SHELLS EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH
   _{287 Shells Church Road, Grantville, PA  17028
      Office:   469-2586}          

Missions

Dear friends and sponsoring congregations,

The new year is bringing changes to our family again. In December, Marissa and I not only celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary, but we also made the decision to return to the United States. We first postponed our return in 2005 in order to respond to a call to serve with JCMWA. Two years ago, when that call ended, we seriously considered our return, but accepted this call to serve as ELCA Regional Representative.  So after much conversation and prayer, we are returning.

We don’t imagine the return to living and working in the US will be easy, but we are moving toward it in faith that God will prepare the way and be by our side. We are somehow content to know that we will, after 27 years on the road, finally be able to share in the lives of our brothers and sisters, our families. We are also looking forward to life in the ELCA both in worship and in service to community. And, truthfully, we are excited about living in the USA, enjoying the four seasons, becoming homeowners, and establishing roots in a community.  Through the mobility process for rostered leaders in the ELCA, we hope to find a new call in or near Pennsylvania.

There are of course many parts of our life in West Africa that we willmiss and yet cherish forever: the facility with which people here smile in any circumstance; the capacity of people to extend hospitality, the readiness to share what one has with the other; the aptitude for creating community by recognizing everyone present and taking the time to greet, visit and say good bye; the privilege of living in and learning about other cultures and other ways of understanding. The list could go on.

We will also leave with a memory of so many people who we met during our life as ELCA missionaries, both people in West Africa and people in the USA. We are thankful for those encounters, so many shared visions of God’s mission in the world. We are thankful for congregations whose members have sacrificed in order to support the engagement of the ELCA with people around the world.

For the next five months, I will continue to work in this position with the Global Mission West Africa Team. This coming summer, I will have July and some of August to visit one more time with churches that have supported ELCA mission work through the missionary sponsorship program.  If you would like me to visit your church this summer, please contact me.

By God's grace we live.

Viking

Rev. Viking Dietrich
Regional Representative

 - West Africa
ELCA Global Mission