What a "Steel"

TUESDAY, JANUARY 11 – Things are happening pretty quickly here in Immersionland, and it’s getting more difficult for Yours Truly to keep up. After our day off on Monday, we were back to a rapid-fire schedule of events on Tuesday. We managed to dodge small snow drifts and challenging prairie winds en route to the city of Norfolk (pop. 23,000), which is actually pronounced, “Norfork.” This is not some language oddity but is due to the fact that the town originally named itself “North Fork,” but they just wrote “Nor-Fork” on the application to receive a post office and the government assumed they had simply misspelled “Norfolk.” Sigh.

Our first stop was to St. John’s Lutheran Church, where we had an inspirational conversation with the pastor, Edgar Schambach, about both his extensive experiences in rural ministry and also his methods of building up the spiritual dimension of a congregation.

After the delightful soup lunch served to us by the church, we joined up with Norfolk’s Dr. Jim Merritt who served as our tour guide for the rest of the day. The biggest event was a guided tour of a Nucor steel mill (http://www.nucor.com). Nucor is one of the largest employers in Norfolk, and the company over all is a major force in the world steel production. It is also one of the largest recyclers in the world: the Nebraska location alone recycled over 1.9 billion pounds of scrap steel.

We had to wear special outfits for our protection. For some reason, they made me think of the old sitcom, “Laverne and Shirley.” “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Schlemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated.

We’re gonna do it! Give us any chance, we’ll take it. Give us any rule, we’ll break it.

We’re gonna make our dreams come true. Doin’ it our way!”

Okay – I’m alright now. Sorry about that. So… we were told that we couldn’t take photos inside the plant itself, and thus I urge you, dear readers, to check out the Nucor website to see depictions of the process. I can tell you that we saw virtually the entire process of recycling steel, from the raw scrap brought in on rail cars to its being melted at over 3,000 degrees F and finally re-formed into raw steel that will be turned into everything from hammers to wind mill parts. We all enjoyed the look behind the scenes of the production of something we use every day, and at an industry that is employs a significant percentage of this Nebraska town.

Next it was off to visit the offices and warehouse of the Orphan Grain Train.

The Orphan Grain Train is a fantastic organization begun in 1992 and based in Norfolk that ships clean clothing, food, and medical supplies to where they are most needed in America or around the world. More than 63,000,000 pounds of supplies have been shipped thus far. Their warehouse occupies space the size of several football fields.

To end the day, after driving by the boyhood home of Johnny Carson and making a quick stop at the mall, we had dinner at Leon’s Mexican restaurant with Becky Beckmann, who pastors a three-point parish not far from our home base of Albion and spoke frankly to us about the challenges, frustrations, and moments of joy and satisfaction in such a ministry. We drove back to Albion and spent our first evening with different host families. Another busy was planned for Wednesday. This is an “intensive class” after all!

“Nothin's gonna turn us back now,
Straight ahead and on the track now.
We're gonna make our dreams come true,
Doin' it our way.”

Today’s blog prayer:
Dear Lord, in my blog entries for the rest of this trip, please help me to come up with more relevant pop culture references than “Laverne and Shirley.” Amen.