I read the email twice, to make sure I understood this right. Yes, this really is a scholarship opportunity in Germany. I could either let it go or Carpe Diem. I decided to seize the day and soon realized, sometimes when you walk through an open door, God has even more blessings in store!

Thus, Carpe Diem led to a colleague and me receiving a scholarship for a teaching methods course, offered by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education. We’d be studying in Hannover, Germany for ten days, with hotel, food and local transport....

The following blog post is Part 1 of 4 planned posts about a Hutterite history tour I was privileged to experience in the summer of 2012.

Part I will provide an introduction and brief overview of our tour.

Part II will touch on places and events relating to Jakob Hutter's early life.

Part III will present surprising new details surrounding Jakob's Hutter's arrest and execution.

Part IV will describe a planned Hutterpark in the city of Innsbruck, Tyrol to celebrate the Anabaptist-Hutterite history in the region.

I received an impo....

During their stay in the Dakotas, Americans barely noticed the Hutterites, that is, until World War I broke out in 1914. But then they were viewed as foreigners because they spoke German and refused to participate in the war. Nor did they contribute any money towards the financing of the war. Of course, this did not go over well with the English-speaking neighbors, who raided the colonies and stole livestock and supplies to help finance the war.

Since it was compulsory, Hutterites sent their young men to military camps, but they didn’t all....