Dear Friends in Faith, Grace and peace to you! It is my great privilege to be appointed to serve as one of your pastors. I am excited about the opportunity we have to serve Christ together, and look forward to getting to know you. To begin that process, I ask your indulgence now in allowing me to share something of my life with you. My husband Dan and I were both born and raised near Akron, OH. My parents and older brother Tim moved to Akron several months before I was born when my Dad accepted a job with B.F. Goodrich. My parents had met and married during World War II when my Dad, an Iowa native, was stationed at an airfield near Houston. They remained with my mother’s large extended family in the Houston area for many years after the war before relocating briefly to metropolitan Los Angeles, and then moving to what was, to my mother and brother, the very cold Midwest! In 1985 I graduated from the College of Wooster, in Wooster, OH, where I majored in Religious Studies. I spent the summer after college studying Hebrew at Princeton Theological Seminary before enrolling at Yale Divinity School, where I completed my Masters of Divinity in 1988. During the brief break between finishing at Princeton and moving to Connecticut, Dan and I married and flew to Pensacola, FL, where he began pilot training with the Navy. An already exciting time for us was made even more so when hurricane Elena hit Pensacola within days of our arrival. It then proceeded up the east coast to Connecticut. The storm did far more damage to the Divinity School than it did the Naval Base in Pensacola. I remember that due to power outages the dining hall served little other than sandwiches for what seemed like weeks! After finishing seminary I joined Dan, who was by then an A-6 pilot with a carrier-based squadron in Virginia Beach, VA. After ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I, too, joined the Navy. Upon completing my chaplaincy training, I joined the crew of the USS L. Y. SPEAR, a submarine tender home ported in Norfolk. Although we finally shared the same address, Dan and I saw little of each other in those years, as we were at sea on what seemed to be opposing rotations. However, our ships literally did pass within three miles of each other one night in the eastern Mediterranean when our units were both deployed in support of Operation Desert Storm. It remains a strangely comforting memory. In late 1991 I was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where I served as a staff chaplain on the base. About seven months later Dan was transferred to the A-4 squadron there and we enjoyed living in an old home on top of a hill overlooking both the Caribbean Sea and the bay. We had already made the decision that we would leave active military service. I did so in the summer of 1993 when I accepted a pastoral call to Faith Presbyterian Church in Sun City, AZ. Our son, Jeremiah, was born in Glendale that December, and Dan left active duty and joined us the following summer. After serving at Faith for three years, I left to spend more time at home with Jeremiah while Dan re-entered the work force as an accountant. We began attending a newly constructed church in our neighborhood, Dove of the Desert UMC. Shortly thereafter I accepted an appointment to join the pastoral staff in a part-time, soon full-time, capacity. Thus began a delightful six and a half years at Dove, and my, now long, association with the Desert Southwest Annual Conference. In the years since leaving Dove, I have engaged in a variety of forms of ministry. I served as interim pastor at Cross in the Desert UMC, taught special education and middle school social studies in public schools, studied and taught history at ASU, served as a chaplain for Hospice of the Valley, and continued to serve as a chaplain in the Navy Reserve until my retirement in 2011. In 2013 the Conference contacted me, asking if I would accept an appointment. I was pleased to begin serving Velda Rose UMC that July. Should the Board of Ordained Ministry recommend it, and if it pleases Bishop Hoshibata, I anticipate formally transferring my ecclesiastical credentials to the Desert Southwest Annual Conference at next year’s session. Our son, Jeremiah, is now a senior at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. He is majoring in International Affairs and expects to complete minors in Chinese and Economics as well. We are excited to see what the next chapter in his life will bring. Dan is now a CPA specializing in corporate tax work and IRS consultation with Tull, Forsberg & Olson, an accounting firm in central Phoenix. As I share this personal history with you, I am overcome with gratitude to God for all of the blessings I have known. I am grateful for that which has been, and look forward to that which lies ahead as we join in ministry together. Yours in Christ, Pastor Joan Miller
