On my weekend visit to Switzerland I experienced a demonstration of nature’s power during a brief thunderstorm in Biel, located between Basel and Bern. (more…)

"Remember to entertain strangers," writes the author of Hebrews. One of the great things about the greater church of God community is its hospitality. I experienced that first hand on a trip to Big Sandy this past weekend. (more…)

60 years after the end of World War II, a visitor from Germany tours "America’s battleship," as the U.S.S. Alabama is called on billboards in Mobile and along the highways leading to Mobile. (more…)

How many young people have the opportunity to spend a summer in a foreign country on another continent? Having connections via family and friends helps. That was the case for Karlina Hoeh, daughter of Herman and Isabel Hoeh, who spent a summer in Germany in 1970. (more…)

"Make yourself feel at home" is what we tell our guests, and we hope they really do feel at home when they visit us in Mobile, Alabama. One of our current visitors did just that last night. (more…)

At our annual international young adults activity this weekend we were pleased to have three guests from Italy. One of them, Marco Tanzi from Parma, proved to be a really good trooper. (more…)

One reason given for excluding non-elders from church governance boards is that those boards are to make "ecclesiastical" decisions. The bylaws of the United Church of God, an International Association are a good example: "Decisions of the Council are ecclesiastical in nature", according to UCG bylaw 8.3.2, so non-elders do not serve on the UCG council. What is an "ecclesiastical" decision anyway? How about who should be a deacon? What about the amount given for mileage reimbursement? (more…)

In German class we learned that German is an easy language for pronunciation, which English often isn’t. Once you know how a combination of letters in German is pronounced, you have no problem, since that particular combination is always pronounced the same way. So you might think that you could also spell correctly by applying the rule inversely: Write what you hear and it will be correct. (more…)