So how close are we to the end of the year? IF a whole year were represented by one 24 hour day, Dec 7th puts us with one hour and 34 minutes “before midnight” when the new year begins! In NFL terminology I think that could probably count as The Two Minute Warning!

Thanks for the jolt of panic, Tim! So what’s your point? As we breeze through the last days of 2025, there are two topics I want to talk about, starting with how things are looking with my budget. Below is my dashboard from Donor Elf. This is what IV staff use to track donations. There are a few things I’d like you to catch (that may not be obvious from all the numbers).

Donor Elf reminds me what my annual target is – by the end of June (our fiscal year) I need to raise $128K to cover my entire budget. That includes my salary. My health insurance. The amount I’m setting aside for retirement. All my ministry expenses including travel. And my training and conferences.

Click here to be taken to Tim’s donation page at InterVarsity.

Thank you so much for your part in keeping me funded year after year. The past couple of years I’ve been able to build my budget to the point that I am now actually on InterVarsity’s pay-scale where my salary level says I can be! This hasn’t always been the case. Thanks to several new donors and increases from many current donors, I’ve got a good shot at reaching full salary and full budget by June 30th.

A few other realities:

• I never meet budget just through gifts that come in monthly. Lots of you give one time annually. About half my annual donors do that about now. About half do that in the spring.
• When donations get that boost in December, my bottom line usually goes from deficit to “back in the black”.
• Currently my account is running a $5,000 deficit.
• I ended last fiscal year (June 2025) several thousand in OVERAGE because of some surprise one time gifts.
• I have also lost three donors this fall. One due to a job cut. One who just needed to discontinue. And one supporting church had to close it’s doors! I’ll need to replace a total of $4.9K.

Consequently… a few things you always hear me say in December:

• IF you are able to continue your support (whether that is monthly or annually) I’d be so grateful for your ongoing generosity. If you plan to make no changes to your giving, no need to reach out to me. Thank you so much for your faithful partnership!
• IF you need to adjust your giving, reduce your giving or stop sending gifts, please do let me know what your plans are. It would be really helpful for me to know that so I can make some changes on my end. Just email me at the link below or text me via PBR.
• IF you are able to increase your giving some I’d love to know that and help you make that change. Please text me, call me or email me! Changing your electronic giving is very easy to do.
• The link above will take you to my page on InterVarsity’s donation site. If you would like to give your annual gift between now and the end of the year use this link. I’ll also send it out a couple more times before Dec 31st.

And SPEAKING OF DEC 31st

Topic number two: This is an Urbana year! InterVarsity is hosting it’s triennial Missions Conference this time in Phoenix, Arizona. If you’d like a look at the theme, schedule and list of speakers, feel free to visit the Urbana website. I’d really appreciate prayers for one of our GFM students here in Omaha who will be attending Urbana. I’ll tell you a little more about her in coming posts, but for now, please be praying for Jaicy! She’ll be a small group leader at Urbana. She’s a UNMC employee who is in her first year of Creighton’s MBA program.

Thanks so much!

Today we’re celebrating Founders Day in InterVarsity. It was on this day 84 years ago that InterVarsity began its existence as a national movement in the United States. If you have a few minutes to swing over to the InterVarsity Blog you can read all about it! My first encounter with InterVarsity was as a freshman at Eastern Illinois University sometime in the Fall semester of 1982. Here’s a little of my time-line from a previous post in the wake of my 25th anniversary with InterVarsity. How about you? When did InterVarsity first cross your path?

Free Prayers!

Last week was part two of a networking adventure in the great state of Iowa! My last post came to you from Iowa City – last week I spent three days in Ames. I couldn’t wait to get to ISU if for the sole purpose of witnessing Bob! Bob Horton is a faculty emeritus in the Agronomy Department at Iowa State. He’s been a long-standing member of the Iowa State Christian Faculty and Staff Association currently led by our GFM staff member Tom Ingebritsen. When I asked Tom and Chad to give me names of people we should talk to about staff recruiting Bob’s name was at the top of the list. “Bob is the most amazing evangelist and discipler of grad students I’ve ever seen.” Chad, Tom’s teammate at ISU, kept telling me things like: “You know, Bob is retiring from active teaching at ISU, but he is a pastor-evangelist at heart and he just can’t help showing spiritual care for faculty and students in agronomy.”

