Laura Newsletter Number 25

8/10/2019 Laura Newsletter Number 25

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Lima Area UFO Research Associates

P.O. Box 5193 Lima, Ohio 45802-5193

http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/

Sept/Oct 2014

Issue # 25

LAURA CLUB MEETING REPORT

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17, 2019 @ 7:00 P.M.

NEW CREATION LUTHERAN CHURCH

LIMA, OHIO

BUSINESS:

1. Pres. Bob Prater opened the meeting at 7:05 p.m. with announcements and his usual knack for alien

humor.Approx. 19 persons were present.

2. Amber Horner Treasurer provided the following report:

Savings balance.................$1127.52

Checking balance................1006.32

Auction Income for Aug....... 269.50

MUFON Membership.......... 55.00

P.O. Box renewed.............. 106.00

3. Tonights refreshments were many and varied. Each person brought his own favorites. There was fresh apple

cider, Hawaiian bread with dip, popcorn, ice cream, crackers, chips and much more.
http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/


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4. It was announced that on Friday, Sept. 19th the ONU Observatory [Ada, Ohio], will be holding a star party.

They will be observing the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galaxy in the Local Group.

5. President Bob and his more than able assistant Marcia presented an audio quiz playing the tune from the intro

of a past TV show. Amber (our know-every-tune Queen) answered it correctly as the theme from Mork &

Mindy series starring Robin Williams and Pam Dauber.

6. Pres. Bob asked if there had been any recent sightings. The recent viewing of the Northern Lights was

mentioned. Neil Nandi said he had seen a short red glow around 5:00 a.m. this past week.

7. Tom Bowman stated he will appear on WLIO on Monday the 21st to discuss SETI, The Search for Extra

Terrestrials.

An interesting follow up was that Amber presented the club with the latest edition of the MUFON Journal for

Sept, 2014, in which appeared an article by Stanton Friedman titled SETI effort based on Ignorance,

Arrogance.

PROGRAM:

1. Tonights program was titled The Cash Landrum Incident that occurred on Dec. 29, 1980 in Texas. The

UFO sighting and contact was experienced by two women and a grandson. It occurred when they were in their

1980 Cutlass auto. Parties involved were Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and the grandson Colby who was 7 at the

time.

2. A diamond shaped object appeared before the party with flames shooting out the bottom. The object was

approx.130 feet from the car and the heat was so intense the car became heated and Betty experienced burns on

her hand when she stepped outside the car. Betty received 2nd to 3rd grade (possibly radiation) burns. She was

later forced to close the restaurant she operated due to medical problems

3. Almost immediately after seeing the UFO they witnessed 23 Helicopters in the sky tracking the object.Others in the party had lesser back and facial burns.

4. Betty was later told by Congressman Lloyd Benson to seek medical help at the VA and Bergstrom Air Base.

She later said she received poor help.

5. Some 18 years later UFO investigators get involved. John Schuessler and police officer Ken Storch become

involved.

6. The road area at the site which had been damaged was mysteriously repaired.

INTERMISSION [7:57 p.m.]

PROGRAM PART 2:

1. A second video was show, this one from the series The UFO Hunters.


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2. At Piney Woods some 30 miles NE of Huston, Texas other witnesses see both the 23 Helicopters and the

diamond-shaped UFO. The event occurred about 9:00 p.m.

3. Colby Landrum later described the object as being bright, and red glowing.

4. Jerry Lamar, a walker also stated he had seen the Helicopters and they were Double Bladed Chinook's.

5. Betty Landrum was treated for years by her doctor for Radiation exposure. Her doctor was unable to get

Bettys medical record from Parkway Hospital where she had been treated.

6. In 1998 Betty Cash died from radiation exposure.

7. The officer on duty at the Air Base at the time of the incident stated absolutely the military was not involved

however his on-duty notes of that night showed 100 Helicopters landed nearby at Fort Hood.

