Waiting, but Not Wandering

I love Pentecost. There is something amazing about reflecting on the birth of the church over 2000 years ago, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the empowerment to “Go” throughout all the world that is truly exciting! It’s knowing that it wasn’t just one day that happened and then was done, but a call and continued equipping that we as the church are still living out today. It is the same Holy Spirit that fills each of us and sends us out to make new disciples and grow God’s Kingdom. How can you not get excited about that?! While I have not personally seen 3,000 people be lead to Christ in one sermon, I know it is the same Gospel today as it was then, and through his living Word people are still being brought into the family of God through faithful teaching, preaching, and baptizing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What an amazing privilege and responsibility to carry on Christ’s work here on earth!

An Update While We Wait

Now … to update you on our family! We continue to travel most every weekend to a new church, inviting people to partner with us in ministry. This has been a long season of waiting, one that is truly teaching me to trust in God’s timing. I had all these ideas of when we would be in the Netherlands: starting our new mission placement, finding a house, getting the kids in Dutch school, and settling into the next season of ministry. And yet, God still has us here – still traveling, still transitioning, still waiting. Why? Now, God may never answer that question for me this side of heaven, but he has taught so much in these periods of transition that we often find ourselves in as missionaries.

When we were living at Wycliffe College in Toronto while David was working on his PhD, I was very aware of our time there being temporary and transitional. And for a long time I was so focused on where God would have us next that I didn’t want to invest in where God had placed our family then. I didn’t see a purpose for the transitional other than to leave it behind. It wasn’t until I surrendered my plans to God and decided to grow where we were planted that I started to see God’s plans for our family – plans which (it turns out) were far better than mine (surprise, surprise). Whereas I originally wanted to just get through our time in Toronto, God made it a period in our lives that I will always treasure for the friendships, the church community, the growth in my own faith, and then, by the end, the clear calling to serve in the Netherlands at Tyndale Theological Seminary. I realize this sounds a little rambling, but sometimes in these periods of waiting, when I can’t clearly see God’s purpose in his timing, I can remind myself about all these other times in my life where he showed me that he didn’t abandon me to wander aimlessly, but that he has had a purpose for each period. I am just called to follow faithfully where he leads.

As a family we are experiencing many blessings during our home ministry assignment: some that we expected, some that have been wonderful surprises. For instance, as you may have seen on social media, a few weeks ago our family travelled back to Toronto to celebrate David’s graduation and the conferral of his PhD. What an amazing blessing to get to go back to a home we loved and celebrate this amazing accomplishment together! When we moved out of Canada last year we didn’t think we would all be able to return together for convocation. We had such a wonderful time visiting favorite places, seeing so many friends, and getting to cheer on David after so many years of hard work!

Another continued blessing has been the opportunity to spend so much time with grandparents. Our kids (and we) are enjoying a period of communal living with family, and that is something we couldn’t experience any other way. The kids are getting to spend so much time with grandparents at an age where they can truly grow close in their relationships. Knowing that we will soon be living overseas with much fewer in-person visits has made this time extra special.

There are also ministry opportunities that have arisen because we are here in north Georgia, and those that come from visiting churches around the United States, inviting them to step out in faith to partner in their prayers and gifts. It’s funny, I’ve always had mixed feeling about some of Paul’s letters in the New Testament (they tend to bring out my most argumentative side in the, “Well why did he say … ?”) but as we travel to churches and call people to this ministry, I find I relate to him as a missionary more and more. Like Paul, I desire to have a full team that can support and encourage one another in the work he has given us to do. As in Paul’s case, our calling to expand God’s Kingdom is not an individual mission but one that God has set before each one of us.

So right now, in this period of partnership-forming, team-building home ministry assignment, we continue to extend our own call to others and trust God with his perfect timing. As long as we are still stateside we will keep visiting churches and inviting people to partner in this amazing ministry of training leaders for the global Church. And when God finally says “Go!” we will be so ready to follow.

Praises and Prayer Requests

  • We thank God for the amazing outpouring of one-time donations we have received in the past two months!

  • We praise God for the conferral of David’s degree earlier this month and the blessing of getting to celebrate as a family in Toronto for a couple days!

  • Please join us in praying that God will bring in new monthly financial partners. We are continuing to see an increase in support, but since we cannot get our visas to move to the Netherlands without 100% of our monthly support pledged, we are praying for God to lead more people to become regular supporters.