I heard the rumor about Bob on a zoom call with my staff this Fall, that since he’s no longer teaching regularly, Bob likes to just go to campus and talk with students and faculty OUT ON THE QUAD near his old building!

Bob: “Yeah, I had my daughter make me a couple of directors chairs – the kind that fold and you can print something on the back. I wondered what would happen if I just offered to pray for people.

Tim: “I can’t believe you get away with something like this! Isn’t there a rule against doing something like this?

Bob: “Not really – its another expression of free speech on campus. Besides, I figure I am a retired professor. What can they do to me? (laughing)

Tim: “So far since we’ve been out here with you, it doesn’t seem like students are knocking each other out the way to sit in the Prayer Chair. (I’m sure extra dudes hanging out WITH Bob didn’t make it MORE inviting) How many people take you up on this kind of thing?

Bob: “I come out here nearly every weekday. I’ll hang out and catch a couple of passing periods at the top of the hour. There hasn’t been a single day when I have NOT had anyone stop. It’s usually about 3-5 or people by the time I fold up my chairs and head home.”

Tim: “How long have you been doing this?”

Bob: “I’ve been out here every week since September. I don’t keep a precise count, but my tally sheet back home says people have asked for prayer over 300 times so far this semester!”

Tim: “Incredible! Over 300 people?”

Bob: “Well, there would be quite a few repeats in that number. I’m starting to develop a community of regulars. They’ll often come back excited to tell me something about how God has been answering our prayers! It’s so encouraging to be a part of real changes people are experiencing!”

Isaiah walks up while we’re out on the quad with Bob. Bob knows him by name and has prayed with him multiple times. Isaiah is actually from Council Bluffs just across the river from Omaha! We chat for a while, then Bob prays for him! Another student also walked up (in spite of three GFM staff workers cutting into Bob’s turf). He sits in the Free Prayers chair and tells the whole group of us about his girlfriend’s family. Her mom, Denise, is undergoing cancer treatments and is in critical shape. After talking with him for a few minutes, Bob says, “Can I pray for you?” And we ALL stand up and Bob pours out a prayer filled with thoughtful care and grace-giving dignity for this student.n He thanks Bob and is on his way to class. “Come back and tell me how its going and we’ll pray again” Bob says as he walks away.

Tim: “Bob, you are incredibly approachable! Your way of praying is so simple and genuine. You’re schooling us three staff workers in how to actually do ministry. Do all these prayer sessions go like these two?”

Bob: “Pretty much. You know by the time someone looks over at the chair, calculates the risk and walks over here, they’ve pretty much decided there’s something here for them. They always seem to know how this works whether they are a Christian or not. People’s defenses are down. They want help.”

Match the captions to the pics from my ISU trip:

• Tom Ingebritsen and Chad Britten on the quad with Bob! Chad works with  some with faculty and also is building a grad student fellowship.
• Mid-trip I curiously open the armrest in my “No-Smoking” Enterprise rental car and discover a pack of menthol 100s! No I didn’t smoke them. And neither did the guy who left them before me!
• Apparently one of the classroom buildings at ISU has a bat problem on the 5th and 6th floors!
• Only at ISU will you encounter turbo-charged four-wheel drive LAWN MOWERS (on display in the Center for Renewable Energy).
• The old campus water-tower. Just begging engineering students to summit! I bet there are stories…

Lastly, here’s my summary sheet we’ve been chatting about in our networking meetings. IF YOU know of someone we should talk to, please let me know. We’re needing to find staff everywhere in my area. Think of connections you have with people who may have gone to school in these communities or who may be moving toward these campuses. IF you know of a grad-school bound student that’s also a great connection for me to help make with my staff. Just email me! Thanks.

