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| Mother's Coffee Cake Helps Lutheran Pastors |
 Mathilda and Fritz Renzelman at their 60th wedding anniversary with their two sons, Delwyn (L) and Alfred (R) at Calvary Lutheran Fellowship Hall.
My mother was a good German cook. She loved the Lord and she loved to bake coffee cake. Little did she know that her coffee cake, many years later, would be the source for a LCMS Foundation Trust at Calvary Lutheran Church, Wray, CO. Her trust provides approximately $1,000 each year to a student studying to become a Lutheran Pastor.
Mother and Dad lived on a farm that was located halfway between the small town of Vernon, CO, and the County Seat at Wray. It was about 8 miles to each town from the Renzelman farmstead.
In those early days the town of Vernon had the only Lutheran Church and parsonage in the area. Ministers riding by horseback or with a team and wagon or buggy often would stop at my parent's halfway place to give their horses a few moments rest. Mother's gratuitous coffee cake, along with a good cup of coffee, was always available. The Lutheran pastors loved this, and Mother loved to serve them.
As my brother Del and I grew up on the farm, Mother was always supportive of our Lutheran Ministers. Never did she have a negative word about them. She prayed for them and continued to bake her coffee cake for them even after a sister congregation was started at Wray in the 1930's that our family joined.
In the late 1980's Mother and Dad both went home to glory. In their modest estate settlement my brother and I remembered the kindness our parents showed toward our Lutheran Pastors. We felt it would be fitting in our parent's memory to leave a Mathilda and Frederick Renzelman Trust Fund wherein the interest would help pay for some of the tuition needs for men from Calvary Lutheran studying to become Lutheran Pastors. If no one at Calvary takes the funds, they are to go to the Northeast Colorado Zone or on to our LCMS Rocky Mountain District Scholarship fund to help someone studying to become a pastor. Presently the Trust is paying about $1,000 a year. The goal is to build the Trust fund to at least $100,000. With the Lord's help it can be done!
Mother and dad would be pleased with this memorial and I can hear Dad saying with a smile on his face, "Thanks for the memorial, and by the way, those preachers sure ate a lot of your mother's good coffee cake, but it was some of the best of times."
The LCMS Foundation thanks Alfred Renzelman for his inspiring story.
For more information about Charitable Remainder Unitrusts, please click on "Meet the Staff" to contact your district LCMS Foundation gift planning counselor.
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