  • Please pray for safety in travel (we spend a lot of time on the road).

  • Please pray for David and me as we represent SAMS-USA at the next month’s meeting of the ACNA’s Provincial Council and share about the importance of global mission with anyone who will listen.

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From Easter to Pentecost

Today is Maundy Thursday: an odd day, perhaps to send out a missionary update to you, our supporters and loved ones. But our own prayers for all of you are arriving with this prayer update, as we prepare together, far and wide, to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection. In that spirit of celebration, I am also writing to invite you to join with us in a special campaign throughout the Easter season leading up to Pentecost, as we explore new ways to collaborate all of us in the mission and calling that the Lord has placed upon our family (scroll down to learn more!).

But first, the News

I can summarize our news fairly quickly. We have been doing well since Mary Beth’s latest update, and we are slowly making progress raising the financial support necessary for us to serve at Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands. In these winter months our schedule has kept us a bit closer to home, visiting with churches in the states of Georgia and Tennessee. This has been good for our children and Mary Beth’s homeschooling efforts with them, although as the weather warms we are looking forward to traveling a bit further afield around the southern parts of the United States. In April and May we will be heading north for a few weeks to Ohio and Indiana before returning to Toronto for Wycliffe College’s convocation, at which time my PhD will be conferred in person. We are really looking forward to visiting with old friends and familiar churches in Canada, and to cultivating new partnerships in the Midwest along the way. Our return to the U.S. will then take us down to the Florida panhandle and then … who knows? We are actively seeking families and churches who would love to partner with us in theological formation for the global-church leaders. Do you have any suggestions about where we should go next?

In regard to other activities, I was privileged to give a paper on baptism and Richard Hooker (1554–1600) at the Anglican Way Conference back in February: something of a last minute invitation to Savannah that resulted in an excellent time of conversation and fellowship with new and emerging leaders from around the country. With the demands of raising support, I have not been able to do that much more academic writing. I have, however, been approaching publishers about getting my dissertation into print, and I am happy to share that some of my paper proposals for  the annual AAR/SBL conference in Denver later this year were accepted, so there is still a nice (though not overwhelming) assortment of academic tasks on my plate even before taking up the teaching position in the Netherlands.

In that regard, we are still in touch with colleagues on the faculty there at Tyndale, and while there is still hope that we may have raised the support needed to arrive on the faculty before Fall 2026, it is clear that there is at least one course in the Winter 2027 term that I am being asked to consider teaching. Becoming aware of this concrete need has elevated our sense of urgency over the last few weeks, and we are praying that the Lord will open the doors and clear the path for us to meet our budget and finally initiate our relocation to Europe so that we can reach the world.

Our Easter–Pentecost Campaign

This leads me to the big news that I would like to share with you this Holy Week. Mary Beth and I have felt the Lord leading us to undertake an email campaign throughout the seven weeks of Easter, plus the week of Pentecost, as a way of uniting our diverse team of prayer and financial supporters, and to celebrate Jesus’s saving work by focusing on the life-changing ways in which he calls us to minister in his name. If you are on our emailing list for prayer updates (and if you are not, make sure to sign up here!), every week you will receive a brief message with a thought to ponder, a video to watch, or a challenge to complete, all of which will serve to link Christ’s life, his calling on our family, and his invitation to you to discover new ways to share in this mission.

Pledged Support (%)

The Easter–Pentecost Campaign in our Total Missionary Budget

We have several goals in undertaking this campaign. First, we want to connect better with you as our senders and be an encouragement to you in this celebratory season. Second, we want to spread exciting information about our story and passion, Tyndale’s students and faculty, and how the Lord is using missionaries like us to equip missionaries around the world. And third, we are praying that the Lord will use these emails and their challenges to help us raise the next 25% of the pledges we need to meet our budget, taking us by the end of May to nearly 85% of what we need to serve on the mission field again.

So, what are we asking from you this week – Holy Week – as we get ready for our Easter–Pentecost campaign? First, we ask you to keep your eyes open for these emails! We will be using a more conventional email campaign tool, so look in your “Promotions” folder (or even “Spam” folder) for the first week or two to make sure you are getting them. Second, we ask you to keep your hearts open to the Lord’s leading as you read and engage with these emails. And third, please be open to following through on the challenges we’ll be giving! Some may be as simple as replying one word to us, some might involve forwarding the email to a friend, and some might push you even further. In any case, please consider praying with us that this campaign will help us connect better with all of you, and that we will be much closer to meeting our financial need by Pentecost (May 24).

