People of faith give for many reasons and in many ways, living out their values in determining how to share their resources. During the 2025 Stewardship Season at St. Andrew, several congregants are sharing their stories with the congregation on Sunday mornings about what motivates them to give. You’ll find those stories below:
Footprints in the Sand
You may be familiar with a popular modern allegorical Christian poem known as “Footprints in the Sand.” It describes a man who sees two pairs of footprints in the sand, one of which belongs to God and the other to himself. At some point the two pairs of footprints dwindle to one. The man asks God why at the most difficult times of his life, does he only see his own footprints. He wants to know why God has abandoned him when he needed him most. God explains that when he sees just one set of footprints, they are not the man’s, but God’s own footprints. God explains that at these most difficult times, he has carried him.
This poem has come to describe one of the most significant life events in my own giving story. It took place in 1991 shortly after the birth of our twins, Cameron and Minda. It reminded me of something I was told when I was involved in a stewardship campaign shortly after joining St. Andrew. “We give because we were first given to.” This was the theme of the campaign and it occurred to me at that time that no matter how much I give, I would never be able to equal the greatest gift that God had given to me. The life-saving grace of his son Jesus Christ.
Cameron and Minda were born 10 weeks premature, both weighing just more than 2 pounds each. They spent many weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). They are now both healthy, loving, caring, and productive people. We are very blessed. Cameron was nicknamed “Mr. Amazing” by the NICU nurses as he progressed every day, never having any of the usual setbacks that many significantly premature infants experience. Minda’s time in the NICU was a bit more rocky. One evening, Debbie went to the NICU to visit the babies while I stayed home to finish work on the nursery. It wasn’t yet complete since the babies were born so early. When Debbie returned home she began to cry. She said that Minda was not doing well. When Debbie arrived at the NICU, the nurses told her that Minda had become septic. The nurses had given her the proper course of treatment and she was beginning to do better but wasn’t yet out of the woods. As Debbie was leaving to return home, the nurses told her they would immediately call if Minda’s condition took a turn for the worse. Before going to sleep that night, we prayed together asking God to hold Minda in his arms, keep her safe, and that she would progress and get through this scary situation.
We woke the next morning realizing that no calls had awoken us during the night. We checked our message machine just to be sure we hadn’t slept through a call. It seemed to be working just fine and there were no messages. We were still anxious but felt hopeful that Minda had a good night. We quickly got ready and drove to the hospital. When we arrived, the nurses said that Minda was doing much better. They mentioned, though, that they assumed we must have been so exhausted that we had slept through their calls. We were very confused. The nurses informed us that they had called multiple times. They said they had double and tripled checked the phone number on file to make sure they were calling the correct number. They were trying to reach us because Minda’s situation was in fact declining. Just to be sure, we had them check our contact information and it was indeed correct. We were obviously still confused but extremely happy to see that Minda had made it through this setback and was doing much better.
Later that day, the poem, “Footprints in the Sand” came to mind. I just knew that this past 24 hours of my life had been one of those moments where God had known, “this is too difficult for you right now, I will carry you both.” That was why we didn’t hear the phone ringing. God was “On Call” and interceding for us. Debbie and I could not come up with another explanation. God had taken Minda, and both Debbie and me into his arms, held us close, and carried us through that difficult night.
This is not, of course, the only example of God’s loving care that our family has experienced. There are many, many more. This experience has made me think about the many times when I have knowingly or unknowingly relied on his tender care. As I mentioned earlier, “We give because we were first given to.” After this experience, I have thought that the phrase should be: “We give because we were first given to, and continue to receive God’s gifts throughout our lives.”
Again, there is no amount of money I could put in the offering plate that would equal the gifts that God has given my family and me. But, by giving what I can, and at times, challenging myself to give even more, I know that God understands how much I appreciate what he has done, and what his love means to me.
Dwight Jerde, February 2, 2025
Music that Builds Connection
Earlier this year, we each received a word to inspire us for the year and my word was “wander.” My wife told me that it was not a good word if you go to Costco or if you give a presentation. With that in mind, I wrote down how music has impacted my life.
