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Granite Falls Lutheran News

May 2020

Virtual Worship Services

Worship services will continue to be livestreamed on the GFLC Facebook page.

If you are unable to tune in live, the services will be posted to Facebook and

YouTube after being streamed. Our services also continue to be broadcasted on

both KMDA radio (93.9 FM & 1460 AM) on Sunday mornings at 7:40 am

as well as on the local cable channel 8 on Sundays at 7:00 pm.

GFLC Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/GFLCGFMN/

GFLC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/gflcMNelca/feed

Special Congregational Meeting

The Special Congregational Meeting will be held on Sunday, May 31st at 10:00 am. The plan is to do a virtual meeting via Facebook live followed by a contact-free vote to call a senior pastor. More specific information will be released to you all once we are closer to this date, so be sure to check your emails frequently. Those without email will receive an in-struction letter via mail. The council is looking into passing a continuing resolution in order

to hold meetings electronically and/or by telephone. The council will be discussing this at their May 12th meeting.

*The Semi-Annual Congregational Meeting is tentatively being held on June 7th.

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Worship in May

Come let us worship together as we sing praises to our God and grow in faith together.

Want to Sign Up for Electronic Giving?

Check out the Granite Falls Lutheran Website. (www.granitefallslutheran.com)

On the home page you will see a link titled “Give Online” towards the upper

right part of your screen. From there you will be able to complete the easy

sign-up. This is a simple way to pre-arrange offerings to the church.

Direct link to simply giving sign up: click here

Special Music

Benson Family Singers

* Rescheduled for

September *

We want to thank you all for your

continued support of our

congregation whether you have

mailed or dropped off contributions,

or signed up for electronic giving.

We truly appreciate everyone!!

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This month has been a strange one. We celebrated Easter remotely, postponed a vote to call a Senior Pastor (twice), and have started to settle into this new reality of COVID-19 dis-tancing. For those of you keeping track, we’ve been doing church remotely for eight weeks now, as March 15th was our first Sunday worshipping remotely. I know it’s been hard for me to worship without all of you, and I have to imagine that is the case for many of you as well. With that all said, there are some positives that I would like to highlight.

Normally I do visitation for 4-10 hours a week. This includes hospital visits, in house visits, and visits to the nearby retirement homes. Since I have limited time, I’m rarely visiting with the majority of you all who are doing well, and spending most of the time visiting with folks who are in more urgent need. However, since COVID-19 has shut down all of my in per-son visiting, I’ve been taking to the phone lines. So far I’ve reached out to 50 households, with the goal of reaching out to about 10 times as many. It’s a bit daunting, but I’m enjoying check-ing in with everybody and getting a general sense of how things are going. So far I’ve spoken with 30 people, and the general consensus is that y’all are doing fine, but are bored. I sympa-thize with all of you, while we all know it’s best to socially isolate, that doesn’t make it fun.

Speaking of being bored, now is an especially strange time to parent. If we had two pastors, one of us would likely be spending much more of our time on creating stuff (videos and whatnot) for kiddos. However, between administrative tasks and sermon prep and the general complexity of church in COVID-19 times, I don’t really have much extra time or men-tal ability to create videos/curriculum for kids. If you, or someone you know would be inter-ested in helping us out in creating videos for kiddos (such as an online Sunday School) please reach out to us!

In other positive news, we’ve been having more and more people watching our online services. On Easter Sunday we had 1700 views on Facebook, which is certainly more than we could pack in our sanctuary. I’ve heard stories of people watching remotely who haven’t been able to attend worship in a while, which is a blessing for them and us. My own grandmother has been watching Sunday mornings regularly, which is a joy for both of us. We will likely continue doing some sort of Facebook live video once we all get past COVID-19, as it’s a great way to reach people we otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach. We’re working on reaching out to folks that don’t have access to Facebook or YouTube, and can’t access the Public TV station or radio broadcast. I’ve been typing up my sermons ahead of time for these folks, and we’ll start sending them out soon. If you know of someone who really wants to receive a written copy of the sermon, please let us know.

Despite all the COVID-19 complications, Kayla Anderson and I have been in conversa-tion with our candidate for the Senior Pastor position. The individual is still interested, but they want to remain with their current congregation until things settle down a bit. Right now we’re looking at this person possibly starting sometime mid to late summer. Because of this, we are not sharing details about the candidate to preserve their anonymity, and to let them tell their congregation on their own timeline. We are holding a Special Congregational Meet-ing to vote on extending a call to this candidate on May 31st. We’re speaking with local health officials and with representatives of the Synod to make sure that the meeting would be safe for all those who vote, abide by our constitutional guidelines, and be accepted by the synod. We will share more information about this later on.

