Moving as a way of life

I love moving. Not the back breaking work, not the exhaustion that comes with it, but the process. Mike and I have been married for nearly 9 years and the move to South Dakota will be our sixth move. One of those moves was literally across the street (we moved from 617 to 618 main, but we still moved).

The best part of moving every few years is that you get a chance to reassess your stuff. What do you have that you don't need anymore? What do you have that you can live without? Long distance moves especially help you to really rethink your possessions. For Mike and I we really have to love a piece of furniture to go to the trouble of loading it in a truck and hauling it across country.

The other great thing about moving so often is that all your little stuff gets reassessed too. We look through our clothes, our papers, our knickknacks. All this moving has helped us to eliminate clutter in our lives. So even though moving is a lot of work it allows us to keep our lives more ordered.

The blessing and the curse of seminary is that you move to seminary and after 2 years years you move away for a year of internship and then you move back to seminary for a final year of school. Then after graduation you move again. So that's four moves in four years. By the time we get to first call we should be down to our most valuable possessions.

Just so we're clear, while Mike and I like to declutter our lives by moving, our cat Berronar hates moving. She hates car rides and being locked in a room while we load the truck and new places freak her out. She'll be alright though as long as she has Mike to pet her on the long car ride and at the end of the journey.

New Address - effective August 1, 2009

The move to South Dakota is quickly approaching. We leave Dubuque on Friday July, 31st and arrive in Bancroft on August 1st. Here's the new address:

615 Main Ave.
Bancroft, SD
57353

* * * coming soon - a blog post about packing and my philosophy about moving * * *

Move to South Dakota scheduled

We have more information about the move to South Dakota! The plan is to move out of our apartment on campus Friday, July 31st and into the parsonage on Saturday, August 1st. We'll spend the first two weeks in South Dakota getting settled in and oriented.


Also next week all the Internship supervisors are on campus Tuesday thru Thursday. I'm looking forward to meeting my supervisor Rev. Randall (Randy) Koeller. I'm excited to get started, but I keep reminding myself that I need to stay focused until the semester is over.

Internship 2009-2010

Starting in August Mike and I will be living in Bancroft, South Dakota - population 37 (not a typo). I will be serving as an Intern at St. John's Lutheran (37 members - average attendance on a Sunday 16) in Bancroft and American Lutheran (728 members - average attendance on a Sunday 165) in De Smet. We will live in the smaller town in a 3 bedroom parsonage. The assignment is an interesting mix. I'll spend half my time working fairly independently (with back-up from my supervisor) at St. John's in Bancroft and the other half of my time with my supervisor at American Lutheran in De Smet. We're very excited about the assignment and we think it will be a great place to be for a year. The church in Bancroft has been training interns since 1970 and we know they will teach me what I need to learn. We start in August, but we don't yet know the exact date.

A fun and interesting side note - De Smet was the setting for 5 of the 9 books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about life on the prairie in the late 1800s and is a popular tourist site featuring the LIW homes, museum and annual pageant! As a Little House fan I couldn't be more pleased :D

Pictures from the afternoon we received the assignments!



I was excited before we even opened the envelope











"We're going to....
SOUTH DAKOTA!"





(Thanks to Jealaine Marple for taking pictures on Assignment Day!)

Announcement postponed

We got our assignment and we're very excited to announce... but we've been asked to wait until the supervisor has been notified. Sorry!

Update on Endorsement, China, and Internship

I have been very lax in posting. Can it really be that I haven't written since October? So much has happened since then! Three things to report.

1. I am officially Endorsed by the Northwest Minnesota Synod Candidacy Committee. We got the official paperwork while I was away in China. Being Endorsed affects #3.
2. I went to China and back in January and it was incredible! Expect a new post sometime soon.
3. Now that I am officially endorsed I am cleared to go on Internship. Internship Assignments are coming to our Seminary mailboxes on March 11th.

A few words about Internship... Internship lasts for a full year. We will leave sometime this summer and then be back for my final year of school in the summer of 2010. This is an assigned placement. The Seminary has an internship committee that reviews the student and church applications and tries to make the best match. We have some say in where we go because we fill out a lengthy preference form as part of our application. Some students choose to restrict their location for a variety of reasons, but Mike and I chose not to restrict. We're looking at it as an adventure and we're hoping 1) for a good supervisor fit, 2) for a great congregation and 3) to learn a lot. Watch for a post in mid-March letting you know where we'll be summer 2009 - summer 2010! see the post from May 2008 about the seminary process - recently updated!