Music has always been an important part of my family. Maybe being a very Lutheran family helped with that. I grew up with my grandmother’s piano in the dining room. My mom played it, and also the cornet, as did my brother and I. At Grace Lutheran in Corvallis, I sang in the junior choir and listened to the concerns of switching from the red book to the green book (now the cranberry book). When I was in 7th grade, we bought a record player. We didn’t have a TV, so the record player was our entertainment. I became familiar with a variety of records available through the library.
To me, music links memories: “Beautiful Savior” or “A Mighty Fortress” remind me of my Dad who taught me to sing the bass part. “Amazing Grace,” and the soundtrack from Phantom of the Opera, remind me of my son, Erik. For Erik, it was a memory of a girl that he met who also enjoyed that music. Same song—different memories.
Music creates lasting connections and community. My two best friends and I were in the high school band together. We had our eyes on three flute players who sat in the front row. All three of us married those flute players and our music connections continue today. We get together monthly. A community that has been together for almost 60 years that is based on music.
In Fall 2023, Lynetta and I attended a Washington County Tree Tour of the woods around the Sanctuary of the Firs. Don led the tour and LuAnn was a co-host. She invited us to attend a St. Andrew service and we did. At our first Sunday worshiping at St. Andrew, Lynetta and I enjoyed a variety of music—Pastor Laurie’s voice led the worship, accompanied by a ukulele and a wonderful pipe organ. It was a blessing to experience the music of St. Andrew and we decided to continue to attend.
The congregation owes a special thanks to Susan for her contribution as the part-time interim Minister of Music. The future intent is to make this position into a full-time Minister of Music. Imagine the possibilities!
Music connects us and has always been an important part of Lutheran worship. I encourage you to help build music and community at St. Andrew and be generous when you complete your intent card. It’s an opportunity to “sing a new song.”
Chuck Weswig, February 9, 2025
Finding Welcome
In the Fall of 2023, I attended an In Medio Choir Concert at Augustana Lutheran Church. Augustana’s Pastor Mark gave the introductory welcome. He spoke about the church being a sanctuary church, a place of welcome for all, going into remarkable detail about what that meant and who that included. The list was exhaustive. It was a truly unapologetic community of welcome. As I listened, I thought, “what a wonderful community it must be and too bad it is so far from our home.” It made me long for a community like that.
My wife, Wendy, and I had been talking in the Fall of 2023 about finding a new church home that we could feel more at home with, a church that was a welcoming community for all. Wendy and I had met and been married at Christ Episcopal Church in Lake Oswego. No longer a part of a liturgical church, we were looking to return. In December, I called Augustana, hoping they could direct us to a church in the Beaverton area. When Pastor Mark called back, without hesitation he said, “St. Andrew Lutheran.”
On December 31, 2023, we attended St. Andrew for the first time. Wendy, Isaac, and I were mugged as we entered. It was the first delightful sign of welcome we encountered. We sat in a pew and were immediately aware of so many additional signs of welcome. A family to our right with an adult who experienced disability. We would later meet them: Gordon, Carolyn, and Barak Teifel, evidence that families experiencing disability were welcome. The prayers of the people included prayers for those who experience intellectual disability and people throughout the world. The music was lovely and the pipe organ, piano, hymns, and liturgical music were a welcome sound. There was a woman in pastoral leadership and a pride flag on the wall. At the peace, we were greeted with genuine welcome by many, including Patty Jones, who Wendy knew from growing up at St. Bartholomew Episcopal in Beaverton. Tira Nesset, a nurse practitioner colleague of Wendy greeted us in the narthex after the service.
As the choir teacher at Tigard High School, I teach a lot of students who identify as LGBTQ+. They know I am a Christian and that I go to church. Where I go to church matters. Students talk. To belong to a church that is explicit in its welcome to all people, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, is important. At St. Andrew, it was clearly a priority.
