Update and Prayer Request

Friday, June 14, 2019

With summer upon us, the seminary building is rather quiet these days. You will find our staff, a few professors, and one or two students in the building but that is about it. Where is everyone else? Well, our professors may be working at home, doing research, writing articles, or preparing sermons. Some of them are doing some travelling. Dr. de Visser visited The Netherlands recently. Dr. Van Vliet is in Australia at the moment, and Dr. Van Raalte will soon leave for a trip to South Africa. We hope and pray that these visits may be encouraging and stimulating experiences, both for the churches that are being visited and for the professors themselves.

As for our students, we are very thankful that all our graduating students passed their classis exams recently. Some of them have received calls already. Others are still waiting. Please join us in praying that the Lord will guide every one of these men to find a place where they can serve Him and his church in this world.

Most of the returning students are involved in internships. Three students are doing the big summer internship at this time: Aidan Plug is in Spring Creek with Rev. Peter Holtvluwer. Daniel Shin is in Langley with Dr. William denHollander. Kelvin Dekker is in Albany (W. Australia) with Rev. Hendrik Alkema.

Four students are doing (or have completed already) mission internships: Ruurd Offringa with Rev. Paul Aasman in Streetlight Ministries, Hamilton; Timothy Veenstra with Rev. Richard Bultje in the River of Life church plant, Niagara Falls; Raoul Kingma with Dr. Eric Watkins in St. Augustine, Florida; and Kevin Star is improving his French by visiting ERQ churches in Quebec.

The six students who just finished their first year of studies are doing (or have already completed) the two-week orientation internship: Rodney den Boer with Rev. Marc Jagt (Fergus); Anson van Delden with Rev. Winston Bosch (Ottawa); Dathan Pleiter with Rev. Dirk Poppe (Southern River, W. Australia); Bryan Vanderhorst with Rev. Rodney Vermeulen (Glanbrook), Timothy Van Beek with Rev. Rolf denHollander (Grassie), and Tsjibbe deJong with Rev. Al Bezuyen (Brampton URC). We also have one of our international students, Sungmin Hong (from South Korea), doing a six week internship with Revs. John Louwerse and Darren Feenstra in Hamilton-Cornerstone.

From the seminary’s perspective we rejoice in seeing all these connections with the churches. Please join us in giving thanks to the Lord for his many blessings and praying that He would bless the various internships and other activities that are taking place this summer.