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Carl: Hello, my name is Carl Rockrohr… Deborah: …and I’m Deaconess Deborah Rockrohr...
Carl: …and we’re a missionary couple who both have calls to serve at the Lutheran Theological
Seminary in Pretoria, South Africa. This seminary is associated with two partner churches, the
Lutheran Church of Southern Africa… Deborah: …and the Free Evangelical Lutheran
Synod in South Africa, both of whom are partner churches of the LCMS.
Carl: Part of my responsibilities will be to teach some of the courses at the seminary
and also to assist the Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Southern Africa with various duties
that he needs me to take up. One of the interesting things about our student body at the Lutheran
Theological Seminary is that there are both students from Southern Africa, and also students
from Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, even Ethiopia. So, it’s a quite exciting time for us to
think about and prepare for helping these students to be pastors and deaconesses for
Lutheran churches, not only in South Africa, but throughout Africa.
Deborah: I will be director of the new diaconal training program training deaconesses. For
the past two years they have had some women in training through an intensive short-term
course of study, and they will be concluding their training in October. In January I have
been called to start a full-time residential training program for the Church, and so that
will be my work there. Carl: We have four children, three who are
in college in graduate studies, but our youngest, Theodore, will be going with us. He will be
in seventh grade when we arrive in South Africa, and you can pray for the transition for our
family, both for those three older ones – Paul, James, and Rebecca who we’ll leave behind,
but especially for Theodore, Ted, who will be adjusting to a whole new schooling situation,
making new friends, and those types of things. At this time, we are also raising support
for our ministry there, and we ask for your prayers for that aspect also.
Deborah: People have asked us what our timeline is, and we actually don’t go to the field
until we’ve raised 80% of our budgeted support, but our timeline is that school starts in
South Africa in mid-January, and so we need to be there by then. We hope to be there sooner
so that we have a chance to acclimate to the region, and to the greater work of the Church
at large, before we begin our teaching duties. Carl: Thank you for listening to us and learning
a little bit about us, and we ask that God would bless you in your lives.