Back from BACAM

Last weekend we flew down to Orlando for BACAM (Bishop’s Advisory Committee for Aspirants to Ministry). BACAM is a conference for aspirants and their spouses to meet with members of the commission on ministry for prayer and further discernment concerning ordination. Hannah and I both felt the conference was joyful and the interviews very prayerful and encouraging. We met a ton of amazing new people, making friends with others who are seeking to serve Christ in his church. I was excited and honored to receive a letter of approval a few days later from my bishop to move toward postulancy, the next stage in the ordination process. God seems to be moving us right along on this journey, and surrounding us with Spirit-filled people to assist us in seeking his call. For that we are thankful!

Hannah’s edits: The conference was held at Canterbury Retreat Center. This orange tree was the main view from our room’s window. I had never seen an orange tree before! I know Floridians are laughing at me right now.

Ice breaker time on the patio.

I’m not gonna lie, this moment was one of the best of the whole weekend. I had never seen an armadillo before! I didn’t even know they could be found in Florida.

Since Saturday was Hannah’s birthday, and we wanted to see our church family at Good Shepherd, we stuck around for the weekend. Saturday was a work day at the parish, so we showed up in our work clothes and got our hands dirty for a few hours.

Cameron “cleaning up” the children’s room. But when he didn’t know I was looking…

After lunch we cleaned up and headed into Winter Park (where an enormous sidewalk art festival just so happened to be going on) to celebrate Hannah’s 27th.

This was another highlight of the weekend…standing next to one of Mr. Rogers’ handmade sweaters! I’m easy to please.

Working our way through the busiest semester yet, this was a much-needed rest for our souls. We enjoyed the heck out of just being together.

(…and eating junk food)

Sunday we went to church where the very awesome Canon Tim Nunez was guest preaching, and got to worship with our beloved new church family. The skies were sunny, the air warm, and palm trees palmy. We are getting ever more excited to be down there for more than a weekend! (I’ll be spending June and July in Maitland working with Rev. Sarah at Good Shepherd.) As always, it was difficult to get back on a plane to 20 degree snowy Milwaukee, but we came back recuperated and ready to take on the second half of this crazy semester. Pray that I would have the grace to endure the endless pages of reading and paper writing, and that Hannah’s work, teaching, and other duties would be carried out with joy and strength.

When boredom strikes on a long flight home… This is actually a pretty good depiction of how our heads have been feeling the past several crazy weeks.

We’re getting ready to dive into Holy Week (a most blessed time of worship for Nashotah House) and anticipating some family members showing up Thursday. More on that next time…

– Cameron

BACAM or Bust!

On Thursday we are heading off to Orlando to meet with the Commission on Ministry at BACAM (Bishop’s Advisory Committee on Aspirants to the Ministry). This is a required conference for all postulants in the diocese and their spouses.

Please pray with us that our travel will be safe and that the conference will be a blessed time of continued discernment.

Whirlwind Week

Cameron and I are still recovering from a crazy week that was both a lot of fun and a lot of work. Here are some of the highlights:

Lenten Series
Nashotah House is hosting a Wednesday evening Lenten Series on Bach’s Passion Oratorios. Each week starts with a soup supper provided by area parishes. St. Anskar’s, the parish Cameron and I have been attending, hosted the first evening, so I cooked up a big batch of vegetarian chili and cornbread and helped set up, serve, and clean up.

It was a blessing to brush shoulders with the wise and well-experienced women of St. Anskar’s while ladling soup into hungry guests’ bowls. After dinner, Fr. Westberg gave a lecture that hooked and baited us for next week when we get to start listening to the Passions!

Bishop Brewer / Canon Nunez / Wilsons
Over the weekend Nashotah House hosted a Symposium by Drs. Peter Steinke and David Jones. The topic was Conflict Resolution and it drew attendees from both near and far. Among the “far” were our Bishop, Greg Brewer and his Canon to the Ordinary, Timothy Nunez. It was great to see Bp. Brewer again and it was our first time meeting Canon Nunez. On Friday night, after the first day of the Symposium, Cameron and I hosted them both for dinner, along with our friends Clint and Theresa Wilson who came all the way from Texas.

(Canon Nunez is behind the camera) We managed to squeeze all six of us around our little table and had a great evening with food, wine, conversation, and Billie Holiday. What an honor it was to host such distinguished guests and lovely people!

Music at the Farmer’s Market
I finally decided that my hiatus from playing and writing music had been long enough, and I have been working with my friend Elin who is a talented singer and violinist. Yesterday we played our second gig so far, at the Oconomowoc Winter Farmer’s Market.

