We hope this letter finds you and your entire family joyful with the spirit of anticipation this Advent season as we await the coming of our Lord! Life at Nashotah House has been keeping both Philip and I busy with a conglomeration of holiday festivities, chapel services and community events—not to mention all the school work Philip has to complete before the end of the semester. Yet, through it all we have found it beneficial to fully participate in this season of Advent as we develop our own traditions as a family and celebrate and reflect with amazement on Christ’s incarnation as a tiny little baby.
We can’t believe that it was just this past summer when we shoved all of our belongings into our small hatchback and drove across the country to Nashotah, Wisconsin where Philip is finishing his last year of seminary. It seems like such a short time ago when we first pulled into our parking space at Sheridan 4C on the Nashotah campus. Our car was so full that it looked like a water balloon ready to burst! In no time we were unpacked, Philip began classes, and I started working as a teller at a local bank. Since then our weeks have been so full of activities that it is no wonder the time has passed quickly. Before we knew it, snowflakes began to flood the yard with piles of fluff while icicles started forming sculptures on our window panes. This winter sure has been a chilly one!
Philip’s school schedule keeps him moving from morning prayer at 8am until evening prayer at 4:30pm with classes and study in between, after which he is able to come home and relax just long enough to eat dinner and return to the library or his study in our frigid basement for an evening of reading Church History or writing papers for Liturgy I and II. Praise God his days of Greek and Hebrew are over!
My evenings are quite full as well. After returning home from work, usually around 6pm, I seem to have some sort of activity to fill my evenings every night of the week! Mondays I lead a women’s prayer group in our home, Tuesdays I have begun attending training classes for the Order of St. Luke, which is a healing prayer ministry. On Wednesday nights we have about eight vibrant and talkative teenagers pile on our couch, eat snacks and interrupt one another as they tell us all about their weeks for close to an hour, leaving about thirty minutes for us to teach them about coming Sunday’s gospel lesson. Thursday evenings there is a family Eucharist in St. Mary’s Chapel on campus which is usually followed by some other social event, and Friday evenings we have been hosting bon-fires outside our home to build community with our neighbors. And believe it or not, our weekends are just as crazy! Philip is filling in as pastor every other Sunday at a small parish of elderly folks and we are also participating in the Sunday evening contemporary service on campus. As you can see, life in Wisconsin has left us little time for relaxation, but God has been sustaining us and we are blessed to be a part of such a spiritually enriching community!
Next semester has a lot in store for us as well. Right after Christmas Philip will be taking the General Ordination Exam which is a four day process that will test him on what he has learned over the past two and a half years in seminary. The exam covers topics such as theology, church history, spiritual formation, liturgy and pastoral care. He is busy preparing for that on top of all his studies. After the exam is complete, Philip will load into a minivan with half a dozen other volunteers and travel down to New Orleans to assist the area still suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sadly I will not be able to join him.
When he returns, he will begin his final semester of seminary! However, once again his school responsibilities will be joined by a variety of other tasks like meeting with the Standing Committee, starting the deployment process with the Diocese of Central Florida and, assuming everything falls into place, preparing for ordination to the deaconate! We are really excited and overwhelmed, hardly believing that our three years of seminary are coming to a close!
As for myself, after a lot of prayer and discernment, we have decided that I will leave my job at the bank a little earlier than planned in order to give myself ample time to complete my Master’s thesis project. So next semester I will be spending a majority of my time in the library and interviewing as many people as I can to develop curriculum for a women’s bible study based on a theology and spirituality of the human body. This is a topic that God has placed on my heart and I am eager to develop it into both a spiritual discipline and a tool to help others integrate their bodies into their spiritual lives.
Well, that’s all for now! We hope that your lives are being filled to the measure with the complete love of Christ as we rejoice in his coming! If you are already receiving Philip’s email newsletter updates, “A Month in the Life of a Seminarian”
and would like to be put on that mailing list, send him an email.
Thank you for all your love, prayers and support. We are blessed to have you as a part of our lives and we could not have gotten to where we are today without your encouragement and prayers.
The Lord be With You,
Philip and Melissa
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