Family News

Latest update

• Deborah and I have found a wonderful house in Centurion, a municipality just south of Pretoria. We are situated about 12 km (8 miles) from the center of Pretoria, and about 30 km (19 miles) from the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, so it's a very convenient location. We are renting for now, while we wait for our permanent residence papers to come through (the equivalent of a US "green card").
• Colin is in the midst of his second semester at Austin Community College, still planning to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin in September. His reentry into academic life has been very successful; he earned a 4.0 (straight-A) average in his first semester and passed out of two years of university-level Spanish on the basis of what he learned during his months in Mexico.
• Matt is completing his final year at Amherst College. He's hard at work on his senior thesis in Anthropology. Plans for next year are still up in the air (of course). Stay tuned!

New home in South Africa

In August, 1996, when I finished my work in Namibia, Deborah and I began exploring the possibility of moving to South Africa. That exploration has been successful. On June 8th, 1997, we officially established our new residence in the Pretoria area. I am working in the human resource development field, Deborah with health and counselling. I have opened an office to do consulting work not only for international donors such as USAID, for the education and private sectors in South Africa, and for US-based organizations in the fields of education and human resource development that want to make a contribution to South African transformation.

 

Our professional goal is to find the best way to use our skills to empower people from the Southern African region who have previously been denied the chance to release their God-given potential. Our personal goal is to put down roots so that we can continue to enjoy the bounty of living in Africa.

 

Visiting the United States

We recently finished a four-month visit to the USA, our longest stay in the States since we left in 1975. I worked for three of those months in the Washington, DC, area at the home office of IIR, the Institute for International Research. Deborah visited family and friends while doing her own research in healing and counselling, her current interest. We joined each other in the final months for a great family reunion and some wonderful visits with old friends.

 

This trip was preceded for me by another last November, to begin work on a project to tell the story of the positive impact of foreign aid on educational development in Africa. Among many special treats for me (including celebrating my birthday with my folks for the first time in about 30 years), I got to see my father teach. As Prof. C. Roland Christensen, his career at the Harvard Business School has taken him from a sought-after developer and leader of the Business Policy MBA course to a teacher of the art of discussion teaching and the case method.

 

And last summer, when we were back on our annual family visit, Debbie and I were able to visit one of my mother's many interests, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where for many years she has done volunteer work such as museum tours and architectural tours of the city. This is just one of her many contributions to the arts, charity, and quiet service to others in need. Being back in the States three times in a 12-month period is a first for us since we left for Canada, then Africa, in 1975. It has been a welcome opportunity to reconnect with family.

 

Matt

Our older son, Matt, is completing his senior year at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts, just a few miles where Deborah's parents live in Sunderland. He is majoring in Chemistry and Anthropology (sometimes combined as medical anthropology), with wide interests that range from computer programming to blues harmonica. Last summer he did anthropology research in preparation for his senior thesis under a grant from the college, as well as working at the Amherst Campus Center. His home page gives a good a sense of his existential, UNIX-based world-view (and his sense of humor).

 

Colin

Colin graduated in June, 1996, from Maxwell International Bah�'� School in British Columbia, Canada. He decided to take a year off before starting college this Fall. Beginning as a gardener at the Bah�'� House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, he moved in September to Mexico, where he undertook community development work with rural Bah�'� communities, largely indigenous, in the Huesteca region. He returned to the U.S. in May, 1997, to start college. Originally this was going to be Earlham College in Indiana, but as a result of his Mexico experience he decided to study in the Southwest region so that he can be closer to new friends and to the Huesteca. Now he plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin after this preliminary year at Austin Community College. One of his real loves is history; another is justice.