Acts 28:31
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I’m updating you right now from Calgary! I came up here for a quick visit to get a view of the winter time! As you can guess it is cold up here. At this point I’ve only been up here for two days. I arrived on Friday the 27th at 10pm, and today is Sunday the 29th. Between these two days, I’ve experienced three major differences between my future home and current home. I’ll share those in a minute. I want to share right now however, some of the relationships that I’ve gained from the last trip in the summer. First, there’s Craig and Kathy. Their the host family I’ve been staying with, they’re like an extra set of parents for me. They support me in moving up here, and have been great at helping me adjusted to life up here and they’ve been great with the love they show. Opening up their doors to a guy they’d never met for a month (in the summer) and this time now and serving with a warm smile on their face every day just shows the love of God poured out for others to experience. Kathy has one of the biggest hearts for people that I’ve ever experienced, her ability to lift up and encourage people is just so natural. And Craig is a fountain of wisdom from life experience, a love for God, and knowledge of Scripture. As I watch them living life together, they model a type of relationship I want to have with a wife at that age. They also have a cat named Otis, and I mention him because he changed my mind about not liking cats. I used to not like them at all (see Propaganda’s “I Hate Cats”) but after meeting Otis this summer, I love the guy he’s one cool cat (da dum tsss). Then there’s Beth and Calum. I’ve known Beth for a few years because she is from North Carolina as well. We ran in some of the same circles and just two years ago she moved up here around this time of year to begin seminary. There she met her husband, Calum. Calum, is from British Columbia, west of Alberta (over Washington State). He moved to Cochrane to begin seminary around the same time and before you know it they were married. Calum is my go to guy up here. He and I share a lot of similarities, like our love of coffee and coffee roasting, our appreciation for sports specifically NHL (which he’s still teaching me players, etc.) and the NBA. But beyond that, he is really good at carpentry, he practically built most of Hope Church’s storage units for setup and tear down every Sunday. I can tell that my time here will be spent a lot with him, learning as much as I can from him. Finally, there’s the Conner’s, many of you would already know the Conner’s as they are the people that introduced me to Calgary to begin with. There’s Dustin he’s been a professor of mine at Piedmont since 2015, but before I ever took a class by him, I met him as a faculty member who started the North American Church Planting Minor (NACP) at Piedmont. That was the whole reason why I started at Piedmont in the first place, so of course I switched, but I walked into wasn’t just a teacher student relationship it was a genuine life-on-life friendship that has built me up, challenged me, and shown me so much more than just church planting. I learn so much from Dustin, through his example, and life as much as I’ve learned from him in the classes I had with him. There’s Jill, Dustin’s wife, what’s super cool about Jill is that I know I have a genuine friendship with her as well, not just as Dustin’s wife. When I first met Jill she shared so many stories about their childhood (they grew up together), that when I see them now, I feel like I’ve known them my whole life. They have two children, Kirk he’s 5 years old, just a few months younger than my baby brothers but has just as much energy as they do. I’ve watched Kirk grow up from the social baby to the energetic toddler he is now. When I see him I automatically miss my baby brothers. Then there’s the baby, Jane who’s 1, is adventurous, she’s learning to walk and just loves to climb on everything, learning the world around her. I look forward to learning more about these people as I serve our God alongside them. I also look forward to the relationships that I will build with new people in the church. I’ve met people from Columbia, India, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, and many other places. Every Sunday here is a picture of Revelation 7:9-10 “After this, I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Financial Update: To close out this year, I’m just short of $10,000 and the Lord has been good to provide up to this point. When I get back home, I will be hitting the ground running with reaching out to a list of contacts that I have. Through this I’m hoping that more people will partner with me to reach Calgary. When I move up here I will be looking for work either as a teaching assistant, or barista as I’m going through the seminary to help provide for some of the needs that I have. With a student visa, during the school year, I’m able to work 20 hours a week and during the summer 40 hours. Granted, part of this job is what I’m support raising for, I’m in short raising my wages that I work with for Hope Church, and then the rest of those hours that constitute the 20 during the school year, and 40 during the summer will come from said vocations.
I will be featured in a WMU’s Missions Mosaic Magazine, through which NAMB passed along my information to a freelance writer that I’m going to fill out some questions and provide some pictures. Hopefully that will bring some more people to be a prayer partner with me and you all to help bring the Gospel to Calgary. When it comes out I will show you all the article myself. I’ve never had anything like this happen for me so its kind of new, but cool too. This concludes this update, it was a bit longer than normal as I try to keep them at about 3 paragraphs long, but I had a lot on my heart this month, and wanted to make sure that I touched on most of them. Thank you for your continued prayer and support with me in reaching the city of Calgary with the Gospel. I pray that you are encouraged and that the work our God has started in you is brought to completion at the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. May the grace of our Lord, and His peace, be with you.
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AuthorMy name is Nokomis Gregory. I'm a native of Winston-Salem, NC. After graduating from Piedmont International University I moved Calgary, Alberta as a church planting team member, with the hopes of planting a church in Calgary. Archives
September 2023
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