8. The program concluded at 8:50 p.m.

9. Footnote: Amber Horner announced that Dr. Bruce Maccabees new book is now available. He also recently

appeared on the overnight program Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

Tom Bowman, LAURA Secretary

419-999-4785

[email protected] P.O. Box # 5193

Milky Way Galaxy 'Home to 3,000 Alien Civilizations'

There are probably thousands of alien civilizations living in the Milky Way, butour chances of ever meeting them are extremely low, an expert has said.

Michael Garrett, head of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy(Astron), made the comments at the International Astronomical Congress in

Toronto.

Reported by Discovery News, the astronomer said data collected by NASA and other space agencies suggeststhat Earth is one of 40 billion potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.

In addition, another habitable planet is believed to form every year, meaning the chance of alien civilizationsexisting is very high - there may be around 3,000 alien civilizations already out there according to the study.

However, Garrett said that with the sheer size of the Milky Way, sending out signals and receiving one back

from a civilization advanced enough to possess this technology is unlikely at the moment.

"On average, you'd expect the civilizations to be separated by at least 1,000 light-years in the Milky Way," he isquoted as saying. "That's a large distance, and for communication purposes you need to allow for twice thetravel distance, so you're talking about civilizations that have to be around for at least a few thousand years inorder to have the opportunity to talk to each other."
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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He pointed to Earth as an example of how life developed, with extremely simple life forms having been aroundfor billions of years. Intelligent life only arrived much later, he said.

"We don't really know the time scales in which civilizations persist. [Intelligent life only developed] essentiallyin the last few minutes of the overall evolution of life on the planet. I don't want to be too negative about this,but... my basic conclusion is that SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) signals will be rare in the MilkyWay."

While Garrett does not expect to hear from aliens in the near future, experts at SETI are more hopeful.

In March, leading SETI astronomer Seth Shostak said he expects to make contact within the next 20years thanks to advances in technology.

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, he said the search is still in its infancy, and is limited by equipment and moneybut believes we are not far off: "My guess that we'll succeed in the next two decades is based on the fact thatwith improvements in digital electronics and computers which are getting better and cheaper, followingMoore's law we will be continually sifting through the sky faster.

"And you can extrapolate how fast we'll be able to search, assuming we have the money, in the next decade ortwo."

There Are Pretty Legit UFO Reports Coming Out of Colorado and Utah

If reports coming out of Colorado this past weekend are any indicator, then its time to break out the tin foilhats, cuz theres something super mysterious flying overhead.

Normally when we see reports of UFO sightings, its in shoddy and likely doctored YouTube videos. Eventhen, youll only see those make front page tabloid news or big conspiracy theory outlets at best.

Not so this time around, as DenversNBCaffiliateKUSA-TV aired a report on some mysterious shiny objects

hovering over Breckenridge last Saturday. With eyes trained on the UFOs eerily suspended over a ridge,their reporter in the field dismissed any speculation that the sighting was merely a hoax.

Other big network affiliates picked up the story over the weekend as well, and even USA Today along with a

few other totally legit, non-tabloid national news outlets. Add the report by Salt Lake CitysFox 13 of a nearly

identical sighting in Utah just a few days prior, and we have ourselves a nearly bulletproof UFO encounter.

But as we all know even credible media outlets are prone to misreporting. With an open police investigationinto the matter now underway, it would seem thats not the case this time around.

Moreover,KUSA-TV reported NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command) was evenlooking into the matter. Military spokesperson Army Major Beth Smith said, NORAD is not tracking any

anomalies in that location. We are investigating.

Cryptic, sure, but anything short of a flat denial from these tight-lipped guardians of our airspace should be asign that something caught their eye too even if theyre not certain what it is either.

Aliens or not, I guess it depends on what you wanna believe.


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Remembering Zimbabwe's great alien invasion

Twenty years ago, 62 pupils at Ariel School said they saw an alien spaceship. It's still regarded as one of themost compelling events in UFO history.

Tracking down one of the Ariel School experiencers took some doing, but eventually I connected with Sarah*

in what she referred to as a most stubborn old Rhodie [white Rhodesian] bar in downtown Harare.Of the more than 110 children and staff who had been at the school, which sits just outside the smallagricultural centre of Ruwa, when the aliens landed in 1994, she thought she was probably the only one still inthe country.

