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Five of us attended the Delaware-Maryland Synod Assembly (church council meeting for Lutheran churches in Delaware and Maryland) at the end of last week.
I stayed at Mike Lehm’s mother Magda’s house in Fenwick Island. She is in her 90s, gets around well, and has the most beautiful face and smile. We drank margaritas together while I watched her and her daughter-in-law, Yvonne, play double solitaire.
That was fun, but what was energizing was to hear her stories. Yvonne asked me how my trip to Paris was and then I asked Magda if she had been in Paris before. She is German in heritage, and she said, "Yes, during the war." She recalls walking down the Champs-Elysees as German soldiers marched down the street. "I guess because I’m German I should have been proud, but I stood there on the street corner with tears rolling down my face." She talked about being transferred to Normandy working for a construction company building a wall to keep out the expected British invasion of Normandy (which became an Allied effort) that led to the end of the war. She and a friend asked to be transferred to see more of the world and went to Oslo where she ended up in a prison camp when the war was over. There in the camp she married her husband, Mike’s father.
Don’t you want to just go down to Fenwick Island, have a drink (lemonade will do), and hear more of the story? So many amazing stories in our midst from young and old alike just there to be received by those curious enough to ask the questions.
--Pastor Dianne