More Than a Pastor

Dictionary.com is one of my favorite places to visit. Vitaliy even down­loaded the app to my iPhone in cases where I’m not at home but in need of a def­i­n­i­tion. As you all can see, I have a pas­sion for writ­ing. It is one of my new favorite things to do, but the real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion is that I went to pub­lic school. And well, that means my vocab­u­lary is lack­ing in a major way. But thank­fully, I’m on a mis­sion to learn, actu­ally a life long mis­sion to never stop learn­ing. I’m not opposed to quick fix ideas though, so if you have any ideas of how my brain can become a mini dictionary.com, please let me know. Oth­er­wise, I will just keep read­ing and writ­ing which I’ve been told are the best ways to grow your vocabulary.

I did bring this up for a rea­son though. I promise. Dictionary.com defines “pas­tor” as a per­son hav­ing spir­i­tual care of a num­ber of per­sons. I would say that this does define Justin. He has taken his respon­si­bil­ity of study­ing and teach­ing God’s word very seri­ously and we have all ben­e­fited and grown from it. How­ever, one of the duties of a pas­tor is “to shep­herd” which dictionary.com defines as a per­son who pro­tects, guides, or watches over a per­son or group of peo­ple. Justin was not only our pas­tor, but he was our shep­herd. He and his wife Tay­lor pur­sued us, loved us and prayed for us through some very dif­fi­cult times. If a pastor’s role is to “spir­i­tu­ally care” for peo­ple, you can­not do so unless you are in rela­tion­ship with the peo­ple, aware of their life sit­u­a­tions, and you love them through it all. I am so thank­ful that Justin is a shep­herd­ing pas­tor. It is this rea­son why we will miss him, along with his fam­ily, so much.

Justin and Tay­lor, I know I’ve shared this before, but we will be for­ever grate­ful for the ways that you reached out to us and loved us. You never let pride get in the way of con­tin­u­ing to invite us and wel­come us even when we were quite closed. It was your lov­ing per­sis­tence that opened us up and has given us a remark­able year to be served by you at our 20s gath­er­ings. We pray the Lord would pour down his bless­ings on your new min­istry the way He has done here. Thank you for authen­ti­cally liv­ing out your faith before us. We love you both!

~Vitaliy and Candace

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These were a cou­ple pic­tures we took on Justin’s last day at Cen­tral Penin­sula Church. His last ser­mon preached and a lovely fam­ily portrait.

This was past nap time (I’m talk­ing about the boys’ nap time, not my own) and we had about 60 sec­onds of pho­tograph­ing. And it was 60 sec­onds well spent — I love this pic­ture! Tay­lor has 2 boys as you can see and is preg­nant in this pic­ture with their third son. Is she gor­geous or what?