Pr. Taran's Sabbatical 2026 - St. Luke Lutheran Church

After returning home from Europe, I was home five nights before joining our youth on the Mission Trip to Asheville, NC. Needless to say, I think my body is just now figuring out what time zone we are in. The mission trip was amazing and the youth from St. Luke are incredible. Their willingness to stretch and serve brothers and sisters, who were strangers, on the other side o...

We made it home last night. What an amazing month of adventures in Europe! I missed blogging between our last change of city. We spent a quick couple of nights in Munich before packing a lot into our time in Paris and then flying home. To catch up…

After Rothenburg, we drove down to Munich as a good hub to fly out of. Originally, we’d planned to check out the REAL C...

Our latest stay has been in the idyllic town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We stayed in a hotel that is more than 700 years old. Just through the lobby was a rose garden where we could duck out of the bustle of tourists and relax. It was a great stay. The many fun German shops (including the famous Christmas store), dining options, ice cream shops (the daily stop hasn’t ended)...

How do you keep track of which important Luther “E” city is which?!? I genuinely messed them up in my planning several times. And we almost drove to the wrong “E” city when plugging things into my phone’s GPS. Now though, I have memories for the places. There is something about stepping foot somewhere, and taking in the sites, that helps place the locations ...

I’m a day behind (we arrived in Erfurt yesterday), but we’ve had a fun filled entry into Germany. The Lenzs and the Spokane Dennings train-ed and airplane-d from Italy up to Berlin, Germany. One delay on the tarmac later (and girls that were more patient than their dad), we made it in one piece.

We spent our first day in Berlin at the Zoo. We’ve been trying to break...