do have everything we need. But the reminders from home are great to see. I couldn't tell you the last time I read a newspaper. We are on the list to move into more permanent housing, but no move-in dates yet.

Our camp is pretty small, but busy. The mission is important, so visitors and media are common. We have a gym and a tent to watch movies, play ping pong and pool and play X-box, but that's pretty much the extent
of it. Thankfully, I guess, we work long days so there isn't a lot of free time. The weather is starting to heat up some. Got up to 107-108 earlier in the week. We still have about 20-30 degrees to go once summer hits us. Thankfully, I work at night so I get to miss the heat of the day.

Thank you again for the care package, and more importantly, for all of the thoughts and prayers that go out to me and all service members abroad.

1LT Daniel Moss
530th MP BN

Going the Extra Mile

On Sunday, April 20th, you may have noticed several middle and high school students walking or running on a treadmill in our Café area. They were raising both money and awareness for the Extra Mile walk for the Food Bank of Lincoln. The walk specifically benefits the Backpack Program and will be held this Saturday, April 26th at 10:00am.

About 15 high school students and adult leaders from Southwood will be walking on Saturday as a team to support this cause. Many more Southwood students will be walking as a part of teams from their schools. All told, the students and adult leaders raised $520 for the Extra Mile, which will provide 7 students a backpack full of food for an entire school semester!

If you want to Get involved with Southwood's efforts at Saratoga Elementary school click here.

Check out what Jacob and Jay had to say about participating in this great cause!

Jay is Going the Extra Mile

Learn more about the Back Pack program here and here. Due to technical difficulties (dead batteries) Jay's video gets cut off - what he had to say was passionate and eloquent to say the least! Thanks to all the youth who continue to reach out to those in need.

Jacob is Going the Extra Mile

Learn more about the Back Pack program here and here.

Am I Really Suffering?

A couple of months ago, Kim (Turnage) had a blog that referred to a daily devotional. It was by a Pastor Kerry Nelson and I liked it so much I subscribed. He continues to make me think deeply and discover new ways to apply scripture to my life. He recently wrote about the following verse from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God's doing. For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.” Philippians 1:27-30

He writes about how seldom we have to suffer persecution. When we think of suffering, it probably relates to sacrifices of our time, talents, treasures and concern.

I am currently part of a group that is preparing for the teacher’s summer trip to Tanzania to teach in Uroki, a secondary school in Southwood’s sister parish, Uswaa. Like most people, I have a variety of responsibilities in my life and I have been struggling to find time to spend on preparation. It was late the other night as I was trying to come up with a plan for teaching math – did I mention my background is teaching business? My mind wandered to Uroki, the teachers there, their rooms with cement floors, broken chalkboards and perhaps one book for 6 students to share. They lack most of the resources and supplies that are plentiful in our schools. Yet on a daily basis they go into their classrooms and do their best to share knowledge and bring understanding to their students.

Every time I go to Tanzania I think about the monetary cost – it costs about $3,000 just to get there. And every time I get there I ask them the same question – wouldn’t it be better if I just sent the money?

I Have Been To The End Of The Road

We travel a lot of different roads in our lives. In and out of our driveways, places of work, and school pick-up zones. We know I-80, Capital Parkway, and South 40th Street very well. We love green lights and passing lanes, and we detest detours, road construction, and people who stop when they see yellow.

But sometimes we learn the most about ourselves when we are willing to travel a new road. For instance a road that leads us to someone else's home or a road that leads us into someone else's pain. A mission experience can often take us down those roads. Over spring break Southwood sent a mission team to Honduras, they took with them a group from First Plymouth, many of whom had never been there before. They had the opportunity to travel a new road - riding in the back of a pick up, bouncing over gravel, and battling the dust and wind they arrived at the end of the road. They arrived at someone's home, they experienced someone's pain - they were led down that road to "the poorest of the poor." Here is what one person wrote about this experience:

