Faith in the Freshman

Back to school!  Concordia doesn’t resume classes until next Monday.  The rest of the family gets going today.  Stephen’s first day of his senior year at Milwaukee Lutheran coincides with his sister Hannah’s first day as an English and Spanish teacher at the same school.  I wonder if he’ll remember to call her Mrs. Meineke?  The college kids also start classes today.

Rachel is a sophomore at Concordia Texas in Austin.  She is thrilled to be back in the Lone Star state surrounded by her friends from Concordia.  Andrew is a junior at Cornell in Ithaca, New York.  Unlike Rachel, he really knows no one at school.  But, he’s just as eager to get going.

We made the trek across Canada with a brief stop at Niagara Falls to deliver Andrew — no car for him this year!  The trip to Ithaca went smooth if not straight.  The closest distance between two points in that part of New York is not a straight line.  There are no straight ways to get to or around once you arrive in Ithaca.

We didn’t even go straight to see Coach Courtney when we arrived.  I don’t think Andrew was too excited for him to see the splint on his wrist.  That was better than the cast and sling he had on when he got off the plane from China.

The trip to China was wonderful.  Andrew described the opportunities for spiritual growth, cultural experience, and basketball competition.  Everything went well — until the next-t0-last game when he hurt his right wrist.

The original diagnosis was a fracture.  That, however, was not the conclusion of the doctor here in Milwaukee.  Whatever the case, Andrew has a couple of weeks of healing and rehabilitation before he can return to the court.  There are no straight lines to get you where you want to go!

Check here for a recent interview with Coach Courtney by the Ithaca Journal.