When we left church that day, Wendy and I were certain that St. Andrew was a place we could call home. We never left, and Wendy, Isaac, and I officially joined in April of 2024, alongside our new friends, Kim and Dana.
In the troubling times we live in, where welcome is transactional, given and taken away as a direct expression of a person’s value, the welcome that St. Andrew extends is a clear sign of a community living out the Gospel in real-time. Opening doors in a spirit of generosity and welcome without hesitation and/or measurement tells all who enter this place that they are a welcome and beloved child of God.
Disability isn’t always easy to understand. It isn’t always easy to interact with. It expresses itself in sometimes awkward and unexpected ways. And yet, we are still welcome here. And we are grateful. And for that we are pleased to be members and contributors to the ongoing mission of St. Andrew. I encourage you to continue to extend welcome to all and help build this welcoming community at St. Andrew. Join us in giving generously when you complete your intent card.
Robert Hawthorne, February 16, 2025
Growing Faith at the ELCA National Youth Gathering
This last summer the high school group went on a trip to New Orleans for about 5 days where we were able to experience a lot of incredible things. We walked around and learned about the culture and history of New Orleans, met a lot of new people from all over the place, and most importantly, heard stories from other Lutherans about their own experiences.
I cannot stress enough how important this trip was to me, and how it has changed my life and continues to impact me to this day.
Before going on this trip, I struggled a lot with finding where my faith was, and coming to youth group and church on Sundays was a really hard thing for me to do. I truly didn’t understand why people continued to attend church, just to go through the same thing over and over again, since I wasn’t getting anything out of it. At that time, I was refusing to listen to what was being said during the service or during youth group. Hearing the same thing every single Sunday was making my faith weaker and weaker, but I didn’t realize what I was doing wrong until I ended up going on this trip.
When we arrived in New Orleans, we were super behind schedule since our flight had been delayed. We decided that it would be best to skip the first event, and I remember being ecstatic because that meant we could go eat pizza. I believed that going to the first event would be a waste of 2 hours that I could’ve spent having fun instead. Looking back on it now, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The second day, we attended our first Mass Gathering. This day was July 17th, and I remember it as the day that the faith inside of me finally started to grow.
When we entered the Mass Gathering, I heard music, not the traditional type of music that you would hear in a church, but more modern, contemporary music, a change that I never thought I would see in a church event. Enjoying and singing along to music that I could relate to and have fun with helped set the stage for what was yet to come.
I remember the music ended, and a person walked onto the stage. She began to tell her story, explaining how she was just like me. As a kid, her faith was very wavering, and unfortunate events in her life led her to stray further and further from God. But even in those troubled times, she showed us how she was able to recover and change. We saw how much better she was doing, and how much she grew as a person.
Throughout the night, more of these speakers came in and told us their story, each of them just as inspiring as the last. All of these stories had one big thing in common though. Throughout their lives, learning from the Bible and from worship had helped them deal with things in life. In worship, they didn’t simply listen and read, they used it to help them change, something I hadn’t been doing, and as it turns out, the very thing I needed to do.
When I returned home from New Orleans, I went to the next worship service with a whole new mindset. I came to change, not to listen.
Ever since that trip, I’ve never felt more in touch with God and more inspired by my faith. The ELCA National Youth Gathering was the reason that I joined the Church Council as a youth representative so that I could improve the church for youth so that they could experience the same thing that I experienced.
I am extremely fortunate to have this feeling, and it helps keep me happy and going everyday. I want nothing more than to help others feel the same. And the reason I get to experience it is thanks to all of you.
Without your support and donations, the youth of St. Andrew would never have been able to experience this, and I can’t thank you enough for that. I invite you to complete an intent card to support the Ministry and Mission Operating Fund, which will financially support our next group of youth to go to their own youth gathering to experience the same thing I did. This opportunity has changed so much inside me as a person, and I am extremely thankful. I hope that every youth at St. Andrew will be able to experience the same thing. Please consider completing an intent card, which will help make this experience possible for all our youth. Your donations mean the world to us. No donation is too small, and we appreciate all of your support. Thank you!