--- Barbara Buchholzer wrote:
 I was confirmed at St John's back in the early 1950's.   I have some pictures your members might enjoy seeing of the old church.   My name is Barbara Millett Buchholzer and was married there in 1956.    I have a prayer that I cut from the church bulletin that Pastor Laughlin put in when I graduated from high school and have carried it in my purse every day since then....  It reads:

 Give me the faith that asks not "Why?"
 I shall know God's plan by and by.
 Give me the faith that looks at pain
 And says all will be right again.
 Give me the faith to bow my head
 Trustfully waiting to be led.

 Give me the faith to face my life
 With all its pain and wrong and strife.
 And then with the day's setting sun
 I'll close my eyes when life is done.
 My soul will go without a care
 Knowing that God is waiting there.

 After nearly 50 years.... its still with me every day... and always will be..... thanks to St. John's

(click on images to enlarge)

bulletin for June 24, 1956

The old cars outside the church were part of a collection of my cousin's, Larry Clifford, who drove the wedding party around Vandalia and Dayton after       our wedding.  It was alot of fun.

This is a photo of the church and the parsonage

This is a photo of Nancy Gilmer at the organ in front of the stained glassed windows..

 

This is a photo taken at a dinner in the church basment around 1954... perhaps someone will recognize  themselves....

I believe this might have been at the same dinner.....