Warm greetings from our family in Toronto! Our summer this year has been a productive time of “getting things done” outside of the rigidity of the school term, and I’m eager to give you all a little window into how things have been going throughout this season of study, ministry, travel, and rest.
As our last missionary update suggested, we were expecting life to get a bit hectic over these last few months: and this has been even more true than anticipated! Mary Beth and our three children headed south in mid-June, to spend a significant chunk of time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. With the help of my parents in Indiana and hers in Georgia, they arrived at the latter’s home in the Smoky Mountains safe and sound, where I also joined them a few days later. Although I was only able to spend a week with them, it was a rejuvenating time of relaxing in a beautiful part of the world with people that we love.
While I had to continue my journey en route to Europe, the rest of our family was able to continue spending ongoing quality time with an extended family that had come from places as far away as California. During that month in Georgia, Lily learned to walk, Austin and James re-learned how to go creek-ing, and despite the very full house everyone had a fantastic time with each other in ways that – given our family’s missionary calling – we don’t usually get to have.
While all this was happening, I had made my way to Europe for nearly three weeks. I first visited fellow SAMS-USA missionaries who are serving in the Netherlands, around a half hour north of Amsterdam. Despite the jet lag, I was incredibly blessed to spend an amazing time with Louise and Johann van der Bijl, who in addition to his ministry as an author with Langham Publishing is pastoring an Anglican congregation in Heiloo. I then took the train to Germany, where I spent two weeks in Wittenberg studying Reformation-era paleography: that is, the kinds of cursive and other scripts that were used by Latin-, German- and English-writers in the sixteenth century. Honestly, it was much harder than I expected, but also much more important for my specialization than I had previously realized.
In addition to reading letters written by Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, or Queen Elizabeth I in their own hand, I was also fortunate to rub shoulders and learn from some of the top scholars in Reformation scholarship: people like Robert Kolb, Ashley Null, Andreas Stegmann or Dorothea Wendebourg (my encounter with whom was – alas! – all too brief). As our small cohort of graduate students travelled around east Germany, visiting manuscript archives and encountering other historical artifacts, we also formed bonds with one another that, moving forward, will continue in the years ahead. I am deeply grateful to the Wittenberg Center for Reformation Studies for accepting me into the program, and for covering the travel, living, and studying expenses necessary to make it happen!
By the middle of July, both my family and I found ourselves back in Toronto: exhausted, but happy to have made our ways through the world as we did. Less than two weeks after returning, we borrowed a vehicle, packed everyone up and headed to Camp Koinonia, where I served as the speaker and pastor for Family Camp, Week 2. In addition to guiding worship at the beginning and end of the week, each day I led the adults in discussions that centered on allowing the Lord’s Prayer, combined with excerpts from the Gospel according to John, to inform our understanding of prayer in general. Due to the insightful collaboration of the many campers who joined with us, these discussions were challenging and fruitful, and I myself will be ruminating on our sessions together for months to come. In the meantime, Mary Beth and I enjoyed watching all three of our children flourish in the wild: making crafts, swimming in the lake, going on hikes, jumping on the trampoline, and making friends with a good half dozen other kids around the same age. As usual, when we reached the end of the week at camp, they did not want to go back to the city!
One thing however that we brought back from camp has been colds: since early August, it has been one cold or flu after the other, both for the kids, as well as for me and Mary Beth. While I have been getting back into the swing of reading and writing for school, as well as preparing to TA for Wycliffe’s class on preaching, illness has put something of a crimp in my productivity. Please pray that both I and the rest of the family are able to get back on both feet soon!
In this regard, let me give you an update on how things are going with writing my dissertation. In June I turned in a chapter of my thesis (treating Richard Hooker’s understanding of participation in Christ and the sacraments) that was favorably received by my doctoral supervisor, and I’m now onto the next chapter (on Hooker’s ecclesiology and political theology), a part of which I am scheduled to present next month at a conference in Baltimore. My hope is to get this next chapter, and hopefully another finished by the end of the calendar year. Doing so will take a considerable effort, but the result will be that the bulk of my argumentation will be completed, setting me up (potentially) to submit my thesis for defense some time in 2024.
At the same time that I am chipping away at my academic research, we have also been steadily following up on leads for future mission placements. So far, we have had serious conversations with representatives of three theological institutions – on multiple continents! – that are accepting missionaries to teach, and we are prayerfully continuing in dialogue with them and others that have begun entering our field of vision. It is still far too early to tell where the Lord will be sending us, but we are even now beginning to get excited by the sense that he has a place and a set of ministries for us beyond the horizon of our life studying and serving in Toronto. And we can’t wait to tell you more, even as we find out more ourselves. Stay tuned!
Along these lines, I am aware of how difficult it is to continue supporting missionaries who are back in North America on Educational Ministry Assignment, especially given the financial pressures that so many are finding themselves under. I want to thank you for your prayers and for your gifts, and for continuing to partner with us long-term in this ministry to which the Lord has called us. Indeed, as monthly giving from supporters to our ministry continues to drop, and we would ask you prayerfully to consider giving to our family’s ministry – in Canada, and wherever God next calls us to go.
To sum all this up with our requests, please pray especially for:
Bodily health and financial provision
Fruitful study and writing
Effective ministry in Toronto
Good routines with the children
Discernment for next steps as missionaries
On this Labor Day, our family wishes you and yours a wonderful beginning to the Fall months, and we do ask you to keep us and our needs in your prayers. We look forward to sharing more about our life – and more about my progress in writing – in these months ahead!
