It was a rough week around here. A teacher in our community, Mark Perkins, died tragically at the age of 31 from an uncontrollable brain tumor on Monday night. I spent much of my week visiting with the bereaved, planning a local memorial service with the help of the school and local funeral home, and traveling to East Grand Forks for the wake and funeral.

you can check out his caring bridge site

Mark and I grew up in the same town and had older brothers about the same age who played basketball together. But my greatest sympathies are for his family and his school family in Browerville (including colleagues, fellow coaches, students and players). They will struggle a long time to learn to live with this loss.

In other news, the batteries died on my recorder, so there is no sermon this week. Currently, I'm trying to work on my Lenten series on "Then Sings my Soul: Finding the Sacred in Secular Music." It's been fun. There's a lot of work to do, though.

And that's the news from Browerville.

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