January, 2011 Update

Dear Friends & Family, Jan. 21, 2011

I hope this finds you well and celebrating a new year where God can continue to show us all how truly awesome he is!

My seminary journey continues! Currently I am taking Pastoral Care, Christology (the study of Christ, his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension and their meaning for us), Systems Theory (pastoral counseling help), and Theology of Worship. I love them all! I am finally done with all my languages (praise God!), and had Ethics and Homiletics (preaching) last fall. I am officially halfway done!!!

This year has been a real challenge for us since I didn’t qualify for any financial aid and so we have had to get some big loans for both school and living (which I keep telling God, was not in our plans). Kim’s hours at Apple have finally increased to almost full-time so that has helped, and I work ten hours a week between my two field ed. churches - which does pay a small stipend.

God is teaching us about his provision in ways we never would have imagined! Amazingly, he always comes through - whether it’s something that we worked at or something that is purely grace - like the large check we received last fall from an anonymous angel in Grand Junction. It is very humbling, and yet builds our faith like none other. GOD IS AT WORK IN OUR MIDST! I hope you see it as much as we have - and if you haven’t, I pray this encourages you! He is here, always, and at work in our lives. A lesson, I believe, we constantly need to be reminded of...

I wasn’t planning on going on a mission trip this year because of our very tight finances, but then a trip came up that I felt I couldn’t pass up. The seminary is taking a group of students to Brazil to learn about and encourage those planting churches there. Since I am very interested in church planting and new church development I felt God really calling me to go on this trip. He seems to keep directing me to people and situations that teach me even more about church planting, so I try to keep following his lead!

The total cost of the trip is $2500. World Mission Initiative, the school organization which organizes the trip, has given me $500, and a wonderful couple, the Shortridge’s, have given me (and many others - as they do each year) a scholarship of $1000. So I’m more than halfway there!

God has been working in me and many students here at PTS. There are quite a few of us feeling called to new church development, and the seminary is even talking about starting an “NCD track” next year since there are so many interested students - which is very exciting! The Pittsburgh Presbytery is also very proactive with NCD, and there are around half a dozen new church plants in Pittsburgh alone. God’s showing me more and more why PTS was the right place to come!

Having come from such a vibrant church in Grand Junction, it’s been almost shocking to see how many Presbyterian (and other mainline) churches are dying. There IS literally a church on every other corner here. Huge, 100-year-old monuments with tiny congregations barely able to keep the building going let alone do any kind of ministry. Many of these churches simply end up fading away, but some - like my urban field ed. church - are slowly coming back to life as they reach out into the community showing the love of Christ in tangible ways. (There is a part of me that is drawn to church redevelopment as well - helping some of these dying churches come back to life!)

I am writing to see if you can help in supporting me become better equipped for what God is calling me to. So many of you pray for me, and I (we) can’t thank you enough, as your prayers have truly carried us through this sometimes difficult journey.

If you are willing and able, I would be so grateful if you could help financially support this trip to Brazil (which I take from Feb. 25th to March 8th). Whether or not you can help financially, I would love to have your prayer support as I see what God has to show me in Brazil and beyond!

Thank you, again, for your love and prayers throughout this seminary journey. I know for certain that it has been only through God’s strength that we have made it thus far!

May God bless you and open your eyes and your heart to the great love he has for you, and the wondrous mystery of his work in all of our lives!

Serving Together (though miles apart)!

~Sally

P.S. If you can help support this adventure financially you can make checks out to either me or Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and I will take the money to the school. (When made out to the seminary, you will receive a receipt for tax deduction purposes.) Leave a comment or email me for our mailing address so I don't have to put it out here in cyberspace!

P.P.S. If you would, two more prayer requests. First, pray for our sweet Sarah, her husband Rob, and their Rilo. They are separated and our family is simply grieving. Certainly we pray for reconciliation, but more than that we pray that through this Rob will come to know the Lord and Sarah will draw even nearer to Jesus.
Second, please just keep our future in your prayers. I trust that God will have the perfect church, in the perfect place, at the perfect time prepared for us. My prayer is that even now he is preparing that place, and he will guide and direct us when that time comes. (I am guessing that I won’t start with doing a church plant right out of seminary, but who knows! We hope to be wherever Rilo is so we can be a bigger part of his life.)