Ruaha National Park

 

The pictures posted in reverse, so scroll to the bottom and go up to see the pictures in order.

crazy thing is I didn't even see all his friends until editing the picture! to his left in the top of the tree are at least 11 loves birds!

Bryan wanted to see a fish eagle and he got his wish!

jackal

water bucks with impalas

look closer.

do you see the small dark creatures?

baboons eating flowers.

how many giraffes can you see in this one?

the dark lumps are elephants!

giraffes are indeed tall!

nothing like making eye contact with a lioness.

the young male who just waits.

one lion gives up early and stays near the water while the second continues.

sprinting

The case is on! Lions on the left coming across the water.

I get distracted by a bird.

the Kudu are distracted by some other kudu coming for a drink.

...and then disappear into the bushes.

look carefully here who else spotted the Kudu?

We spotted Kudu!

Called to Missions

 

April 25^th 

Bryan received his call to serve the 

Office of International Missions of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod 

as a Theological Educator in Tanzania, Africa.

The reason they announced that we will be in St. Louis, Missouri District is because the headquarters for the Office of International Missions is located there. Missouri will be our assigned district.

Where in Tanzania? Shinyanga, 2.5 hours south of Lake Victoria.

What is there? A training center and the beginnings of a Seminary.

Have you ever been there before? Yes, we visited this past December, 2022 (more to come on this!)

When will you leave? Most likely in January, 2024.

Why not immediately? This call requires some additional training as well as some fundraising.

So what's happening now? We are completing our studies. We have two more weeks of classes. At the end of the second week, we will BOTH graduate. Bryan with his Master of Divinity and Keah her Master in Deaconess Studies. We will then immediately downsize our entire household belongings to what fits into a 16 foot trailer and move it back to Oklahoma. Then we start training for our mission assignment this June.

Keah has quit her job with Just Neighbors in order to focus on downsizing the household during these last days in the home. We have moved so many times (4 moves so far since selling our home in Oklahoma City) and we still have a great number of random things we cling to. This year we have been working on downsizing, and we are getting there. We are not there yet, but it is such a great feeling to have less - less to clean and make a place for. It is hard though. One of our big projects is scanning as much as we can so we have digital reference materials and memories. The folks at the library are getting really familiar seeing Keah’s face every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as she spends some time scanning to email all kinds of documents.

We continue to work with Calvary Lutheran Church in Plymouth, IN until the end of this month. Bryan will preach one last time there on May 28th. They have been such a blessing to our family, and we will miss them very much!    

What do the kids think? Well originally they thought it would be just another amazing Wyoming like adventure. But over time we have told them more and more about Tanzania, and while, yes, Wyoming’s culture is different than Indiana and Oklahoma, it is still inside the United States of America, still in the same Country, and Tanzania is it’s own country on a different continent (Globes really help when teaching these things).

We are beyond thankful for this call! This has been a long time in the works. We have yearned to return to Africa since returning from it in 2010. We wanted to return in a way that would be most helpful for the people there, and teaching pastors and deaconesses will be most fruitful for the Church. In order to do that we chose to start down this road which has led us to this point. We are excited to prepare for the next steps and the journey to come.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'” (Mt 9:37-38)

Tomorrow it the BIG day

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The time has arrived. Please join us Tuesday evening, 7pm (Eastern time) for the Candidate Call Service, and learn where concluding students (from Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne) will be serving their first calls! 

Here is where you can watch it live! 

https://www.ctsfw.edu/callday/

What does this mean?

Bryan has completed: 

• 2 full years of studies (Fall 2019- Spring 2021)
• Vicarage assignment at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Cheyenne, WY (Summer 2021- Summer 2022) 
• Theological Interview (Fall 2022)
• Final year (almost) of studies (Fall 2022 - Spring 2023)

He is a candidate to receive a call for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod along with the rest guys receiving calls! 

Watch for more info after call night! 

In the Depths of Winter

 Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! and Happy New Year! 

I first will apologize for not getting Christmas cards/letters out this year. Consider this your Christmas/New Year and now Epiphany letter. 

We are now over halfway through the Winter quarter at the Seminary, which means halfway through this final year of Seminary. The Fall quarter had us readjusting ourselves mentally to be students again after a year out on vicarage. With 10 week long quarters you feel like just as you have the routine and swing of it going it ends. But our fall was full of so much. 

Fourth year Seminarians must do a theological interview and pass it in order to graduate and receive a call. Bryan had his interview with Dr. Gieschen and Dr. Peperkorn on November 15th, and he passed it. Thanks be to God!

Fall this year was beautiful, full of such brilliant colors. 

At the end of the Fall quarter we had visitors! Nana and Papa Payne visited from Oklahoma, and then we all drove to Pennsylvania to visit Uncle Jim and Aunt Cindy and their family for thanksgiving! The kids got to meet cousins they had not seen in a long time as well as ones they had never met. We all had a wonderful time catching up and celebrating Thanksgiving together. We even got to visit Hershey Park thanks to Angie! And thanks to the guy cousins for riding the rides with the kids! Uncle Jim took the kids for a ride and Nana and Aunt Cindy had fun crafts. 

Winter quarter began at the end of November. Winter quarter is broken into two parts, 3 weeks before Christmas then a 3 week Christmas break followed by the 7 weeks of classes to complete the quarter. We did quite a bit of traveling over the Christmas break and were able to visit family in Oklahoma for the holidays. We visited Great Grandma Roggow in Enid, Oklahoma and Nana and Papa in Lawton Oklahoma. We then spent the week after Christmas in Oklahoma City with Agogo and Papa and many more cousins. Keah is so thankful for her flexible job that she could even work while in Oklahoma! 

The weekend following Christmas we even drove down to Galveston, Texas so Bryan could preach at St. John Lutheran Church. The humidity and fog welcomed us to the island, but we were warmly invited into the church and enjoyed chatting with many people before and after church. We debated taking our time driving back North but decided we would rather get home and rest before the kids went back to school, so we drove straight back, stopping only once overnight in Durant, OK where we got to spend time with Shawna, Eleanor, Mr. and Mrs. Dewald. 

Back in Fort Wayne we did all the laundry and got prepared for studies again. Classes started back up and we didn't quite get back into the rhythm before Bryan had his gallbladder removed. Back in October, after the last post, Keah took Bryan to the ER late one night due to extreme pain in his stomach. We were told it was not an "emergency surgery type of thing" and to follow up with Bryan's general MD. That started us on a trail to figure out what was wrong. Bryan was sent to a GI doctor who ran more scans/tests and finally gave the diagnosis of a significant amount of gallstones and his gallbladder needed to be removed ASAP. The GI surgeon who removed it just happened to be the GI surgeon on call that day back in 2020 when Keah had her appendix removed! Thank you all for all your prayers throughout this! Bryan is doing very well now. He attended his classes last Thursday and Friday (might have done a bit much) but he is healing and getting a little stronger each day. 

We got to see Mrs. Pam Selking at chapel! That was so wonderful. We had some good snowfall last week and we have enjoyed its beauty and had fun with the kids building snow forts and snow foxes. The snow has really captivating this year. The kind of snow that when you walk out into it you can't hear anything. The snow absorbs all the chaos and background noise and all you can hear is silence, a silence so bold you strain to hear anything at all. It is so peaceful yet so heavy at the same time. The weight of winter, the cold days and nights, kids are more inside than out to release their energy! Thankful winter days are short so that the longer days are in summer when we can be outside. But for now we cuddle under blankets while attempting to get our homework done. This quarter wraps up at the end of February.