Greetings to all from the road tour of summer 2024! My traveling music ministry is lots more fun with my sweet wife Donna. I’m a people person all right, but she takes it to another level. She is now the smiling and loving face of my work in our churches around the country, and we sure love traveling together. We just celebrated our second anniversary.
So far I’ve just played for worship at Mountain View Lutheran church in Great Falls, Montana and then Trinity in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It’s such a happy little small WELS after all - we bumped into Brenda Diede, who was at Mountain View visiting family there. She and husband Jim moved to Great Falls recently from Aberdeen where I had just played. And the wonderful Christian family connections keep happening!
Between the last two churches we’ve been doing some “touristy” things. Donna and I had both been to Yellowstone when we were kids, but it was great to spend a couple of days driving through so much of it. We saw a bunch of animals - buffalo, grizzly and black bears, a small wolf, and elk - and amazing scenery. Met up with Jayne Nitz (my long-time co-writer) and husband Mark in Rexburg, Idaho for dinner, and then cruised over to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to show my wife a real cowboy town. I played with the “Sons of the Golden West” in 1980 and 1981 at the Wort Hotel’s Greenback Lounge there, and we bumped into a grizzled old bartender who remembered me from all those years ago, which was really amazing.
The Grand Tetons are visible just a few miles north of Jackson, so I took Donna up there too. After that we stopped in Deadwood, South Dakota for the night and then on to Aberdeen where we stayed with friends Pastor and Cheryl Rawerts. He and I are musical buddies from quite a while ago. (He’s the only yodeling minister in our church body.) He sang one of his own compositions in our worship services, “I’m Thankful to Jesus.” I think it’s very special when a pastor sings to his flock.
Donna has been the preschool director and teacher at St Matthew in Spokane for over 20 years, and happens to be the greatest teacher of little ones in the universe in my humble opinion. But her degree was in Business Management from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and she’s never been to our preacher/teacher school, Martin Luther College in New Ulm, MN. That’s a special place, and I’m going to show her around next week just before we play at Mount Olive in Shakopee, MN. Besides, she really needs to meet Herman the German and see Schmidt’s Meats in Nicolette!
This tour will get as far as Nashville, Tennessee - I’ll play at Rock of Ages on Sunday July 14th. The following week will be the annual Meister Family Reunion, this time at the KOA in Nashville, where we’ll do and see lots of fun stuff, including the Grand Old Opry. We’re in charge of snacks Monday night - ever heard of a Banana Boat? It involves a split banana wrapped in foil with chocolate, peanuts, marshmallows, etc heated in the campfire - you get the idea.
All in all, I’ll sing 17 worship services and concerts in 14 churches in 5 states over 40 days! Donna and I very much enjoy helping each other with our 2 different ministries. We work for a king, the King of Kings and it is our great joy, our reason for being. I hope you’re getting the message that I’m blessed and grateful!