My Birthday in 1979

I got an email yesterday from Bruder Timotheus of the Land of Kanaan, Darmstadt, Germany, asking if I remembered what I did on my 26th birthday in 1979. I had no idea.

So Bruder Timotheus, then Sgt. Cliff Almes, reminded me that May 2, 1979, was his discharge date (He used the military acronym ETS (expiration of Term of Service) showing just how deep they burn those acronyms in us.) On that day I drove Cliff from Wiesbaden to Darmstadt in my 1969 Renault TS with a 4-speed shifter on the column.

On that day, Cliff began 10 months in the novitiate of the Franciscan Brotherhood at Kanaan and later became Bruder Timotheus. He is still there. He is also an American so he fixes things at the monastery and for the last ten years has been the network administrator for Kanaan Ministries.

I talked to Cliff today on Skype. Birds were singing in the background as we spoke. It is spring all over the northern hemisphere, but spring has a very different sound and feel in central Germany than in Kuwait.