You never know whom you will meet in Germany!

by the Rev. Joanne Fitzgerald
of Elmwood Park, Illinois
(in black and white in photo at left)

It had been a very long day in Dresden for the bold women of the ELCA trekking, by bus of course, the countryside of eastern Germany. When we returned to Leipzig, we immediate went to dinner, in haste to be at a concert at the Bach Museum. But we weren't quick and were too late to enter in. You must be "punctlich" here — no entrance after the concert starts.

As we went back down three flights of stairs to the entrance, a man entering through the doorway caught my eye. He looked familiar. I called out, "Mark!" and he looked back and we connected. It was Mark Sundberg, a pastor from Lake Zurich, Illinois, USA. He and I had graduated from LSTC in 1994. Two of the people I was with returned and two others (Gayle and David from Spokane) stayed behind while we stayed together to talk. It was one of those aha! moments! He had been asking, well, praying, for someone to talk with and we were his answer. What an awesome God we have! Never would I have guessed or even thought that I would have seen someone I knew from so far away. And so what a wonderful day it was!

(Joanne asked me to enter this into the blog for her — ed.)