Yesterday, Father's Day, Dale and I drove out to Venedy, Illinois for St. Salvator's annual Chicken dinner. St. Salvator was where Dale began his ministry and where our children were born. It's always a joy to go back there. It's fun to walk up to where the people are and still know everyone by name even after all these years. The church is very old, (1842) in fact, it is one which sent its first pastor to be part of a meeting in Chicago to create our church body, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. This was way back in 1847. The church and school still stand, much like it has for all these years. There are people buried in the cemetery behind the church who were born earlier than the creation of the church. It's amazing.
The organ has it's own history, purchased from Old Trinity in St. Louis and carried by horse and wagon to Venedy. That organ had come from Germany with the original Lutheran immigrants. It is still used to this day.


The one room school house that stands today was built in 1872

The parsonage we lived in next to the church was torn down a couple of years ago and a nice fellowship hall was built and where the chicken was served up.


The inside of the church, much like it's been forever.

When we lived there coal was still the way the parsonage and church were heated. The coal drop is still there.

But now a more up to date heating system is in place as well as this which surprised me.

air conditioning!
Here is organ up in the balcony


Here are the steps you need to climb up into the balcony

And then if you want to go up into the bell tower there is a steep wooden ladder and a trap door at the top which opens to the bells. There is also a sort of room like area up there where Dale spent many a day working on his Ph'd dissertation. Crazy times.

The cemetery is beautiful in a serene spiritual way. The ancient burials were right behind the church and as years went by the plots filled up row by row.


What amazed us was the growing number of new tombstones with pictures engraved on the front which tell of the person's life.

Coal miner

Excavator


And farmers.
Venedy is a blessing.