Leaving La Verne

Dear LVUMC Family and Friends,

During church on Sunday, November 13th I shared that as of January 1, 2017 Anna and I will be in Alabama for some new opportunities. Anna is going to be the new lead for the Wesley Cooperative Parish Ministry, which includes serving as the Associate Director of the Auburn University Wesley Foundation, and the lead pastor for three area churches, along with the help of several pastoral interns.

I tried to share through tears, because I am grateful for the work we have done together and I will miss being here for what will yet come. I would hope that you will welcome your interim pastor in January of 2017 with graciousness and love. We have worked to refine the goals of the church committees and personnel to create ministry that can be flexible and responsive to immediate need, while tending to the greater aims of the United Methodist Church.

I am grateful to the Ad Hoc team that has worked to create a calendar of ministry focus areas for 2017. Through their work, and your efforts to see these ministries succeed and grow, I trust that the mission and outreach of the church will be strengthened and emboldened for a resurgence of La Verne United Methodist Church.

I am thankful for those who have shared how God is at work in their lives. As Babe Ortega has organized those who have shared already, she has indicated she would continue to find persons to share. I offer to you part of the story of how God is at work in my life right now. I do not know what job or employment I will find in Alabama. The Alabama West Florida Conference does not have a church for me at this time. I do not have something lined up elsewhere. However, Anna and I go, with our kids, in the full faith and assurance that God has something for me, and for us. We admit we do not know in full, but only in part.

We will be here through Christmas Day, and expect we will hit the road with the kids between Christmas and New Year’s Day to be ready to enter into this new adventure in Auburn, Alabama beginning in January 2017.

May God ever guide and guard you,

David Camphouse