Know anyone who fits the profile below? I’ve been on a staff recruiting networking trip over to Iowa City this week. Herky the Hawk is not hard to find on campus, but GFM staff potential people ARE! Can you help us with our search?

InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministries are an excellent fit for those who:

• Love God, God’s Word, God’s people of every ethnicity and culture, and God’s purposes in the world.
• Hold a positive regard for the university world.
• Demonstrate a gifting for nurturing spiritual communities.
• Guide others in spiritual formation practices.
• Equip and train others for a lifelong commitment to evangelism on campus and beyond.
• Enjoy Bible studies that enrich the spiritual and intellectual life.
• Thrive when discussing complex issues — balancing mind and heart.
• Willing to rally ministry partners to pray, give, and serve in the fellowship.
• Desire to influence the people, ideas and structures of the Academy.

So how do you find the proverbial needle in a haystack GFM staff candidate? Giant pretzels and coffee might be a good start! Our staff member Kevin Kummer (at the University of Iowa) and I are having tons of networking conversations like the one above with Dr Jon Kerstetter (a very interesting guy if you want to read a little about him). Kevin has us scheduled each day with multiple appointments – so far some very interesting referrals for us to follow-up with! I’ll keep you posted.

People we need to network with:

• InterVarsity staff from teams other than Grad Faculty Ministries.
• Christian Faculty members, university administrators and staff
• Donors, ministry partners and InterVarsity alumni
• Pastors, church leaders and staff members in other campus ministries
• Hiring managers and staff recruiters
• People who work in placement in Christian colleges and seminaries.
• HR folks in larger churches
• Is there another category that comes to mind when you see a list like this?

Would you please pray and think hard about your networks? As I’ve written about elsewhere, staff recruiting in campus ministry is challenging in any context – it seems almost impossible in GFM. Help us look. Help us network. Help us find people who can water our camels! Thanks so much!

Any Trekkies out there? I have a great book for you authored by a friend and teammate of mine on GFM InterVarsity staff. Meet Mark Hansard! Mark lives and works in Manhattan, Kansas and does faculty ministry at Kansas State University. For the past few years Mark has used Star Trek as a framework for talking about Christianity. His background in Philosophy of Religion and decades of experience teaching apologetics makes him a compelling and helpful mentor for anyone wanting to connect the dots between faith, philosophy and science.

If you’d like to meet my friend Mark, you have an opportunity this Sunday night, October 19th at 7:00pm. Mark will be hosting an Ask Me Anything zoom session. Log-in, meet Mark and ask him ANY question you might have about faith, science.. and all things Trek!

Join Mark’s AMA session at this link!

I’ve been reading Star Trek and Faith this week. I’ll post the table of contents down below so you can get a feel for how the book is put together. My recollection of watching the Star Trek Original Series dates back to my high school days when (by that time, 1978-1982) Channel 3 broadcast reruns every night after the news. I remember trying to get all my homework done in time to watch another episode. One thing I’m realizing as I read Star Trek and Faith is that the entire Trek-Universe (if you will) covers a lot of material I’ve never seen or even heard of! Let me know if you have an easy way to find and watch all those “extra series” beyond Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Bones. I suppose if you’re a through and through Trekkie you’ll even know all the abbreviations (I have to keep looking them up in the book’s intro). Mark’s book runs the entire Trek World gambit! In fact the book just released this summer is merely Volume One. Volume Two will be released in 2026!

So what spiritual questions does Star Trek deal with?

“From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to The Original Series of the 1960s, Star Trek has always explored deep religious and philosophical questions. Is there a God? If he exists, how would that change our knowledge of ourselves and our place in the universe? What is human nature, and how ought humans to flourish? What is the meaning of life?” -Star Trek and Faith, p. 16

Way to go, Mark! GFM InterVarsity whole-heartedly blesses your new calling as an author! Pray for Mark’s ministry calendar this year as he juggles events and faculty bible studies on campus with opportunities to travel, speak and promote his book!