Everyones (word omitted) off to Canada or the UK, she said. -Or died.

When it became clear to her drinking buddies that we were going to talk UFOs, eyes began to roll.

Christ, S, not ET again, someone muttered.

She ignored him.

Whaddya wanna know? Actually, itll be simpler if I just shoot. It happened, OK. Sixty-two kids between theages of about six and 12 saw the aliens land and get out of their little ships. When the kids returned to class theywere completely freaked and couldnt stop nattering about little men who looked a bit like Michael Jackson.The teachers told them to shut up, as teachers are wont to do, and classes proceeded.

But the next day the school received a bunch of calls from parents wanting to know why their kids werespooked. It got so that the teachers started to freak out, too, and a local UFO expert called Cynthia Hind wasinvited to speak to everyone. It was via her, I think, that we heard about a famous shrink who was coming fromthe US to assess the children. What was his name now Mack, Dr John Mack, who I heard was killed by adrunk driver a few years back.

Dedicated investigatorHind, who died in 2000, had publicly acknowledged her own experiences with other-worldly beings in the past,and had dedicated the past decade and a half of her life to investigating UFO sightings on the African continenton behalf of the Mutual UFO Network, and then publishing her findings in the very collectable newsletter,UFO Afrinews.
http://mg.co.za/article/2014-09-04-remembering-zimbabwes-great-alien-invasionhttp://mg.co.za/article/2014-09-04-remembering-zimbabwes-great-alien-invasion


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I had brought along a printout of Issue 11, which I opened on the bar counter before Sarah on Hinds articleUFO flap in Zimbabwe: Case No 95. It begins:

Wednesday, 14th September, 1994, was an exciting night for Southern Africa. Round about 20:50 to 21:05hours, a pyrotechnic display of some magnificence appeared in the almost clear night skies of this part of thecontinent.

An Ariel schoolchild telling her story of the alien who arrived.

Astronomers across the region soon reported that the pyrotechnic display, seen as far afield as Zambia andBotswana, had been a meteor shower. Hind, though, recorded receiving dozens of reports of a capsule-likefireball, trailing fire and flanked by two smaller capsules.

She also received several reports of alien sightings around the same time: a young boy and his mother reporteda daylight sighting; a trucker who had seen strange beings on the road at night. And then, on September 16,Hind received the report from Ariel School, which she records as Case 96, and describes as one of the mostexciting UFO stories of this or any year.

Childhood recollectionHinds narrative closely mirrors Sarahs recollection. At 10am, Hind writes, on a hot day, the children were let

out for their mid-morning break. They were drawn to an area beyond their playing field of long grass withthorn and other indigenous bushes, trees growing higgledy-piggledy fashion, and undergrowth thick and heavyenough to hide a child should he venture there.

The teachers had all entered the staff room for a meeting and the only adult outdoors was the tuck-shopmistress, who was soon swamped by children claiming they had seen three or four objects coming into therough bush area disc-like objects coming in along the power lines and finally landing in the rough, amongthe trees. The children were a little bit afraid, although they were also curious.

The UFO investigator goes on to record the testimonies of several of the children, who she says represented across-section of Zimbabweans: black African children from several tribes, colored children (a cross-breeding ofblack and white), Asian children (whose grandparents were from India) and white children, mostly

Zimbabwean-born, but whose parents were either from South Africa or Britain.

Although they all came from wealthy families (tuition at Ariel School was expensive), Hind believed theircultural differences gave rise to differing interpretations of the event, and that the differences in interpretationmade the details that were common to all accounts very compelling indeed.


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One of the white students, for example, thought at first that the little man in black might have been Mrs.Stevens gardener, but then he saw that the figure had long, straight black hair, not really like [a] black[persons] hair, so he realized he had made a mistake!

Some of the black children thought the short little beings werezvikwambo, or tokoloshes the evil goblins ofShona and Ndebele folklore and burst into tears, fearing they would be eaten.