I have been to Honduras.
I have been to the “end of the road”. The end of the road is where the poorest people live.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
Women wash clothes on a rock, pouring water on them with a bowl from a barrel.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
Small children have to grind corn with a hand grinder so their mother can make tortillas in a wood fired oven that runs all the time.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
There are few older people because the constant smoke from the ovens fills their lungs and kills the lung tissue.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
A mother and her seven children, along with the grandfather, lived in a one room house that is no larger than 10’ by 12’. Her husband deserted her.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
The water comes directly out of the river and flows back in after using it for cooking, bathing, etc.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
Many bathrooms consist of four poles with plastic sheeting wrapped around them.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
The school is missing half of its roof. The students and the books get wet when it rains. The swings are gone. The slide has a rusted sheet of metal sticking up at the bottom One side of all the teeter totters is missing.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
There is no electricity; therefore there is no refrigeration.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
There are no stores. You can’t buy anything, even if you had the money.
Life is hard at the end of the road.
You know you need to do something to help the people at the end of the road.

Think about the roads you travel every day, the paths you take. How often do you walk along side someone in need? How often do you have the sense that you need to do something to help?

Have you been to "the end of the road?" What was your experience like? What changed in your own road because of "the end of the road?" Life is hard at the end of the road, but just about every time - that is where we will find Jesus.

Thanks to our Southwood mission team for taking this adventure and thanks to Mike Aron from First Plymouth for writing about it!

Pastor Sara

City Impact

The Impact Learning Center (ILC) at City Impact was featured yesterday in the Journal Star. You can read the article here. Southwood has about 20 people volunteering at the ILC each week. Volunteers, like the one featured in the Journal Star article, work one on one with a child to encourage them in developing their reading skills.

During this past school year I've been a reading tutor for a young girl in 1st grade. While her reading has improved significantly, what is even more fun for me is building a relationship with her. I've been able to be a small part of of her joys, successes, and even her challenges. I continue to pray that God will use me to make some kind of positive impact on her life.

Have you been a City Impact tutor? What have you experienced? What would you say to encourage others to consider volunteering in this way? Post a comment!

Pastor Sara

You can learn more about City Impact on their website, and you can read some great ILC stories on the ILC blog.

Thanks LSC!!

This past week we got a check to support the Honduras Mission from the college students who worship at the Lutheran Student Center at UNL.

Throughout the school year they worship on Sunday mornings and collect an offering, the students heard the story of our mission in Honduras and wanted to use their offerings to support it. We thank them for looking outside of their doors and getting involved in ministry locally and globally. Maybe one day some of those students will get to travel to Honduras and see what an impact they can make.

Tonight Pastor Eric Bostrom, Campus Pastor at the Lutheran Student Center will be joining us for our Maundy Thursday worship service. He will also be back this summer to preach at Southwood - we thank Pastor Eric for his important ministry with students on campus and here at Southwood too!

Saratoga Kids Say Thanks

Around Valentine's Day Southwood's Sunday School students made snack sacks for kids at Saratoga. The sacks had cheese and crackers, raisins, and other snacks...and they were beautifully hand-decorated by the Sunday School kids. See more pictures of Southwood's kids making the bags here. Recently, we got some very special thank-you's from Saratoga students. My words can't do them justice, so here they are.

USE it on Thursday.

This week we're thinking about what it means to have a living hope. For a refresher, listen to Sunday's sermon or Tuesday's "Use It" post.

The following article is a great example of someone living out their hope. It talks about sacrificing pieces of one's self and one's own expectations in order to serve in God's world. What is incredible to me is that by doing this we not only bring hope to those in need, but we also get to see God working (through us) to bring this living hope into the world. This is a great read!

Inner-City Smell-O-Vision, by Bart Campolo

No words can really communicate the essence of what we are doing here. For that, you'd need Smell-O-Vision.

In case you didn't know, Smell-O-Vision was a system developed in the 1950s that released odors
during the projection of a movie so that the viewer could actually smell what was happening onscreen. Thirty years later, cult filmmaker John Waters tried the same thing with scratch and sniff cards. In both cases, the idea was to take advantage of the scientific fact that smell is easily the strongest and most vivid of our senses when it comes to processing emotional experiences. If you've ever smelled something and had memories you hadn't thought of in years come flooding back, you know what I'm talking about.

What you may not know, however, is what the scent of urine in a hallway tells you about a low-rent apartment building, or what the combination of cigarette smoke and baby formula on an infant's blanket tells you about a family, or what cheap liquor on an addict's early morning breath tells you about the rest of their day, or maybe the rest of their life. These are some of the smells I'm learning these days.