A quick update

Summer is almost over and for many, this marks a time of transition from summer vacations to back to school life.  I hope your summer has been good.

Just a quick post to update you on what's been happening with us and Mosaic Niagara.  

We continue primarily to simply establish the patterns of our lives in a new city where we know very few people.  This is a season of transition for us also in terms of jobs.  For the past 8 months, I have been working as an interim pastor with Kingsfield-Zurich Mennonite Church which is about 3 hours away from our home here.  I made one trip a week to Zurich for this which minimized the drive time somewhat.  The people there are wonderful, generous and welcoming and it was a wonderful season of ministry but the distance made it unsustainable.  So while the hope at the beginning was to stay there until they had found their next permanent pastor, I had to cut my time short there.  Today is my last official day of ministry with them.

Tomorrow, however, begins a new season of interim ministry.  I officially begin as an interim minister here in Niagara with Vineland United Mennonite Church.  I am looking forward to working with this church and am happy that the commute is only 30 minutes.  

As you may remember, the plan is that Mosaic Niagara will be a church without buildings, programs or paid staff.  So because I never plan on taking a salary from Mosaic Niagara, we need to find other ways to make a living.  I am finding that interim ministry is working for me as a "tent-making" kind of way to financially sustain ourselves.  (If you aren't familiar with that term "tent-making", it comes from the Apostle Paul in the early church and how he literally made tents for his living as he spread the Good News of Jesus and planted new churches)

Kim also is in transition and it has been an exciting week.  We have mentioned before how difficult (ok, impossible so far) for her to find a job teaching in the public school system here in Niagara.  So last May and June she got a job as an Educational Assistant in a French Catholic school that is walking distance to our house.  When that job ended at the close of the last school year, we knew that the person she was replacing would still not be back in the fall.  So we watched all summer for the job to be posted again.  Finally, it was posted last week, she applied, got an interview on Monday, found out that she got the job on Tuesday and started this morning.  Rollercoaster, right?

Finally, you might remember that in the early going, we were part of trying to start a new community service club here in Welland.  The hope was that this would be part of us finding our place in this new community, meeting people and helping to make a positive difference in the community.  After a few months of working at that, it became apparent that this wasn't working so we backed away from it.  That's the way it goes sometimes.  You try something.  Maybe it works.  Maybe it doesn't and if it doesn't you try something else.  So in the past few weeks we have joined up with a great local organization that serves the homeless or housing threatened population in Welland that this has been a great experience.  We are meeting wonderful people, serving the poor and neglected and feeling like this is our place.  Who knows what God will lead us into through this.

Ok, so that wasn't as short as I thought it would be.  There is more I could say but I will save it for another time.




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