For Starters — A roundup of articles on the topics of faith, finances and volunteerism

Praise To Go | Deeply Rooted | A Healing Vision | Stronger Together | Medicare Maze | Blooming Where Planted

HIGHER ARTS
Praise to Go
You’ve seen iPods at the gym, on the bus and permanently attached to your teenager’s ears. Since Apple introduced the personal digital music player in October 2001, 42 million have been sold. And the Christian music scene isn’t being left behind. Here’s a brief roundup of Web resources to help you fill your iPods with God-praising tunes.

Both iTunes and Napster have sections devoted to Christian or inspirational music. You can search for specific titles and artists or browse the category, which includes everything from Christian contemporary to Christmas hits by secular artists. These sites are a good place to start, since they allow you to listen to snippets from the songs you’re interested in before you purchase your download (at 99 cents a pop).

If you’re craving only Christian hits, but don’t necessarily know what’s out there, check out www.SongTouch.com. Dubbed the “Christian iTunes,” the site is packed with contemporary Christian hits, but is only available on computers that run the Windows operating system. Similar sites include www.christianparadise.com/mp3, www.ccmmagazine.com or www.disciplescornerstone.com.

If contemporary Christian isn’t your music of choice, log on to www.musicoffaith.com, where you can download hymns, instrumental favorites and old-time gospel tracks.

Of course, if you’d just as soon listen to the CDs you already have, the folks at www.godipod.com will rip (that’s computer-speak for digitally transfer) your entire CD collection—along with a selection of praise tunes—onto the iPod of your choice (starting at 50 CDs for $99, plus the price of the iPod).

In between listening to Point of Grace and P.O.D., why not catch up on your Bible reading—or listening? Sites like www.discipleshiplibrary.com offer free (or inexpensive) Bible downloads including passages, sermons and teaching lessons.

Finally, now that your iPod is loaded up, it’s time to accessorize. Check out www.devoted1.com to order the iBelieve, a lanyard that turns your Shuffle (iPod’s tiniest tune-player with room for about 240 songs) into a cross necklace.

For more information and a comprehensive listing of legal music downloading sites, go online to www.thrivent.com/magazine/links. 

—Sarah Asp

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FOUNDATIONS
Deeply Rooted
Inside the Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Savannah, Georgia, last October, the Rev. William Roen baptized a young boy. Not a particularly unique event, unless you consider that the boy was the 11th generation in his family to be baptized at Ascension.

“That represents a degree of continuity that is almost unheard of here in America,” says Roen. “There are a lot of new people in the church, but there are also a lot of people whose family goes back to the original founders.”

Indeed, Ascension’s rich history and tradition are as much a part of its foundation as the structure itself. In 1734, when 37 Austrian Lutherans fled from religious persecution in Salzburg and arrived in the fledgling colony of Georgia, the first thing they did was set up a house of worship.

Just one day after they arrived in Savannah, their leader, the Rev. John Martin Bolzius, wrote about the congregation’s humble beginnings: “Yesterday, in the local church, which today and in the future so long as we are here, we are privileged to use, we held our first prayer service on land.”

The Salzburgers continued to hold services in clapboard buildings until 1771, when the church trustees purchased the lot upon which the church now stands, directly across from one of Savannah’s celebrated city squares.

Ascension (then called the Protestant Lutheran Church) saw hard times during the Civil War. The building was used as a hospital for sick and wounded soldiers—pews were chopped for firewood and soldiers slept on the seat cushions. The damage prompted a renovation after the war, which included the addition of a second story and the acquisition of a stained glass window that would give the church its name.

The Ascension window, which depicts in vivid blues, reds and greens Christ’s ascension into heaven, rises 14 feet above the altar to create a stunning centerpiece. Over the years the church has added windows along the sides of the nave and in the rear, above the organ. The interior and exterior grandeur, admired daily by the throngs of tourists who visit this charming city, is mere backdrop to what Ascension really means to its loyal congregation.

“The church is a visible representation of the pride that the congregation has in its long and illustrious history,” says Roen. “It’s sort of the mother church of this part of Georgia.” 

—Sarah Asp

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LABORS OF LOVE
A Healing Vision
Not that they would admit it, but Jerry and Joni Arvidson aren’t your typical 70-somethings. For example, how many retired couples do you know who vacation in Bosnia? For 13 years, this South St. Paul, Minnesota, couple has used their vacation fund to travel to underprivileged regions around the globe delivering something most of us take for granted: clear vision.

It all started when Jerry, who is active in the South St. Paul Lions Club, inquired as to where the used eyeglasses his club had collected over the years actually went. “We never should have asked,” Jerry says with a laugh. “But we’re very glad we did, because that’s when we got involved in Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity (VOSH). We just fell in love with it. It’s opened a whole new avenue for us and actually changed our lives.”

That life-altering question has sent the Arvidsons, both Thrivent Financial for Lutherans members, to Central and South America, Romania, India, the Ukraine and, most recently, to Senegal, Africa. When the group—usually around 20 people, including some ophthalmologists and optometrists—arrive in a village, boxes of glasses in tow, the routine is pretty much the same.