Thanks Team!

One of my jobs in our 17 state Region of GFM is to help staff be effective in evangelism. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, that takes the form of a strategic ministry plan all 60+ of us staff are reaching for. The strat plan invites staff to engage a basic 3-2-1 strategy with their fellowships on campus: Staff, students and faculty commit to praying for THREE non-Christian friends, campus fellowships commit to hosting at least TWO hospitality events per year that non-Christians are welcomed to attend, and at least ONE appropriate invitation to faith given in an appropriate setting throughout the course of the year.

As the new year is underway groups have been increasing their visibility on campus with outreach events (the hospitality part of 3-2-1). New students are being invited to events and groups. Faculty groups are getting reignited and known new faculty members are being reached out to. Coffee is being drunk by the gallon as staff do lots of one on one follow-up. Many if not most new contacts are with christians looking for fellowship. But the beginning of a new year, the presence of so many new people means that many connections are being made with people who are curious about Christianity, but may not be christians themselves.

3-2-1 Happenings

Here’s a look at our first gathering of 3-2-1 Happenings. The idea you saw me in the last post pitching to our region, is up and running! Each month our Regional Leadership Team and myself will be hosting a regional video call for sharing 3-2-1 stories. 3-2-1 Happenings we hope will become a hub of communication, prayer and enrichment in the area of faculty and grad student evangelism. In our first gathering we had our staff member at Kansas State share from his experience of friendship with a couple of atheistic/agnostic faculty members. Nothing is better fuel for outreach than to talk about actual life on life influence. When you hear about non-believing professors responding to friendship with deeper openness and spiritual curiosity – it leaves you thinking “you know, God IS at work in soil I would have thought would be impenetrable.”

Part of the challenge with Christians, especially in the setting where we do our ministry, is that we assume spiritually open people will just somehow find us! The myth of the seeker is that being far from God doesn’t always result in a posture of seeking. When Christians refer to non-Christians as seekers its a bit of misnomer. In the sweep of scripture’s narrative, God is more often the seeker! In Genesis 1, sin didn’t make Adam a seeker – it made him a hider. God had to seek Adam out. The shepherds of Israel failed to seek people out in care, nurture and healing (Ezek 34). Jesus comes as THE GOOD SHEPHERD who goes after the lost. Graduate Faculty Ministry will live out the seeking passion of Jesus for sheep as we embrace that role and join him in his search. A monthly call to encourage staff in OUR work of searching and seeking can help us attend to people on broader horizons than just trying to find more Christians for our groups! We need a better theology of seeking to put it simply.

Pray for 3-2-1 Happenings to grow. There are about 70 staff in our 17 state region. My vision is that our screen could go from being a tidy 3×3 Brady Bunch to a 4×4. Then a 5×5, and beyond. My hope is that more and more staff will get excited to get on the monthly call and share an outreach HAPPENING from their ministry. Pray for me and my team as we work on ways to be more visible to grad students and faculty members – not just the Christian ones. Pray for us to turn connection into friendship. And friendship into witness!

Thanks so much for your prayers and your giving. Thanks for enabling me to be a part of InterVarsity’s mission in the University.

Hope you are enjoying your Labor Day! Cheryl and I have just spent three days with our kids in Tennessee and are making our way back to Omaha. This post is coming to you at 70 mph! It’s Cheryl’s turn to drive so I can get work done on the lappy!

The image above finds me at RSC on the first day of August at the Scarrett Bennett Center in Nashville. Regional Staff Conference happens for us most summers in late July. About 40 of us from our 17 state territory gathered for four days of team building and ministry leadership enrichment. This was my shot as a regional leader to give our staff an evangelism update. We do a self-assessment on how well we’re doing at personal witness and how well we’re leading our fellowships to engage their mission field. If you’re curious about my report you can scan through it here. Pray for our staff and our fellowships to grow in outreach effectiveness. We’re midway into a four-year strategic plan and we have seen some encouraging signs of global evangelistic warming.

