January 2017
On Christmas Day, a friend of Pastor Tom Engel in the LCMS Northern Illinois District, came to worship at St. Philip Lutheran Church on Chicago’s north side, where Pastor Engel was filling in. His friend, Ireen is from Zambia and has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years. She brought with her to St. Philip a childhood friend’s daughter, Nyambe, who is here in the U.S. on a visa. After worship, Nyambe asked to be baptized.
Pastor Engel, who has helped provide services at St. Philip during their pastoral vacancy, spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Nyambe, meeting and talking about the teachings of Lutheran doctrine. “She was a very good student for she knows Scripture well,” Pastor Engel said. “She had been thinking of baptism for a long time and felt it was time to be baptized.”
On New Year’s Day, Nyambe was baptized at the beginning of worship at St. Philip and began the new year of 2017 with a new life in Christ.
Pastor Engel is on the staff at nearby St. Paul Lutheran Church, in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. He came to St. Paul through the LUKE collaboration about a year and a half ago. LUKE (Lutheran Urban Kingdom Expansion) is a donor-funded project of Chicagoland Lutheran Educational Foundation, Trinity Lutheran Church in Roselle, four Chicago churches (Tabor, Concordia, St. Paul Austin and St. Paul Dorchester) and the Northern Illinois District to revitalize members and ministry for the purpose of invigorated outreach in their communities. Through LUKE, pastors and their congregational members are discipled and inspired in seeing where the Holy Spirit is working in people’s lives and serving as Christ’s witnesses to reach people with the Gospel.