LETTERS

Mission Inspiration
I have always appreciated receiving inSpire, but the spring/summer 2008 issue very definitely lived up to its name. I found many of the articles especially interesting, and the mission articles were right on target. As a former fraternal worker (twenty-six years in Venezuela, and raised in Chile and Colombia) I believe that these articles point to PCUSA mission as it has been, and how it can continue to be—a partnership, a two-way street, where all the participants are blessed. I especially appreciated Barbara Chaapel’s article [“Community across the Border: Churches Bridge Culture with Friendship in Mexico,” page 38] on her experience at Puentes de Cristo, part of our Presbyterian Border Ministries. I have the joy and honor of being on the board for Compañeros en Misión. I would hope that our good friends at the national level will read these articles as they discuss the nature of “mission in the twenty-first century.” Thanks again.
Bob Seel (M.Div., 1948)
Tucson, Arizona

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I was very, very pleased by the last issue of inSpire, where I read the experiences of PTS students in different parts of the world. There seems to have been a renewed interest and vision for such trips. Congratulations. I remember back in Mexico hearing ministers talking about el pastor “Juanito,” as they knew President John Mackay. They talked about the powerful missionary force that Princeton “used to be.” My hope is that with such initiatives, many more graduates will catch the vision and be called to go to the ends of the world. Thus, I can think that “used to be” still can be “is.”
Juan-Daniel Espitia (M.Div., 1966)
Oceanside, California

Coming to America
The painting introducing your article “Coming to America” [spring/summer 2008, page 33] certainly did not inspire me. My ancestor Samuel Greaves arrived in New York harbor in February 1820 on the ship Richmond and later became a Methodist clergyman in New York State. The ship in the painting seems to be of a completely different era (1500–1600). After the wars between the English and the French in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, English ships were released from military service and began carrying passengers across the Atlantic. The Richmond left Liverpool in 1819–1820, stopping at Cork in Ireland, with around forty passengers including children.

These ships were frigates or early steam-paddlers, not the “Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria” type illustrating the article.

The “Foreign Mission School” also pictured—is it the one in Cornwall, Connecticut, mentioned in the article?

The author presented the story of Bernard Jadownicky very interestingly.

Another item in the same issue did inspire me—that Thomas Torrance’s collection was given to Speer Library. He was a great man, one of the few theologians who consistently promoted Protestant-Orthodox church ecumenical dialogue. It will be a privilege to see the collection once it has been arranged.
Charles Graves (M.Div., 1956)
Geneva, Switzerland

Editors’ note: Mr. Graves is correct. The illustration was not meant to demonstrate the type of ship used, but to suggest sea travel. The school pictured is the Cornwall school.

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The article in the spring/summer 2008 issue of inSpire regarding PTS’s earliest international students was apparently widely read and appreciated. Among the letters and comments received was a copy of a portrait of John Mitchelmore (M.Div., 1824) from the Lewes Presbyterian Church in Delaware. A letter in the Seminary archives gives first-hand testimony to Mitchelmore’s powerful preaching, which drew people from miles around to join his congregation. He oversaw the construction of a “large new house of worship” in Lewes that, it was predicted, would be “entirely too large and would never be filled.” Contrary to expectation, this church building “was always filled and generally crowded during his time.”

This same building, constructed in 1832, is still the place of worship for the Lewes Presbyterian Church today. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the congregation is currently involved in a Sanctuary Restoration Project. They were glad to have further information about their former pastor to use in the campaign. A cenotaph in the vestibule of the church commemorates Mitchelmore, the story of whose heroic and untimely death was told in the article.

Another request for the article and related materials came from Germany, where a scholar is researching the life of Bernard Jadownicky, the former Solingen rabbi who attended Princeton Seminary from 1823 to 1825.
Kenneth W. Henke
Reference Archivist
Princeton Theological Seminary

Women in Ministry
My wife, Eileen Gergsten Remington (M.Div., 1945), and I attended the First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, New York, where we felt the call to ministry. Upon recommendation of the pastor, Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, we went to Princeton Seminary. President John Mackay was helpful to Eileen in becoming a full-time student with me. She graduated in the Class of 1945 with a Master of Divinity degree, the second woman to graduate from the Seminary with this degree. After seminary, loaned by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, we went to Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica. Eileen designed church buildings and missionary housing, and I worked in broadcasting. We both worked with national pastors in Spanish- and English-speaking churches. God led us all the way!
Robert A. Bennington (M.Div., 1945)
Pasadena, California

Editors’ note: Eileen Gergsten Remington was mistakenly omitted from the timeline in “Outstanding in the Field,” spring/summer 2008 issue, pages 40–41.

Oh, Canada!
I enjoyed the spring/summer 2008 issue of inSpire a great deal, particularly the articles on mission. However, in Class Notes, it says I retired from my church in Fort Erie, New York. While Fort Erie is joined to New York by the Peace Bridge across the Niagara River, it most definitely is in Ontario, Canada. With all good humor, having been the International Students Society president for 1969–1970 while doing my Th.M., it might be wise to alter the web site to affirm my international student status, as all my thirty-six years of active pastoral ministry were served in Canada. Thanks!
J. Cameron Bigelow (B.D., 1969; Th.M., 1970)
Ontario, Canada

Editors’ note: Correction made on the web site.