Big News - Our Internship Assignment

The seminary made Internship assignments public on Friday afternoon. We did get an email sent out Friday night, but then a flu bug hit (for those of you who listen to Garrison Keillor, it was the "60 second flu bug" that he described a couple of weeks ago. It has to do with how fast it hits, not how long it last.) and we did not get the news posted here. Now it is Sunday and we are both feeling somewhat better, so here is the promised news.

Internship assignments, as you have seen from previous posts, are very much beyond our control. We, unlike many of our classmates, have known for a couple of weeks what site was being considered for us, but we could not talk about it. Below is the main part of the email we sent, with more explanation.

We began the process knowing that our only real input was asking to be placed somewhere near each other so that we could live together, but knowing that we would probably be at different churches, possibly in different towns, and that there were a couple of commonly used sites for married clergy couples that met these specifications. We had very little anxiety, because we knew there was just not much we could do about it and therefore, no reason to fret.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we were called into the Contextual Education office to discuss a special situation that had come up. It seemed that a congregation had been working on becoming an internship site where the intern would be shared between the congregation and Lutheran Disaster Response. The hitch - it was only one site. We were recommended by the seminary internship committee because of our experience on the Gulf Coast in January. We were excited about the possibilities, but very concerned about the fact that it was only one site. You see, internship is paid (sort of). The intern receives, in most cases, a housing allowance and a monthly stipend. Under many circumstances, the stipend covers your living expenses, and if you are single or your spouse is working, life is pretty good. When both of you are students and you look at a budget living off one stipend, life suddenly looks pretty dismal. We wanted to go, but were afraid of financial disaster. So, we spent an entire weekend worrying, praying, talking, avoiding, and praying some more. On Monday morning, we said Yes, but we will have to have more income so can one of us work part time, or can we supply-preach in the area, or something? Two days later, we were told that the site had found additional funding to cover the second stipend!

Now, after all that, where is this place? It is St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Mobile, Alabama. The site is a shared site between St. Paul's and Lutheran Disaster Response. We (both of us at the same place) will be working within the congregation and working for LDR in the area - which means the Gulf coast - very near where we were in January. Now you may want to know how did we managed that, but we didn't. Read the paragraph above again - this site wasn't a possibility when we went to Mississippi or even when we first came back. The only part we played in this was to say 'Yes' to an idea that was being pulled together.

Today it is official, and we can tell you all about it. As we find more details, we will post them on the blog. For now, we praise God that we have been assigned somewhere, with an exciting mission ahead of us.

Now, to answer a couple of questions that we have already received from our email: How long? Internship assignments are normally 1 year, roughly running from Aug 1 to July 31. Since this is a new site, they will not be ready for us until Aug 1, so our plans will be to move down there the end of July. Other questions: What will we be doing? Like most interns (or vicars, as many churches call them), we will be assisting the pastor at St. Paul's with normal things such as Sunday worship, Sunday School, and other parts of parish life. In addition, we will be working with LDR in the area with case work, visiting, preaching are area churches, and so on. Some of this is still being defined. Stay tuned for more, as we find out.