Guy G said: [I] could see the little man (about a meter tall) was dressed in a black, shiny suit; that he had longblack hair and his eyes, which seemed lower on the cheek than our eyes, were large and elongated. The mouthwas just a slit and the ears were hardly discernible.

Parents disbeliefHinds account ends with her outrage at the disbelief of the childrens parents.

What a frightening indictment of our society that when we are confronted by something we dont understand,we dont even attempt to open our minds to the event.

After reading the article, Sarah ordered another Castle and said: To be perfectly honest, I dont think youwould be here talking to me now if it wasnt for that woman [Hind].

What happened at Ariel was certainly weird, so many kids coming back from break with such similar stories,

but I doubt many people would have heard about it if Hind hadnt made such a fuss. She was the first person tointerview the kids, and got the news out to all sorts of important people, Mack included, as if, you know, finallyhere was some vindication.

Hinds descriptions of Mack from this time do indeed suggest she regarded him as something of a redeemerfigure, a man who was not only open-minded and prepared to listen, but an academic of some standing. Andone who has risked his credibility with his colleagues to come out and say he believes the experiences ofabductees are very real indeed.

Who was this man, Mack, whose interest transformed a local curiosity into a study that continues to animateUFO chat rooms to this day?

Id been told a little of his biography by a relative of mine called Nicky Carter, who after hearing of the incidentfrom a brother at Ariel School had been the first media respondent, covering it as a producer for an SABCcurrent affairs program calledAgenda .

Prize-winning authorDr John E Mack, she said, had been a Pulitzer prize-winning author (awarded for his 1977 study ofLawrenceof Arabia, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of TE Lawrence) and a professor of psychiatry at theHarvard Medical School.

Highly regarded, Mack had nevertheless been having a tough year professionally when Carter met him. Hisproblems stemmed from his interest in the alien abduction phenomenon, which he had begun researching in the

early 1990s and about which he had written the bestselling bookAbduction: Human Encounters withAliens .

Carter sent me Macks own account of the fallout. In the spring of 1994, he writes in his second book on thealien abduction phenomenon,Passport to the Cosmos , one of the deans at the Harvard Medical Schoolhanded me a letter that called for the establishment of a small committee to investigate my work [on the alienabduction phenomenon].


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Dr John Mack was a Pulitzer prize-winner who came under fire for his UFO research.

After explaining vaguely that concerns had been expressed to the university about what I was doing(although he told of no specific complaint, nor was any offered in the letter), he added pleasantly for he hadbeen a friend and colleague that I would not have gotten into trouble if I had not suggested in the book[Abduction] that my findings might require a change in our view of reality, rather than saying that I had founda new psychiatric syndrome whose cause had not yet been established.

Another peer, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Medical School, was less delicate, describing Mack in theLos

Angeles Timesas a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it, and this time hes lost it big time.

Macks standard rejoinder was to point out that, although alien encounters were not possible according to thescience of the times, they might nevertheless turn out to be real in some way that we do not yet understand as the bizarre reports of rocks we now call meteorites falling from the sky seemed [impossible] in the 18thcentury.

Attempted ousterBy mid-1994 Mack had overcome attempts at an ouster by some of his Harvard colleagues, and was planning toexpand the scope of his research to include African alien encounters and abductions. A flight was booked toSouth Africa, where Mack had organized to meet with experiencers such as the well-known traditional healerand author Credo Mutwa (who was to tell Mack, according to Carter, who covered the interview for the SABC,about his rape by a golden-haired, blue-eyed alien female.)

As he was preparing to depart for Africa, news of the Ariel School encounter broke, and Mack adjusted histravel plans accordingly.

These were the extraordinary coincidences by which the worlds most newsworthy psychiatrist happened toland, meteor-like, in Zimbabwe. Hind recorded how he appeared on two radio shows and one TV programbefore driving the 35km from Harare to Ruwa.

These days were filled with exciting revelations for him, wrote Hind.

John was able to get through to parents and teachers and convince them that, even if they did not believe the

children, it was counterproductive to accuse them of lying.

