Syttende Mai Run 2009

Dear Friends,

By April of each year I'm trying to log a 10-12 mile run once a week. The 20 mile Syttende Mai (May 16th, 2009) run helps ensure that I get in shape and am training each spring. I hope each of you has some kind of routine that keeps you exercising. This year we had the blessing of belonging to a local gym that has nursery care for the kids, so that was a great help in getting the heart pumping and the muscles at least marginally toned.

If you'd like to run the race with me this year, I'd love to run together with you. The registration form is available at http://www.stoughtonwi.com/forms.shtml I already have two folks joining me--a Luther College alumni staff person, and Brihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifan Juchems, who is also running the Syttende Mai as a fund-raiser for Luther College. You can visit his blog about his running at http://cisbambahrah.wordpress.com/ .

I hope you will consider pledging for my new fund-raising goal again this year. East Koshkonong Lutheran Church celebrates its 165th anniversary as a congregation in 2009, and this is my fifth year running the race. Two significant milestones! All donations will support the East Koshkonong building fund that has made our building more sustainable. We are many times more energy efficient than last year previous, with new boilers, on demand hot water heaters, a new roof, and energy efficient doors and windows. Might you consider making a gift of $165, one dollar for each year of our congregation's life?

This letter is going out to many family-members, acquaintances, and friends. I understand that many of you are giving to your own congregational building funds, etc. Obviously, just disregard my request to make your gift to the EKLC Building Fund. Instead, maybe make a gift to www.ldr.org. Lot's of flooding and disasters again this year make that a worthy charity. And of course, if you are a Luther College grad, you can pledge to Luther College in honor of Brian J. running with me.

However, I really believe in what we are doing here at EKLC, and believe that making our church secure, sustainable, and well-maintained, is a great way to honor our heritage and be good stewards of the gifts God has entrusted us with, and it may be that you would like to make a contribution to that. If you do, I thank you.

Make checks payable to: East Koshkonong Lutheran Church with "building fund" in the comment line. You can mail them to 454 E. Church Rd. Cambridge WI 53523. Also, feel free to forward this to any distribution lists you have of folks who might be willing to pledge. Thanks! And if you'd like to learn more about the history and founding of EKLC, let me know. There's good reference material out there, and I'll hopefully have an essay on our founding pastor, J.W.C. Dietrichson, forthcoming in The Lutheran Forum.