Finally, I’m excited to preach more on our stained glass windows. They really are beautiful, and it’s wonderful to be able to share some of the symbolism behind their imagery. I hope you’re enjoying this special series, and please let me know if there’s anything that I missed. I’m always open to feedback! Thanks for being church together, even in this time where we can’t congregate in person. I, like all of you, am looking forward to seeing all of your faces again in person. God’s blessings be upon you all,

Pastor Paul

Greetings from Pastor Paul

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An Ancient Puzzle

Are you bored? Trying to find some sort of way to use your brain instead of watch-ing more TV? Here’s a fun puzzle for you to try. I must warn you in advance, puzzles of this type are pretty hard, and will likely keep you occupied for a while. Puzzles of this type were found in the ruins of Pompeii, and in ancient ruins in Rome, England, and Syria. These puzzles are called word squares. Here’s how it works. A word square reads the same way in two directions, starting from the top left, reading right (reading regularly), and starting from the top left, reading down (reading in the Japanese fash-ion).

It takes a bit to wrap one’s head around, but becomes easier when looking at it. Here’s the most famous example, called the Sator Square.

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

Now I’m guessing most of y’all don’t read Latin, (much like myself), so I’ll provide one possible translation I read on Wikipedia. ‘The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough].’ It doesn’t really make sense, but as y’all could guess, making meaningful word squares is doubly tricky. Most are just combinations of words that work together, like this example.

H E A R T

E M B E R

A B U S E

R E S I N

T R E N D

However, after a good amount of brow sweat and consulting of dictionaries, I was able to come up with this word square that’s both a functioning word square and a poem of sorts. It’s likely the best art I’ve done in my life, and I worry that I have peaked.

E D E N

D O N E

E N D S

N E S T

I look forward to seeing some more of your submissions, and hope one of you all is able to eclipse my humble attempt. I honestly had a ton of fun making this one, and I’ll have to sit down to work on some more future word squares. Hope y’all have fun!

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1 Shawn Flynn 15 Jamie Golberg 23 Brandon Sullivan

2 Jordan Bakkelund 15 Ayva Wilkening 23 Dennis Lewison

2 Addison Doyle 16 Delores Koepke 23 Suzanne Martinson

2 John Nordaune 16 Douglas McCoss 23 Galen Skjefte, Jr

2 Bradley Rude 16 David Nordaune 23 Kelly Ullrich

3 Anders Linden 16 Jacklin Thielen 24 Riley Enstad

5 Mitchell Brovold 16 Greta Voudrie 24 Steven Enstad

6 Hailie Bjorndal 16 Paul Drees 24 Steven Midthun

6 Anthony Mensink 17 Lorelei Carter 24 Patricia Springer

7 Mary Hoffman 17 Todd Hofteig 24 Gregory Wilkening

7 Rhett Kleinhuizen 17 Scott Jans 25 Kathy Balfany

7 William Niemeyer 17 Kristie Malmquist 25 Dennis Kessler

7 Gage Wilke 18 Elaine Monson 25 Brian Panitzke

8 Debra Burgeson 19 Woodrow West 25 Abbeygale Stewart

9 Brian Olson 20 Mitchell McKay 27 Camille TeBeest

9 Sheri Parliament 20 Joseph Rohlik 28 Neal Eggebraaten

9 Aniyah Trost 20 Linda Sorenson 28 Emma Eisenbacher

10 London Luepke 21 Sharon Cole 28 David Finnes

10 Todd Reishus 21 JoAnn Hildahl 28 William Flaten

10 Mavis Thielen 21 Nancy Ross 28 Kris Jacobson

10 Asher Wieland 21 Myron Wee 28 Patrice Johnson

12 Charles Balfany 21 Quinten Zieske 28 Pamela Peyton

12 Daniel Olson 22 Christopher Balfany 29 Elizabeth Hutson

13 Lauren Fagen 22 Rori Buchman 29 Kathleen Kimpling

13 Troy Halvorson 22 Verona Dalin 29 Wyatt Ansel

14 Karen Mills 22 Ryan Reishus 31 Jenna Luepke

14 Marlene Peterson 22 Arlene Tollefson 31 Connie Peterson

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April Ministerial Acts:

Baptisms:

Kylah Sloan Ims

Monthly Community Dinner

The May Community meal is cancelled, with hopes to resume in June.

Updates to come

Granite Falls Lutheran Church

350 9th Avenue

Granite Falls, MN 56241

www.granitefallslutheran.com

Phone: 320-564-3746

Fax: 320-564-9301 Joe Rohlik

Custodian

Paul Drees

Associate Pastor

pastorpaul@granitefallslutheran.com

Valerie Santjer

Parish Administrator

office@granitefallslutheran.com

Saraya Burgeson Office Assistant

reception@granitefallslutheran.com

Children’s Church, Sunday School, First Communion,

& Confirmation Classes

All classes are cancelled/postponed until further notice. Students and parents will

receive notification from GFLC once any new plans are made.

Updated information?

Do you have a new address, a new phone number, e-mail, or have you switched to using only a cell phone and your land-line is no longer in use? We are in need of your updated information. If you have had a change, or are not receiving any email messages, please contact the church office so that we may better stay in contact with you!