Schönes Deutschland!

There is much about Germany that is breathtakingly beautiful, both inside and outdoors, and every time I go back I find myself thinking how I have forgotten this all over again. It is good to have returned home after our ten day excursion, but the memories will be with me a very long time. A thousand thanks go to Rev. Wade Seaver, pictured here with me and Dr. Daniel Reuning (he's the one handily designated by the little heart in the photo :)). By the way, this photo was supposed to be authentically German, so I chose not to smile. Some people just can't follow directions . . .

Anyhow, Wade lives in Neuendettelsau, and put us up there at his home; Neuendettelsau is the place where Rev. Wilhelm Löhe lived and worked, where he established his diaconness home (which is quite unlike anything the Ft. Wayne seminary is promoting--more on that later) and from which he sent missionaries to America in the mid-nineteenth century. Those missionaries wound up in Frankenmuth, Michigan, where, ironically, my wife and I also found ourselves just two days prior to our German excursion. I kept commenting, when we were down in southern Germany, at how curious it was that they seemed to have a Bavarian theme everywhere; and Wade agreed, saying it was a good imitation of Frankenmuth . . .