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People Profile -- Scottish-born Salem co-pastor Paterson finds area delightful
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| The Rev. Lydia Paterson finds herself a long way from her native Scotland. Banner-Press/Bud Chambers |
By Bud Chambers/Staff Reporter
Barely over a year ago — actually between Christmas 2006 and New Year’s Day 2007 — the Rev. Lydia Paterson arrived here to co-pastor Salem Lutheran Church, having spent the first 15 years of life in her native Scotland and making several more stops: high school/college in Mississippi; a graduate school stint in Arizona; a five-year Lutheran seminary/internship in Ohio; and a one-year Nebraska church assignment before finally finding “a home” in Texas.
“Home” is how Paterson says the Brenham area felt to her virtually from when she set foot in these environs.
Actually in part it may have been the advantageous timing of Paterson’s initial social invitation here, joining with a number of Salem Lutheran Church members for a church-related New Year’s Eve party, that sealed-the-deal for the young Lutheran minister in her first fully-ordained assignment feeling both so welcomed as well as needed.
“People teased each other, yet in a caring and good humored way,” Paterson said, suggesting that this positive-approach to both life and the Christian faith meshed extremely well with many of her personal philosophies/goals.
Paterson — after moving from her Scottish homeland to Oxford, Miss. in her early teens (where her father, Alan, a math professor at Aberdeen University, had accepted a similar University of Mississippi professorship) — says she had always felt the call “to a life involved with caring for others” even as she did especially well in the math and science fields at Oxford High School, class of 1991, and initially moved forward into a pre-medicine at “Ol’ Miss” University.
“About halfway through, it just didn’t seem like it was what I was supposed to do,” Paterson recollected last Friday in her Salem Lutheran Church office; explaining the several steps from that point to her ultimate career choice.
Making adjustments
Obviously, Paterson was already used to “making adjustments” on the fly in a move at just age 15 from Aberdeen, Scotland, where the family didn‘t own a car — “I took public transportation (there were no school buses) to my high school there” — and she also arrived to start 10th grade in Oxford, Miss., in July weather that was pushing the 100 degree level vs. cooler, damp days in Aberdeen which seldom make it beyond the 50s.
Also, Paterson noted especially “there were hardly any similarities” between the English language as spoken in her native Scotland and English as it was spoken in Oxford, most especially in the city high school.
“At first, no one understand me … and I certainly couldn’t understand (most of my new classmates).” she said.
Paterson said with a laugh that age 15 probably wasn’t the ideal time for a such a life-changing transformation, but — now looking back — “it all worked out!”
So did several smaller transformations, or at least detours, that brought Paterson all the way from being a rather thoughtful and considerate high school student who somehow felt destined “to serve and care for others” — and ultimately hearing “a clear call” to the Lutheran ministry — after having traversed to this place in life all the way from early Presbyterian roots (predominant in Scotland, and to which her parents/siblings and their families still belong).
The first step after abandoning pre-med studies at the University of Mississippi was to transfer into a physics major, where she also did well, ultimately achieving a physics degree, 1996, and then going into a field of graduate study digging deeply into “thunderstorm research in the desert southwest.”
Paterson spend a lot of time in New Mexico, and even more in Arizona, exploring these weather phenomenon’s — but again the young woman was “second thoughts about making this (field) a career.”
The final answer, career-wise, came clear to today’s the Rev. Lydia Paterson one day when she decided to attend a service at a Lutheran Church in Phoenix.
“I immediately felt at home there,” Paterson said. “(I feel) God had been pointing me toward the ministry for a long time … and it was like he was just waiting for me (to find the church I felt right serving.)”
From that point it didn’t take Patterson long to make the decision to study for the Lutheran ministry, but of course, by necessity there was another of those difficult life transition to be made — primarily such as numerous interviews and psychological tests to be sure “that I was right for this important work.”
Paterson had to take a secretarial job to support herself during approximately a period of about a year; and, finally, she gained acceptance into Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
After Paterson’s call to her now lifelong profession in the summer 1999, there was that one year in somewhat of a limbo and then she would work diligently within the Trinity seminary program for the next five years, including a year serving, also in Cleveland’s Trinity Lutheran Church in an internship role prior to a seminary senior year.
And then there would be a third Trinity Lutheran Church — the third one in a row — in her future for another year, this one as part of a Lutheran Services Corporation program serving “in an underserved Omaha, Neb. area” for a full year.
Paterson enjoyed bringing “short messages, and singing with the children” in this somewhat dangerous area of Omaha’s inner city where sometimes families hardly knew where they were going to get their next meal.
But during the summer of 2006, Paterson was invited to interview with Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church near Brenham and then invited by the congregation to join the Rev. Charles Parnell in serving as an equal co-pastor in Washington County’s second oldest Lutheran congregation - and numbering some 800 members.
On Jan. 4, 2007, the Rev. Lydia Paterson received her first full-fledged ordination in the Lutheran ministry; and a wonderful highlight include a special gift given to her by her new congregation — a Tartan that in Scotland signifies that one is a minister doing God‘s work.