“We take along an auto refractor. When the person looks in that machine, the computer reads their eyes and tells exactly what prescription they need,” Joni explains. “Sometimes we can’t find the exact prescription, but we do whatever we can to help them see better.”

Ten-hour days handing out up to 5,000 pairs of glasses in some of the most economically devastated regions of the world may not seem like a great alternative to, say, a Caribbean cruise. But for the Arvidsons, the payoff comes when they look into the eyes of the recipients who, often for the first time in years, can look back just as clearly. 

—Sarah Asp

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SERVICE SCENE
Stronger Together
When Doug Pratt, a Thrivent Financial for Lutherans associate, was called upon to head up a fund-raising event for victims of Hurricane Katrina, he wanted to involve more than just his own congregation. Pratt, who is a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Farmington, Missouri, wanted to organize an event that would not only raise funds for hurricane relief, but also build camaraderie between the Lutheran churches of the Riverview Chapter of Thrivent Financial. So Pratt brought together the nine congregations to organize a relief festival, which included a craft sale, quilt contest, children’s games, a fish fry and musical entertainment.

“One of the problems that I have picked up on is that our congregations don’t really talk to each other or interact with each other,” says Pratt. “I took the opportunity to combine the fund-raiser and also get our congregations to start working together, hoping that it would pull them together a little bit.”

Once he had assigned each congregation a specific task, Pratt contacted Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Covington, Louisiana, and asked the pastor if the Riverview Chapter congregations could adopt the hard-hit church. The pastor provided Pratt with a wish list of supplies that included a cargo trailer for hauling salvaged furniture and valuables from congregants’ washed-out homes.

After the November 2005 event, two members from St. Paul’s drove down to Louisiana with the trailer—jam-packed with food, clothing and supplies, as well as more than 2,000 teddy bears for Christmas stockings and $5,500 to give to members of Holy Trinity.

Pratt is already thinking about what the newly unified chapter can do next. “Members realized that there’s power in numbers, and if we all pull together we can accomplish some great things,” he says. “We have now decided that we’re going to have an annual event. We’re going to select a cause and try to get together on an annual basis and do one of these festivals and make it grow.” 

—Sarah Asp

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MOVING FORWARD
Medicare Maze
As a semi-retired physician, Dr. Roger Meyer has plenty of experience dealing with health insurance companies and prompt payments. Unfortunately, not all of it has been good.

When Meyer, 67, of Utica, Nebraska, began looking at Medicare supplement insurance for himself in 2003 and his wife, Patricia, in 2004, he went to his Thrivent Financial for Lutherans representative, Jamie Kovac. The Meyers already had long-term care coverage through Thrivent Financial. They have been pleased with the service they have received since Patricia, 67, went into a nursing home in September 2004. With Thrivent Financial long-term care insurance products, benefits are payable under the terms of the contract.

“From Jamie, I learned that all the Medicare supplement plans are the same from company to company, so I wanted to get it through Thrivent Financial,” says Meyer.

There are 12 federally standardized Medicare supplement insurance plans available, which are labeled A-L. Plan A, which offers basic core benefits, is available from all insurers offering Medicare supplements. Companies may offer all or some of the other plans from B to L, but the benefits provided by a given plan are identical from company to company. In Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin, the insurance plans are standardized by each state but have slight differences from the federally standardized plans.

“Because the plans are identical, it almost always comes down to service, price and preference,” says Kovac. “It’s important to work with someone you trust, someone who can offer guidance as you look at how any unforeseen medical expenses will fit in with your income as well as other expenses.”

Meyer, who remains active by serving as medical director for three nursing homes as well as continuing to serve several patients in nursing homes, can only speak of what he knows.

“I haven’t had any problems with my Thrivent Financial contracts,” Meyer says. 

—Donna Mulder

Medicare Supplement Insurance from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is not available in all states. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is not connected with or endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program.

More on ‘MED SUP’
For more, contact your Thrivent Financial representative. His or her contact information can be found on the back of this magazine or you can visit www.thrivent.com/locate.

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A LUTHERAN MOMENT
Blooming Where He Was Planted
Carl Linnaeus wrote in the preface of Systema Naturae, “The earth’s creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of nature by man alone.” Linnaeus, the son of a Lutheran pastor, is credited as the inventor of taxonomy—the order, ranking and species classification of the natural world.

Born in Sweden in 1707, Linnaeus began studying plants at university, and launched two botanical expeditions, all the while meeting and corresponding with some of the era’s foremost botanists.

Linnaeus completed his medical degree in 1735 and then enrolled in the University of Leiden in the Netherlands for further study. It was during this time that he published the first edition of his classification of living things, the Systema Naturae. Back in Sweden, he was awarded a professorship at the University of Uppsala in 1741, where he went to great lengths to grow and arrange the university’s botanical garden to his exact classification.

Linnaeus’ research and writings still provide a basis for species classification that lives on in taxonomy research to this day. 

—Sarah Asp

Source: The University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology