Two months out
Eric Hullstrom, pastor of Salem Lutheran Church, Jackson, Minn., offers provisions on the first day of school.
First day of school O
Good one! Producing books
in Braille If you walk into just about any
ELCA church, you’ll find women (and sometimes men) gathered around quilt squares, sewing machines, or wielding knitting nee- dles or crochet hooks. What’s less likely are volunteers feeding metal plates through a machine that cre- ates pages for Braille books. But that’s what they’ve been doing at Lutheran Church of Our
Tissues for parents, doughnuts for everyone
n the first day of school, Salem Lutheran Church, Jackson, Minn., will consider doughnut holes, beverages and tissues among their most important ministry tools.
In fact, last Aug. 22 Eric Hullstrom, pastor of Salem, began his
“The Heart of a Pastor” blog (http://heartofapastor.wordpress. com) this way: “Today I helped serve doughnut holes. It was nothing fancy, just some regular, sugar and powdered sugar doughnut holes. There was also juice and coffee … and a Kleenex or two (which came in handy … parents, you can probably figure out why).” The community of Jackson is deep in southwestern Minnesota, not far from the Iowa and South Dakota borders. Riverside Elementary School is next to Salem, offering parents a convenient way to drop off
and pick up their kids via the church parking lot. From late August to mid-May, dozens of cars and lots of people come on the church property throughout the week. “I challenged the church council to think about how this is a unique mission oppor- tunity, that people are coming to us twice a day, five days a week, nine months a year …,” Hullstrom told The Lutheran, pleased that the board stepped forward with a back- to-school welcome table. “We set up camp in the church parking lot by the sidewalk that leads to the school,” Hullstrom wrote in his blog. Council mem- bers set out provisions. “Some happily accepted. Some didn’t know what to think of us. Some declined and wished they hadn’t just eaten,” he added. Many of them smiled. Hullstrom wanted to make clear that he and council members weren’t in the parking lot to recruit but to offer the love of Christ, concluding his blog with: “We didn’t preach sermons this morning, we just served dough- nut holes with a smile. Most people can do that without getting too nervous. How is God calling you to serve in your commu- nity? How is God calling you to share the love of Christ in a practical way?”
Saviour in Mineola, N.Y., since 1964. They’re known as “Workstation #26” to Lutheran Braille Workers, a national organization that provides Christian materials in more than 30 languages to visually impaired people in more than 120 countries (
www.lbwinc.org). Volunteers hole punch special
paper, number it, encase the pages in metal plates, and run those plates through a machine that punches the dots. Numbering the pages is critical since they can’t read Braille. The pages are collated, inserted in binders and shipped off to individu- als or institutions worldwide. Volun- teers gather Wednesday mornings
and afternoons, each month com- pleting 50 first and second volumes of Basics of Christianity. Workstation #43 at St. Paul
Lutheran Church in New City, N.Y., began in 1968 as an evening activ- ity for women and men. Today 10 women meet Wednesday mornings to churn out five books a week, 88-page Braille versions of Galatians and Philemon.
Does your congregation do a specific ministry in October, November or December? Send details to
julie.sevig@
thelutheran.org. June 2012 39
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