What interested Mack was how the childrens accounts connected to things hed been told by other of hisexperiencer participants, namely that the aliens had communicated an urgent environmental message.

InPassport to the Cosmos , Mack records that after some years of research he was astonished to discover in case after case, powerful messages about the human threat to the Earths ecology were being conveyed to the


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experiencers in vivid, unmistakable words and images. He personally deemed it quite possible that theprotection of the Earths life is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon.

Original interviewsSnippets of Macks interviews with the children can still be found on YouTube today. A fifth-grader calledFrancis tells the gentle-eyed psychiatrist he was warned about something thats going to happen, and thatpollution mustnt be. Eleven-year-old Emma says; I think they want people to know that were actuallymaking harm on this world and we mustnt get too technologic [sic].

I cued up one of the clips on my phone for Sarah, but she waved it away.

I cant, I cant no, Ive had too much of my own experience to want to relive somebody elses.

After a long draw on her beer she said: They werent wrong, though, about the environmental shit, were they?If you go out there now youll see the Miombo forests have disappeared for firewood.

Drawings by pupils at Ariel School in Zimbabwe of the aliens visit to their school in September1994.

But during my first visit to the district, what had struck me was not the state of the forests but the fact that ArielSchool had continued to grow in pupil numbers, and looked to be prospering.

The khaki uniforms, the red floppy hats, the break-time chirring it all matched the YouTube clips, only therewere no longer any white students, the white farming families having all moved elsewhere as a result of the


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governments radical land reform policies. The rough area beyond the playground had been stumped andmown into a second sports field, dusty for want of rain. I asked a few teachers I bumped into about the events of1994, but it seemed that aspect of the schools history had left with the farmers.

There was his documentary being made about it at one point, said Sarah, getting a little shaky on her stool.An American chap. What was his name now Randall, Randy. Ha! Anyway, that was about seven or eightyears ago now, and I havent heard anything since.

Exploring the frontiersI knew a little more than she did, again courtesy of my relative, who had provided local assistance to thedocumentary-maker. After Mack was killed in a car accident in London in 2004, some of his supporters andfamily members had founded the John E Mack Institute, with a mission to explore the frontiers of humanexperience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of theparadigms by which we understand human identity.

In 2007, to further these rather grandiose aims, a young filmmaker called Randall Nickerson had signed on todo something with the Ariel School footage. Geez, he was sooo handsome, said Sarah, slapping her palmsagainst her jeans.

I could hardly concentrate when he was interviewing me. Not only that, he understood the thing on a different

level, because he was an experiencer himself, who had been quite open about his encounter. I think he evenappeared on Oprah!

I had contacted Nickerson in 2008, and because he happened to be in Cape Town running former Ariel studentsto ground, we arranged to meet and talk about his project. He cancelled at the last minute, though, saying hedidnt feel quite ready.

From time to time I checked the Mack Institute webpage for updates, but after a few years it seemed the projecthad run into financial difficulties. Then, in late 2013, two hours of footage tagged with Nickersons namesurfaced on YouTube. I can recognize the carcass of a creative albatross when I see one, and the amorphousvideo dump showed every sign of being just that.

As an accidental historical record, though, it is fascinating: a trove of rural school scenes from the eve ofirreversible societal change; the last generation of khaki uniforms, freckled noses and colonial English accents;and Cynthia Hind, already an anachronism in a series of pre-independence floral print dresses, and wearingwhat was described to me as a Bulawayo perm.

Tacked on at the end of the video are some snippets of interviews Nickerson conducted with former students.It really does stick with me that something happened, something was out there, says a young man. I thinksomething definitely happened, says a young woman.

Amazing experienceA former teacher says We met up on many occasions after that and hugged and shook our heads and said thatwas the most amazing experience of our lives, whereas another former student says he hasnt talked about theevent to anyone, because theyd probably think Im nuts.

When I told Sarah about the video she became very agitated. Can I see it? Oh God no, I dont want to. What dothey all say? Am I on it? she cried.