This is not the best picture…but I think it’s cute how the little girl (who was dancing to our music) is holding her mother’s hand while she gets a massage…Anyway, Elin and I have been having a lot of fun playing together and we are currently trying to focus on writing our own material. I think I found the perfect writing partner: Elin, a creative writing major, composes the lyrics (my weakest area) and I write the music (my strongest area). It feels really good to be playing again!

I would say that things are getting back to normal, but…they’re not really. By the looks of my personal calendar, we will be keeping busy all the way through and beyond Easter! I will do my best to keep our blog up to date throughout the continuing whirlwind!

We’re Still Here

We haven’t forgotten about our little blog- things have just been extra busy around here. Lent has begun, February is waning and March promises to be full of activity as well. We are looking forward to filling you in on the latest in our chilly little corner of Wisconsin as soon as we get a chance to come up for a breath.

In the meantime, make sure you keep updated with the Nashotah House Facebook page and blogs, where Cameron is still the primary poster and writer.

Diocesan Convention

Hey Friends,

I recently escaped the throes of winter for a few days and flew down to Orlando for my diocesan convention. This is an annual gathering at which all the parishes in a diocese come together for worship, business matters, and various presentations about the current goings-on in the region. It’s basically a big conference, and it was my first one with the folks in Central Florida. I really enjoyed getting a feel for the diocese, meeting new people, and spending time with a handful of beloved friends from my sponsoring parish.

The worship was beautiful (cathedral choir – glorious!), the business was painless, and the presentations were encouraging. I don’t know about you, but I always find it exciting to be in a room full of people who are excited about reaching their communities with the Gospel in new, innovative ways. To hear a bit about the current state of the diocese and her mission, watch Bishop Greg’s address:

On Friday night, after a beautiful Holy Eucharist service, we all headed a couple blocks over to the Orange County Regional History Center for dinner and fellowship.

My friends at Good Shepherd welcomed me with the usual hospitality and hearty hugs. Between Saturday and Sunday, I preached three services. Rev. Sarah ensures that I stay busy when I’m in town! I am really looking forward to learning from such a godly leader.

Of course, it is always good to see our dear Bishop Greg.

Oh yes… Nashotah House wasn’t about to let me go to an Episcopal convention without doing some advertising:

The weekend was fast paced but energizing as I continued to sense the Lord’s hand on where he is calling us. And now, time for a busy 16 credit hour semester!

Happy Birthday Jesus (and Cameron)

Although some things are back to normal around here (I’ve returned to work), life is still quieter than usual around Nashotah House. Courses for residential students don’t begin for another couple of weeks, and the weather has been keeping us inside for the most part. We muddled through a full week of negative 0 temperatures and high winds- fortunately today the deep freeze let up a bit and it was warm enough to take Charleigh to the dog park for the first time in a while. She was ecstatic, to say the least.

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Last week we celebrated Cameron’s 31st birthday! I had my sister make him this leather bracelet that doubles as an essential oil diffuser (we like to wear essential oils instead of cologne/perfume). My sister makes a lot of other awesome jewelry here at AuraStrands.

I think it looks pretty darn good on him. 🙂

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With the cold came the snow that we skipped out on pretty much up until the past week. Quite a change from Christmastime last year! I’ll admit it’s a lot prettier to look out at with my morning coffee.

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As long as we stay inside we are plenty warm and don’t have any trouble amusing ourselves until it’s time for Cameron to hit the books again!

Christmas in Michigan

We headed to Michigan this past week to spend time with family for Christmas. It was lovely to stay with Chris and Kayla in their new house, see our adorable 4 month old nephew, hug my (not-so-baby) brother for the first time since his graduation from Marine basic training and proposing to his beautiful fiancee, eat a lot of food, play a little music, make a lot of Flarps, and reach our reading goals for the week: Cameron got through the first 200 pages of A Secular Age and I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time (not sure how that important one slipped through the cracks of my literary life!).

Here are a few visual highlights of the week…

Charleigh travels like a champ.

Charleigh and her “cousin” Pooper had a blast together.

Cameron browsing the selection at one of his old favorite downtown Flint stops, Paul’s Pipe Shop.

Our cobbler friend Tim in his element!

Cameron and Tim sharing a pipe as Tim puts a high shine on a customer’s shoes.

Christmas with the MacMillan side!

Charleigh loves Grandpa Hardenburg!

She puts up with so much…

The Tom Toms playing an acoustic pajamas set.
https://www.facebook.com/TheTomTomsMusic

Baby Gunnar is so big already! He was only a couple weeks old during our last visit.