Our staff conference theme this summer was “New Wine Skins: ministry in a changing ministry landscape.” We had the good fortune to get David French as our visiting scholar for the event. If you aren’t familiar with New York Times columnist David French, here’s a podcast that will give you a sample of his work and thinking. We invited him because of his incredible training and incredible Christian impact in the areas of culture, religion and politics. David was very valuable servant to InterVarsity during many years of our contentious history with university access and free speech in the 90s and early 2000s. Rather than burning more characters here, I’ll drop a few pics from my journal notes and you can get a feel for his presentation. David gave a great talk on how we wound up where we are politically as a nation and why our ministry context has many of its current cultural and political challenges.

My scrawlings while David French was talking: (Good luck figuring this out! OR, just get the book The After Party!)

I would love your prayers as I head into September! here are a few things I’m concerned about.

• I’ll be hosting a new Regional Staff Team video call we’re branding 3-2-1 Happenings. Monthly we’ll try to round up staff to share stories about outreach happening on our campuses. Pray for us to get off to a strong start next week!
• Our staff are also having their first regularly scheduled events of the semester. At some schools lots of new students have found their way into our fellowships. I’d love your prayers for a couple of challenge spots: in my hometown at Creighton, we have been denied access to the student orientation events for professional schools. It has made meeting new students much more difficult. At Kansas State Univ my staff member Mark is taking on partial leadership for a group that is unstaffed after his team-mate retired earlier this summer.
• Pray for Lindenwood University – we are in the process of transitioning off one staff member – pray for Karen (the remaining staff member) as she assumes more leadership of the faculty fellowship there.
• Probably my biggest prayer request for this entire year is staff recruitment. There are several currently staffed schools that will have staff transitions in the coming years. There is a faculty fellowship at Mizzou with no GFM staff member in Columbia. There are places we’d like to go but have no staff and no fellowship (Univ of Nebraska at Lincoln.

There’s lots more to tell you – we’ll keep the posts coming. Thanks so much for your prayers. Thanks so much for your giving!

tim.perry@intervarsity.org

Last month my team and I read an impactful article on Artificial Intelligence. You can read it yourself at the link above – it will take 15 minutes. It’s quite eye-opening! A.I. is working its way into our lives. In my ministry context when I see an article talking about an entire A.I. University it should at least make me spit my coffee! What could InterVarsity’s mission ever possibly be in an A.I. university!

That’s a little extreme, Tim. Maybe you’re getting ahead of yourself? Toward the end, the article did deliver on its hook – what an actual artificially intelligent university might look like. But well before we get to something that far out, the presence and impact of A.I. on university education IS being felt pervasively. Even if I see few changes in my my four-state area, I’m very convinced changes are well underway at a swift pace. When you read the article these are the kind of lines jumping out from the shadows as you read:pit

• Everything is about to change!
• A.I. will continue to assert itself into the classroom forever altering the relationship between students and professors.
• Prepare for an ever-widening chasm between technologically advanced colleges and those that are cash-starved and slow to adapt.
• A.I. will be used to increase enrollment.
• Over the next decade A.I. will decimate faculty ranks through attrition and displacement.
• Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants will be the first casualties of A.I. displacement.
• Personalized A.I. agents will be assigned to new students (in place of their human academic advisors).
• By the end of the the decade, A.I. agents will incorporate avatars.

“A.I. agents will allow for truly lifelong learning. Undergraduates will be able to take the entirety of their college education with them on a portable, scalable block-chain – every syllabus, every text, every assignment, every interaction with every professor, every grade, every lecture, every experiential activity, every email – and an A.I. agent that can mine that vast repository as needed.” p.72

Some things kind of make you chuckle at first till you realize “Hey, that could actually happen!” Our target audience in GFM are faculty and grad students. In the article A.I. seems like a cool new virtual assistant avatar for undergrad students, but in actuality it’s a disruptive force that could replace the very need for student driven graduate research projects. A force decimating faculty jobs! The University of Michigan actually has agentic virtual teaching assistants! I wonder what InterVarsity is thinking about how this impacts our mission?