Ok, just show me.


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We watched the relevant part of the video, Sarah with a hand over her mouth.

God, their accents, she said at one point, of the now American, Australian and English tones that contrastedso sharply with the voices she had known. It crossed my mind that the truly galvanic event in all of their liveswas not the UFO landing but the policy from upon high that had turned them into aliens in New York, London,or wherever.

Then again, what did I know? When the clip ended Sarah stubbed out an Everest Menthol and shook her head.

You want to know the real message here? The real message is that this stuff can brand you for life. Itundermined Macks credibility, became this huge unending thing for others, and it certainly (word omitted) meup. I mean, try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these things returning one day. Try telling themthat you can actually sense when theyre back in our atmosphere. Theyll think youre a kook. All this lot do,she said, casting mock-angry eyes down the bar at a fellow boozer, who raised his glass and said: True, but welove you anyway, S.

Despite her patently thick skin, a look of extreme sadness entered Sarahs eyes for a moment, as she pretendedto watch her fingers pulling the label from a beer bottle.

Christ, and to think I told the family I was just popping out to Bon Marche.

*Not her real name.

UFO Sightings on the Uptick? Seven States Reported 285 UFOs in August

Have we been seeing more visits from extraterrestrial visitors, or are more people just letting their imaginationsrun wild? It seems like thats the question of the day, as UFO sightings were up in some states, with 285sightings being reported across seven states over just the month of August.

The news came to us by way of OpenMinds, which pointed to a new report from theMutual UFO Network

on the number of sightings in August of 2014. The states reporting the highest number of UFOs for Augustwere California, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Colorado, Indiana and New Jersey.

Seven states, though, combined for an impressive 285 UFO sightings for the month. Those were California,Texas, New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. California led the way with 99 UFO sightingsreported by itself, nearly half of the spike in what MUFON calls UFO Alert 3 states.

So, what were are people saying they see when they report UFOs? The most commonly reported UFO was thespherical type, with 179 such cases being reported in August. Others report seeing circular UFOs, star-shapedUFOs, and triangular UFOs. Other shapes include discs, ovals, fireballs, cylinders, cigars, and teardrops. Therewere even a few Saturn-like UFOs, though we dont know if observers were looking through a telescope at thetime they saw those.

Its not just UFO sightings, though; MUFON also says people reported 28 occurrences of a UFO taking off,hovering, or landing near them. In one case, an observer said they even observed an entity entering or exitinga craft.

Seven states reported hundreds of UFO sightings in the month of

August. -Alien visitors, or overactive imaginations?


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As to whether UFO sightings are on the uptick, thats a bit hard to call. Reporting numbers fluctuate frommonth to month. For instance, there were 99 sightings in California for the month of August, but that figure isdown from 104 cases in July and 107 cases in June. In April, though, there were only 80 sightings reported,down from 103 UFOs in March.

Lest you think the madness is over, you should know that witnesses are still reporting UFOs even now. InSayersville, NJ, a witness reported watching and photographing a diamond-shaped UFO moving at about thelevel of the treetops.

The object was diamond-shaped, the witness reported, but concave towards the bottom. The back almostlooked like something out of a movie, like it would have engines off the back, only it wasnt moving in thedirection the engines were facing.

Of course, if youre of type to buy into this thing, you probably dont think UFOs are anything new. TheInquisitrhas on odd archaeological discoveries that some think depict UFOs and aliens visiting humansthousands of years ago. Its not the sort of thing that will be resolved any time soon, though, so keep watchingthe skies; you just might see something interesting.

The LAURA Club News is a publication of the Lima Area UFO Research Associates, in Lima, Ohio. The study group meets on the3rdWednesday of the month at the New Creation Lutheran Church (just west of Tom Ahl auto) in the upstairs church fellowship

hall at 7pm-please join us!

Contacts: President, Bob Prater ~~ [email protected]

Secretary, Tom Bowman ~~ [email protected]

Co-editors, Robert and Marcia Prater ~~ [email protected]

Documents

Laura Newsletter Number 25