The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

40 may 2016 | the foreign Service journal Becoming a Minister, According to Plan By Lo i s Aro i an M y “retirement” has been a journey into joy. My plan had been to retire at age 65, but circumstances intervened. While serving as consul general in Quebec City in 2000, I led worship occasionally at local English-speaking churches. A friend suggested I go to seminary and become the pastor at her church. Three years later, while serving in Washington, D.C., I para- chuted into a local seminary I’d never even visited. One course at a time, I became a candidate for ministry in the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA). That meant that when I retired in 2007 after a 23-year career that included tours as deputy chief of mission in Mauritania and Botswana, my progress toward my next career as a Presbyterian minister was already well underway. While enrolled at Wesley Theological Seminary in D.C. fol- lowing my retirement from State, I went to work in the declas- sification office that scans volumes of the prospective Foreign Relations of the United States after the books are compiled by the Historian’s Office. What a wonderful job, linked to my pre- Foreign Service training as a Middle East historian and author! I loved reviewing historical documents from presidential libraries and new FRUS volumes. The higher income also gave me an opportunity to volunteer as an evaluator for the Future Leaders Exchange program bring- ing high school students from former Soviet republics to the United States. I could have stayed in that office forever, as most people who work there do. However, in 2010 I accepted a call as pastor of a small church in rural Willow Lake, South Dakota, on a PCUSA program to match recent seminary graduates with rural churches. Our Presbytery appointed me immediately to the Synod com- mittees on racial-ethnic ministry and self-devel- opment of peoples. This broader engagement led me to attend the PCUSA General Assembly in Detroit in 2014, as well as the upcoming 2016 GA in Portland, Oregon. In November 2015, I was called as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in East Jordan, Michigan. I told the committee that my long-term plan was to retire at 80, as my dad had done. I feel very blessed that this wonderful congregation was willing to take a chance on someone well past the usual retirement age. Ever since surviving meningococcal meningi- tis in my 20s while doing my doctoral research in Egypt, I have felt the importance of making each day count and of helping others. I have no regrets. I went to college at age 16 planning to become a Presbyterian minister. Lois Aroian entered the Foreign Service as a political officer and served from 1984 to 2007 in Sudan, Mo- rocco, Syria, Lebanon, Kenya, Seattle (with the Boeing Company), Mauritania, Canada and Botswana, in addition to tours in the bureaus of International Orga- nization Affairs, African Affairs and Intelligence and Research. She also graduated from the National War College of the National Defense University in 2002. Lois Aroian in the First Presbyterian Church fellowship hall after her installation. COURTESYOFLOISAROIAN