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A couple days later we had Christmas with the Fralick side!

An intense round of Catch Phrase.

Look at how neatly kids will line up when there are presents involved!

L-R: Karis, Faith, Brother (Kurt III), Declan

Declan beaming after the accomplishment of a very satisfying Flarp.

…and another one.

Uncle Cameron and Karis took some selfies.

Weirdos.

It’s rare that all of my siblings, their significant others, AND their offspring are all together at one time. Unfortunately we were still missing one (brother-in-law Kurt was stuck at work), but we took some group pictures anyway (we’ll have to superimpose Kurt into them later). But this time we had the addition of Sadie, Luke’s fiancee!

Can’t believe how big these kids are getting!

The Fralick kids in age order (youngest to oldest left to right): Luke, Joelle, Rachel, Hannah, Bethany

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Also now that all Christmas gifts have been gifted, I can share some pictures of the homemade goodies I put together:

Homemade cooking spices

Homemade peppermint cocoa mix and homemade honey marshmallows (which are actually not as hard to make as you would expect!)

Whipped body butter (smells good enough to eat but isn’t) and chocolate peanut butter

And of course I had to slip in some of my StrayGifts notecards.

Put it all together in a box, and voila!
When you’re on a seminarian’s budget you learn to be creative with gifts and their wrapping:
The labels are cut from Trader Joe’s paper grocery bags (Cameron did the writing- his penmanship is better than mine!).
The pine needles and pinecones were picked from our “front yard” here at Nashotah House.
The red fabric was leftover from a Halloween costume.
And of course the notecards are from upcycled library materials.
Lots of work, but also lots of fun!

Now we are home in Nashotah to relax for another week before I head back to work. Cameron has a couple more weeks off before classes start again. We are so grateful for the time off to be with our friends and families. Our hearts are full.

Halfway? What just happened?

Dear Friends,

Just like that, in the twinkling of an eye, I am halfway finished with my seminary journey. I have been learning so much about Scripture, pastoral ministry, and theology, and consider my education and formation here an invaluable gift from the Lord. They say time flies when you are having fun, but I say time flies when you are buried in study and community life at Nashotah House. I recently told one of my professors that at Nashotah House, you don’t really have time to watch clocks and notice time flying; instead, you just listen for the 10 minute bell (a daily courtesy reminder that chapel services begin soon). You look up, and the next thing you know is you are halfway through a 3 year degree program. Just like that.

My study carrel — where the hard work happens.

Needless to say, I am grateful to have a month off before classes begin again. This last semester kept me on my toes (and knees!), and I am ready for a few weeks of restful, leisurely reading, Netflix movies, and coffee-sipping in my La-Z-Boy.

Over the last few months, Hannah and I have seen God working in our lives in many ways. We’ve grown in our prayer lives, become more attuned to his guidance, and experienced his provision for needs over and over again. As we continue to grow in the grace of our Lord, our marriage becomes sweeter, and our lives enriched. We ask your prayers for continual progress in our spiritual growth, diligence, and faithfulness to each other.

With Christmas on the horizon, Hannah has been busy making gifts (yes, making!), putting her creative energies and love for art to work. She continues to work so hard, so faithfully, to make this part of our journey possible. Between her hours as a library assistant, a piano teacher, and wife, she does not slow down!

We are heading to Michigan to see our much-missed families for a few days over Christmas break next week. Please pray for safe and uneventful travels!

As we prepare for another full semester (I’ll have 6 classes altogether from Jan – May), we inevitably face our need for not only prayer, but financial support. God has been so faithful to us — bringing in unexpected grants, providing opportunities for work scholarships, calling friends and family to send us support — and we have no doubt that he will continue to sustain us. As we calculate expenses for this upcoming year, we are acutely aware of what we need to continue without accruing debt. We humbly ask you to consider contributing to our necessities, and most importantly, continue to hold us in prayer.

May God’s grace and peace abound to you this Christmas,

Cameron

Lessons and Carols

Last night was our annual Lessons and Carols service at Nashotah House. It’s one of my favorite events of the year!

Here’s a sample of what we sang last night:

Advent!

We are trying to be good Anglicans and waited until the first day of Advent to put up our Christmas (*ahem*, Advent) decorations and listen to Christmas (*ahem-ahem*, Advent) music.

It was worth the wait! We don’t have a lot of decorations, but we still had fun putting a few festive touches around the apartment. And yes, the ribbon tree has come back for the second year…

MacMillans work with what they’ve got!

Best part of the day was catching Cameron whistling along to the melody of Britten’s Balulalow:

Ah, what a good little cultured seminarian I have!

Happy Advent!