A New Normal, Part 2.
Wherein I detail the meeting between me and another missionary.
“A New Normal” is a multi-part story of how I came to be a Missionary to Papua New Guinea. Click here to read the first installment.
Because we live in Fort Wayne, Indiana we often have seminary students and their families attend our church. They come in all sizes: there are singles, married couples without kids, and families with a variety of children in whole numerical values right on up the number line. As long as I have been attending, the record has been six children.
But when we first met that family they only had four, and so did we. We hit it off right away, as parents of large families are required to do (there is a law somewhere). As it turned out, the wife/mother of this clan was quite the play-date queen. She has the gift of assembling mothers and entertaining them while their children run amok.
And so it was that through these interconnected relationship webs, we came into contact with another Papua New Guinea missionary. Except he wasn’t a missionary yet. He was a seminary student with a wife and four kids. I’ll leave it to the numerologists to decipher the meaning of all our families having four children, even though by the time we met some of us were on our fifth. If this all seems complicated, relax; the story gets easier from here on out.
Seminary students are funny. Not necessarily humorous (although some are), but quirky. They have to undergo four years of arduous, strenuous, and at times monotonous training. One of those years is spent doing field work with a congregation, assisting a pastor (we call it a Vicarage). Upon completion of their academic requirements they do not get to relax, try as they might. For always looming above the seminarian, like an approaching storm, is Call Night.
Call Night is a momentous occasion when the seminary faculty reveals to the seminarians where their dart has struck the map…er, I mean, where they thoughtfully and considerately have been called to serve a congregation as a Pastor. Yet somehow a dart must have gone wide, because one man received a call as a Missionary to Papua New Guinea.
Typically, seminarians have little or no idea where they are going. This announcement, therefore, would have been a 1.21-gigawatt shock had this particular seminarian not known ahead of time. But, in fact, he did know, and I knew as well, because he told me.
In the next installment of “A New Normal” I will tell you what he told me. Stay tuned...
p.s. "The seminarian" in this episode is the Rev. Peter Haugen. Find out more about him and how you can pray for and support his family here. Haugen family
p.p.s. And this family needs prayer and support, too. Ritzman family
Don't forget about us non-pastoral seminary students. We have some of the same challenges as the M.Div's do. ;--}
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