The National Alliance on Mental Illness will hold Family-to-Family, a free class for families, partners, and friends of individuals 18 years or older living with a serious mental health condition. The course is designed to facilitate a better underst…
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In my time in the Quad Cities, I have been trying to keep my eyes peeled for what unites us as residents of this town. What is a common experience we all share, regardless of race or age or class, or education level? I have come to the conclusion it…
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Editor’s note: Andy Langdon is the director of youth ministries at St. Paul. He led the devotion at staff meeting this week, where he shared his thoughts on the youth mission trip last week to Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s the week after the mission trip to…
ChurchJazz, a Chicago-based jazz ministry, will come to paint the town jazz at St. Paul Lutheran Church on Sunday, July 31. This group of veteran musicians will play the Chicago Jazz Mass at the 9:20 and 11 a.m. services. This year, the featured solo…
They are almost home. A refugee family – who has spent months, but more likely years, waiting through a strenuous process to be approved for resettlement – will soon arrive in the United States. Last week, 70 St. Paul people came to a training sessio…
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If you ask just about anyone who’s ever tried to learn French, they will tell you: the subjunctive is hard. The subjunctive is not a verb tense – like past, present, or future – it is a mood. Other moods, which we use without thinking, are the indic…
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It started out as a strip of plants along the back of Jeanne Withycombe’s home. Today, on these July days of sunshine and rain, her large garden bursts with life – colorful flowers, beautiful birds and crawling little critters. “It’s at one of its pr…
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Goodbyes are always hard. As I near the end of my time at St. Paul, I wasn’t expecting to say goodbye just a year into my residency. I had plans; plans to be here for two years. I had plans; plans to really live into parish ministry and fall in love…
When I joined the St. Paul staff eleven months ago as director of faith formation, I got a lot of quizzical looks. I often had to answer the question, what’s that? The shortest way to answer is to say my job is about learning or Christian education….
One night when Deb Whitford was leaving her office at Lutheran Services of Iowa, or LSI, she heard a noise that she thought she should go check on. She didn’t think anyone else was in the building – but she was mistaken. Deb opened the door to a conf…
Their first bundle of joy, Bradley James, came home in October 1958. Then followed Douglas Ward in September 1960. The youngest, Sara Lynn, followed in August 1963. Betty Dexter had always wanted a family. Through adoption with her husband Jim, she b…
She was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Her father is a retired Lebanese diplomat and agricultural expert, her mother is a teacher and musician from the northern suburbs of Chicago. His family was also from the northern suburbs of Chicago, and he grew up in…