I’d LOVE to hear from you!

Is there a great source you’ve discovered as you’ve been learning about Artificial Intelligence? Have you thought much about a theological interpretation of the trends? What are your questions about A.I. and the university? What should InterVarsity staff be asking ourselves about our mission? Grad Faculty Ministry aims to “be a redeeming influence among the people, ideas and structures of the university and professions?” Will we seek to dwell in “digital spaces” like when covid pushed us there? Will we attempt something outrageous like disciple-making staff avatars? I can’t believe I dared to ask a question like that. I’m honestly put off by rumors of staff members using A.I. to draft prayer letters to donors or write talks on how to have an effective quiet time!

Meanwhile, I am realizing how extremely ignorant I am of all things A.I. I could keep faking it (talking about A.I. without ever using it for anything practical). I could demonize it and keep it at arms length. I could blindly keep letting it creep into my world while ignoring it. But here’s how I’m currently trying to get a grip on it:

1. I’m going to read everything I can on A.I. and education for starters.
2. I’ll keep processing what ministry and mission means in light of changes coming at us.
3. Faculty members are really significant people to consult with. They are in the crosshairs of the issues more than anyone else in our ministry. Lots of coffee gonna get spilled on this topic!
4. Keep asking the question: What does it mean to be a person created in God’s image?
5. Medicine and Artificial Intelligence interests me greatly! I’d welcome your thoughts or suggestions of what to read/explore.

A word about year-end finances before I go buy my firecrackers!

Thank you so much for your incredible faithfulness and generosity. Most of you know that I have been working really hard to get better funded. Two years ago I sketched out a plan to position myself on IV’s pay-scale where my hours and job description place me. I have a little chart sitting here on my desk that I sketched in February of 2023. It showed I needed to increase my annual salary by 21.5 % in order to get fully funded. As this fiscal year wrapped up June 30, that goal was finally met! The past two years have been really fruitful in terms of new donors and increased giving from current donors. Thank you so much for your part in that!

“Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” (2 Co 9:10-11 NIV)

If you get an extra minute after looking at that incredible article, hit the email reply below and send me your thoughts! Have a great weekend!

Can’t tell you how proud of these guys I am. Aaron and Silas both live in Tennessee. Both work for the same company. Both had babies born to their families last fall (a month and a day apart in Oct/Nov). Both got their great hair from mom’s side of the family! Cheryl and I are just dying – having to watch these grandkids grow up 14 hours away. Here’s a brief catch-you-up on them.

Aaron, Savannah, Poppy and Juniper

• Aaron and his family live in Franklin – Nashville is where one of Whisper Aero’s facilities is located.
• Poppy just finished first grade, went on a short trip with her family that included a hike in the Smoky Mountains with lamas! She’s a fabulous big sister and can’t wait to hit the swimming pool this summer.
• Savannah is a terrific mom of two, loves planning get-aways like an A-frame air BnB in the mountains with nearby lama hikes!
• That’s Aaron showing off a concept model at an experimental aircraft expo. That’s also the whole family on stage – child dedication Sunday at their church.
• Whisper Aero is a really cool high-tech aerospace start up Aaron has worked for since 2021. Here are a few interesting links if you’re curious about electric aircraft!
• Whisper Aero ultralight aircraft
• Autonomous Electric Planes
• Ultraquiet Propulsion

Silas, Haleigh and Lewyn

• Haleigh and Silas live in Cookeville, 90 minutes east of Nashville.
• Silas wrapped up his undergrad in Computer Engineering here in Nebraska last May.
• After an internship at Whisper and working remotely during his senior year, Whisper hired their second Perry! Silas works in imbedded computer systems at their facility in Crossville.
• Lewyn is Haleigh and Silas’ first kiddo – they are doing great learning the ropes of parenthood.
• Silas just came back to Omaha for a retirement party for one of his CE professors. While here Silas picked up his classmate Edoe and took him back to Tennessee for an internship with Whisper Aero!
• In one of those pics below, Silas and Edoe are meeting up with Dr. Chen who is giving us all a tour of a net-zero granny-pod. Dr. Chen is another one of Silas’ professors we saw that day. Silas is incredibly loved back in his CE department. “Give me a thousand students like Silas!” Dr. Chen told Cheryl and I.

