2025 Idaho Falls Mission Trip

 The week was exhausting but it wasn't all work! Wednesday was a day for participants to take a break. Our SCLA team did what many others did and drove out to Grand Tetons National Park in WY. The 2.5-hour drive from Idaho Falls was well worth it. We hiked around 14 miles (around 25,000 steps was one person's watch recorded for the day?!) An interesting thing happened to us on our return to Jenny Lake and Visitor Center... a thunderstorm with hail hit us while we waited to take the ferry across the lake (see the filthy legs/feet photo). Otherwise, here are some photos from the day. The photo overlooking Jenny Lake was taken at Inspiration Point. The stagecoach photo was taken near the end of the day in Jackson, WY where we stopped to get dinner at Big Hole BBQ on our return to Idaho.

I'm sorry for sporadic updates, but I feared that our hotel wifi connection was sketchy, so please accept these posts as somewhat of a recap of our week. Our SCLA group was teamed-up with a group from Arizona Lutheran Academy (pictured) and we worked together to knock on doors over the course of 6 sessions during the week, including Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning and afternoon, and Friday morning. We knocked on doors in the mornings from 10:00 until noon and again after lunch, from about 1:30-5:00 PM. The lunches and dinners were catered for us and every meal was amazing! We burned a lot of calories but likely replaced them (plus some???) Not a lot of photos were taken while we were out as it was hard work, requiring mental focus on where we were and what we were doing. The photos here were some friendly faces I ran across who were willing to take a picture with me. The four maps that I pieced together give an idea of the number of streets and hou...

The crew arrived in Idaho Falls Sunday afternoon and began with training sessions on Sunday evening and Monday morning. The training gives participants a sense of LDS (Mormon) teachings and culture. The obscure teachings of the LDS are eye-opening, but what makes it especially challenging are the twisted meanings the LDS has attached to Biblical words that Christians are familiar with. Words such as "sin", "repentance", "faith", "grace", and "saved/salvation" do not have the same meaning! The training has included role-playing experiences "at the door", hearing from an ExMo (ex-Mormon), and listening to the questions and experiences of others. Our team is partnering with a team from another Lutheran high school to cover our designated area of the city over our four days of going out door-to-door. (Pictures of that to come... if I can remember to take some!) Please keep our efforts and those we speak with in your prayers!  

The group was split in flying out to Utah but was together Saturday and we headed out to see some sights around Salt Lake City. The Golden Spike National Historic Park was a 1.5 hour drive to the north end of the Great Salt Lake. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed there on May 10, 1869, transforming the coast-to-coast journey from a six-month endeavor by wagon to one week by train! Working replicas of the two historic trains are on-site, the Central Pacific's "Jupiter" and the Union Pacific's "No.119". It was good day trip for history buffs and those with engineering minds.