To sum up: you will be hearing from us again soon! Until then, thank you so much for your prayers and financial support for our family. May the Lord richly bless your Holy Week and give you a joyous Easter with all your loved ones!

God in the Transitions

Greetings from the snowy North Georgia mountains! We were dumped on by a snowstorm over the weekend, and since we cannot get out of the neighborhood, now is a perfect time to give you a more reflective update here at the beginning of 2026. In fact, I realized it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me, rather than David, so I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what life looks like right now for us as missionaries in the midst of support raising.

First: moving with kids is hard. Everyone talks about how resilient kids are, and it’s true, but leaving Canada last year was really difficult. Bidding goodbye to friends, our home, and especially our church families was so much harder than I expected. We prepped the kids a lot, but they each had a hard time, in completely unique ways that we had to take a few weeks to work through: for example, it took Lily almost two weeks to stop growling at my parents when they talked to her! I want to thank all of you for praying for our kids. They have adjusted well now to life here in Georgia. While they talk often of things and people they miss in Canada – or of wanting to go to the Netherlands – they are doing well in this period of transition and are really happy here. I also want to especially thank my parents as they have truly worked very hard to turn their house into our home. The first day we got here, the kid’s room was already decorated with dragons, space, and unicorns. There were just so many little things done to help us feel at home here, while still pressing on towards our new one. Thank you!

Second: not having a home church is hard. We went from regularly attending the same churches every Sunday to encountering a different church every week. This has been a bit overwhelming for me. Every week, a new space (often far enough away for a few nights in a hotel), new faces, and always feeling the need to be “on”. It’s exhausting. I have found myself breaking down crying as the introvert in me rebels against this current normal. And yet, God is opening my eyes to the blessings and ministry that is support raising. For our kids it has meant getting to experience many different styles of worship as we have visited other Christian denominations. Sometimes the kids stay with the adults for the whole service, and sometimes they’re in a completely different building for Children’s Church. But in each of these churches they get to see the expansive depth of the Church and faith they claim as their own. Yes, they had to say goodbye to so many friends when we moved, but they have also gotten to make new ones each week as we travel.

For me it has meant getting to participate in the call of the Great Commission. So many people have heard Christ’s call – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” – and have responded to that call by joining our family’s ministry team. They want to be a part of what God is already doing at Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands, and what He has planned for His Kingdom when we get there to help serve the global church. Our team of partners now encompasses those who came on board years ago and also people joining in recent weeks, and in each person I see God’s provision and faithfulness in this ministry calling. It is truly exciting to go to these churches and share the call and challenge of the Great Commission, standing just the five of us, in front of a bunch of people we don’t know, but knowing we have an entire team of partners there with us, asking people to join this amazing work God is doing, and knowing, he is with us always, to the end of the age.

So yes, there are clear challenges to this period. Transitions are hard. Moving targets are hard. Unknowns are (really) hard. But in all things God is faithful. And this ministry He has called our family (and partners) to, is His, which means He has to get us there and until our feet are on the ground in the Netherlands, He has work for us here in raising up more people for this Commission.

How can you pray?

  • Please pray for 70 new people who can give $100 dollars a month.

(This is a big number, humanly speaking, but not for God.)

  • Please pray that God will open the doors of more churches for us to be able to share about this exciting new ministry to which we are called.

  • Please pray for the students and faculty at Tyndale Theological Seminary in this winter term: that God would continue to deepen their faith and understanding of Him and His word, so they can continue to spread His Kingdom to the ends of the earth

We might not be there yet, but God is doing amazing things through the students and faculty of that school.

  • Please pray about people in your own lives who might be interested in joining our team in this great work to which we have been called – and if possible, please put us in touch with them!

  • Please continue to pray for health and safety as we travel and that God will continue to raise up new partners to join our ever-growing team.

Again, thank you for everything each of you is doing for our missionary family: for your prayers, your gifts, and your encouragement. We hope to have news for you soon about our support raising progress, but until then, may the Lord richly bless you and your family in the winter weeks ahead!

We invite you to partner with us in our ministry!

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