Hope you’ve had a great weekend. Thanks for your prayers and donations to my work. Thanks for how you help keep me and my family encouraged and enjoying life!

Blessings!

I hope you are poised for a relaxing Memorial Day Weekend. Here are a few things that instantly come to mind when I think of Memorial Day weekend during my growing up years:

• We had TONS of peony flowers growing all over our farm when I was kid. They were always in full-bloom by Memorial Day weekend.
• We would take large coffee cans, for some reason wrapped with aluminum foil, pack them with all three colors of peony flowers (white, pink, red) then take them to our grand-parents’ graves at the cemetery and leave them by the headstone.
• The Indy 500 (which I actually got to watch one year in person – Rick Mears, 1984).
• With 5 older brothers, for quite a few years in the 70s and 80s someone was always graduating from high-school in late May.

How’s the Fam – Part 1

How about I catch you up with the Perry girls today. I’ll get the guys in the next post before the weekend is up! Cheryl has been working this spring at a new job with Good Will. She serves in an education group called Youth Build. Her role is teaching and coaching adult learners wanting to pass the GED test. It’s a part time job at the moment. She hopes her group will add another program she used to teach at her former job. It would become a full-time gig if things move in that direction.

Other things keeping Cheryl busy these days?

• Grand kids! More on them in the next post, but being Cher-Bear to Poppy, Juniper and Lewyn is Cheryl’s real dream-job. The commute at the moment is JUST TOO LONG! All the grand-kids are a 14 hour drive way in Tennessee.
• Gardening! Her latest creation: wild-flower tree-stump with bird-bath. She’s also helping her Good Will students plant a tiny garden in the back of the building.
• Hamilton! A wonderful mothers day gift from Phoebe. They were seated nearly on the top row in the theatre, but it was magical nonetheless!

Phoebe: a wellness and arts entrepreneur!

Phoebe and Ryan moved back to Omaha about 2 years ago. She officially retired from ballet performance after reaching company soloist for the San Diego Ballet. Returning to your hometown after dancing professionally for 5 years actually makes you rock-star with your former ballet school. She was immediately scooped up by Omaha Academy of Ballet and began teaching. Now and then she gets to be in a show, now and then she gets to choreograph pieces. Recently I’ve just been in awe of her ability to create movement with multiple dancers with all the technicality of composing music for multiple instruments! She brings movement to life on a stage like an artist painting on a canvas (only somehow better). Here’s a few other things she’s got going these days:

• She is the sole proprietor of Allonge Massage and Wellness. She has a studio in her basement as well as offering mobile massage!
• Recently she was “hired” by Gallup here in Omaha – she spends a day a week at their offices doing 15 minute massages for their employees. Her sign up list is never NOT packed full!
• She’s certified in pilates and teaches at a local studio. She also bought a reformer (contraption you can do various pilates exercises on).
• Her and Ryan bought a home here in Omaha last August – a few needed upgrades in progress with a little help from Perry Painting and Decorating (c’est moi).
• A very precocious and adorable halloween cat named Otto!

Hope you have a terrific Memorial Day weekend!

What is Natal Homing?