An entire year, and now nearly onemonth, has flown by quickly in the life of Paterson and her two Labrador dogs “Bobby” and “Danny,” and with hopefully many more years to come in a profession she always felt would be her calling: “Something involving caring for others.”
“Home” is how Paterson says the Brenham area felt to her virtually from when she set foot in these environs.
Actually in part it may have been the advantageous timing of Paterson’s initial social invitation here, joining with a number of Salem Lutheran Church members for a church-related New Year’s Eve party, that sealed-the-deal for the young Lutheran minister in her first fully-ordained assignment feeling both so welcomed as well as needed.
“People teased each other, yet in a caring and good humored way,” Paterson said, suggesting that this positive-approach to both life and the Christian faith meshed extremely well with many of her personal philosophies/goals.
Paterson — after moving from her Scottish homeland to Oxford, Miss. in her early teens (where her father, Alan, a math professor at Aberdeen University, had accepted a similar University of Mississippi professorship) — says she had always felt the call “to a life involved with caring for others” even as she did especially well in the math and science fields at Oxford High School, class of 1991, and initially moved forward into a pre-medicine at “Ol’ Miss” University.
“About halfway through, it just didn’t seem like it was what I was supposed to do,” Paterson recollected last Friday in her Salem Lutheran Church office; explaining the several steps from that point to her ultimate career choice.
Making adjustments
Obviously, Paterson was already used to “making adjustments” on the fly in a move at just age 15 from Aberdeen, Scotland, where the family didn‘t own a car — “I took public transportation (there were no school buses) to my high school there” — and she also arrived to start 10th grade in Oxford, Miss., in July weather that was pushing the 100 degree level vs. cooler, damp days in Aberdeen which seldom make it beyond the 50s.
Also, Paterson noted especially “there were hardly any similarities” between the English language as spoken in her native Scotland and English as it was spoken in Oxford, most especially in the city high school.
“At first, no one understand me … and I certainly couldn’t understand (most of my new classmates).” she said.
Paterson said with a laugh that age 15 probably wasn’t the ideal time for a such a life-changing transformation, but — now looking back — “it all worked out!”
So did several smaller transformations, or at least detours, that brought Paterson all the way from being a rather thoughtful and considerate high school student who somehow felt destined “to serve and care for others” — and ultimately hearing “a clear call” to the Lutheran ministry — after having traversed to this place in life all the way from early Presbyterian roots (predominant in Scotland, and to which her parents/siblings and their families still belong).
The first step after abandoning pre-med studies at the University of Mississippi was to transfer into a physics major, where she also did well, ultimately achieving a physics degree, 1996, and then going into a field of graduate study digging deeply into “thunderstorm research in the desert southwest.”
Paterson spend a lot of time in New Mexico, and even more in Arizona, exploring these weather phenomenon’s — but again the young woman was “second thoughts about making this (field) a career.”
The final answer, career-wise, came clear to today’s the Rev. Lydia Paterson one day when she decided to attend a service at a Lutheran Church in Phoenix.
“I immediately felt at home there,” Paterson said. “(I feel) God had been pointing me toward the ministry for a long time … and it was like he was just waiting for me (to find the church I felt right serving.)”
From that point it didn’t take Patterson long to make the decision to study for the Lutheran ministry, but of course, by necessity there was another of those difficult life transition to be made — primarily such as numerous interviews and psychological tests to be sure “that I was right for this important work.”
Paterson had to take a secretarial job to support herself during approximately a period of about a year; and, finally, she gained acceptance into Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
After Paterson’s call to her now lifelong profession in the summer 1999, there was that one year in somewhat of a limbo and then she would work diligently within the Trinity seminary program for the next five years, including a year serving, also in Cleveland’s Trinity Lutheran Church in an internship role prior to a seminary senior year.
And then there would be a third Trinity Lutheran Church — the third one in a row — in her future for another year, this one as part of a Lutheran Services Corporation program serving “in an underserved Omaha, Neb. area” for a full year.
Paterson enjoyed bringing “short messages, and singing with the children” in this somewhat dangerous area of Omaha’s inner city where sometimes families hardly knew where they were going to get their next meal.
But during the summer of 2006, Paterson was invited to interview with Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church near Brenham and then invited by the congregation to join the Rev. Charles Parnell in serving as an equal co-pastor in Washington County’s second oldest Lutheran congregation - and numbering some 800 members.
On Jan. 4, 2007, the Rev. Lydia Paterson received her first full-fledged ordination in the Lutheran ministry; and a wonderful highlight include a special gift given to her by her new congregation — a Tartan that in Scotland signifies that one is a minister doing God‘s work.
An entire year, and now nearly onemonth, has flown by quickly in the life of Paterson and her two Labrador dogs “Bobby” and “Danny,” and with hopefully many more years to come in a profession she always felt would be her calling: “Something involving caring for others.”
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