It has been a full summer! Here are some highlights.

A New Pastoral Intern

Frank Wang arrived at the start of July to begin a yearlong pastoral internship with us. He moved to Sunnyvale with his wife Martha and their son. Frank recently graduated from Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

As an intern, Frank will be sharing in our regular ministry work: preaching occasionally, leading worship, joining pastoral visits and session meetings. Right now, his main focus is preparing for our presbytery’s licensure exams.

“Licensure” may not be familiar to everyone. It is a step towards ordination as a minister of the Gospel. The presbytery licenses theological students to preach when they have completed most of their training, and demonstrated capability in handling God’s word.

Summer Camp

Another highlight for many of us was attending the presbytery’s summer Bible camp. Friends from churches across Northern California and Nevada gathered for a week in the Santa Cruz mountains. Our speaker this year was Dr. John Fesko, who preached through the Song of Solomon. There was also plenty of time for friends, games, swimming, and campfires.

Team Ulster

In the second half of July, ten people from our presbytery went to Northern Ireland for a short-term missions trip. Six of us were from our church. The team’s purpose was to help two churches in Northern Ireland with evangelistic ministries. We helped to operate two Holiday Bible Clubs (their term for VBS) and a football camp (their term for soccer!) for kids, plus a week of ministry for teens. We arrived back last week, and we are all drinking more tea now.

Vacation Bible School and Teen Bible Camp

This week, our focus is again on kids’ ministries. VBS is happening at our church, where we have almost 80 kids learning about our Creator and Savior from the book of Genesis. Teen Bible Camp is at a nearby park, where over 40 older kids and teens are learning the Gospel by studying the book of Romans.

More to Come

We are working on some plans for the upcoming fall season. I’ll save these for another email soon.