Everybody knows that many animals have an incredible ability to return to their home after migrating in some cases hundreds of miles and up to several years! I had no idea how sophisticated their GPS wiring must be! Here are excerpts from Wikipedia on Natal Homing:

“Natal homing is the process by which some adult animals that have migrated away from their juvenile habitats return to their birthplace…. This process is primarily used by aquatic animals such as sea turtles and salmon, although some migratory birds and mammals also practice similar behavior. Scientists believe that the main cues used by the animals are geomagnetic imprinting and olfactory cues. The benefits of returning to the precise location of an animal’s birth may be largely associated with its safety and suitability as a breeding ground. When seabirds like the Atlantic puffin return to their natal breeding colony, which are mostly on islands, they are assured of a suitable climate and a sufficient lack of land-based predators.”

SPAPH students are like… salmon (or puffins)!

Third-year SPAHP (School of Pharmacy and Health Professions) students set off on a sort of migratory journey. They are doing their field work assignments in places like Minneapolis, Rochester, Chicago or Kansas City. Here in the last month of their final year their “geomagnetic imprinting and olfactory cues” kick-in and back to Omaha they come! Graduating Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and Pharmacy students make the trek about a week before commencement to present their Capstone project, welcome parents and other family members to campus and complete their academic life-cycle with that last walk to the podium collecting their diplomas. This year there are 7 special SPAPH-salmon I’m eager to see end their long journey. Mara Juffer (OT), Emma Wright (OT), Hannah Wright (OT), Grant Solley (PT), Karis Choy (Pharmacy), Abby Knutson (OT), and Katlyn Sims. These seven and other graduates from past classes are scattered throughout the pic galleries below.

Mind the GAP!

I’ve really enjoyed this year’s graduating class. When I first met them all in August 2022, I was thrilled with the energy they gave our group! In addition to these seven, we also started attracting students from other programs as well as grad students from other schools. They have been a solid community for one another as they’ve done their training. The constant aim on InterVarsity’s part has been to coach and mentor them in the connection between their love for Jesus and their passion for their discipline. “Mind the gap” for lovers of things British is a saying similar to “watch your step” in the American dialect. Those of us with graduating students in InterVarsity talk about GAPS differently.

GAPS stands for GIVE, ADVOCATE, PRAY and SERVE. These are four invitations we give every graduating grad and professional student in GFM. These incredible “SPAHP-Puffins” won’t be in Omaha very long before they head out again (maybe NEVER to return?) to the birthplace of their training. They’re off to career jobs sometimes back in their home state, sometimes to far away places in other countries! Our invitation for them is to:

1. Consider GIVING to the work at their alma-mater once they get situated with their new job and location.
2. Be open to ADVOCATING for GFM ministry in their new setting. Things like connecting with other InterVarsity Alumni or helping GFM network its ministry in new places.
3. PRAY for the Grad Student Fellowship they have just left and the staff members remaining in that community.
4. SERVE a local InterVarsity staff member or student chapter by volunteering to help with events or speaking to active student groups.

Pray for graduating students everywhere in GFM. Pray for their job search and transition to new living situations. Pray for them as they figure out the complexity of working, paying off school debt, relationships and family, and on top of all that, MORE testing and exams related to their professional certifications! Pray for me as I hope to welcome all seven of these students and more for a simple reception at our home on May 15th. It’s a chaotic few days with events on campus for the graduates, family visiting in town, etc. It will be hard to see all of them at the same time, but I do want to make a connection with each one. They have each been a real treasure to have in GFM. InterVarsity and I want to bless them as they move on.

Fourth Quarter Finances.

May and June wrap up our fiscal year in InterVarsity. As I conclude this post I want to you know I could use your prayers for finishing out the year in good shape. Quite a few of my ministry partners are fiscal 4th Quarter givers. I’ll be reaching out to see about their support in the next few weeks. At this point I’m watching for about $18K in annual gifts to arrive before June 30 (on top of what my monthly givers are doing).

Tim’s donation page at InterVarsity.org

Ask the Lord to help me connect. Ask the Lord to help my entire budget to come in full. If you happen to be one of those May/June givers, here’s a link to my donation page at InterVarsity. Email me or reply this post if you have any questions about giving to my account.

Thanks so much!