The Maynard-Reid's 2011 Annual Letter

We hope 2011 found all our blog followers in good health and enjoying God’s many blessings. This blog is a joint report by Violet (Vie) and Pedrito. We had another full year – here are some of the highlights.

As always December began with Pedrito taking two of his students to Oakwood University for the Pastoral, Evangelism and Leadership Conference. This was one of the most stimulating and energizing of the 20 that he has attended. And just as energizing was having the entire family (including in-laws and Lorraine) for Christmas at home in Walla Walla. The last grandchild, Mayamiko, was almost 3; so she got into the “spirit” as did Jasmine and Leo, and all of us “big” kids! The Maynard-Pemba’s flew back to Florida late New Year’s Eve, so we celebrated that occasion in Seattle.

During Winter quarter, Pedrito taught every Monday in Portland. He loves teaching at the Nursing School, even though it is a lot of flying or driving (8 hours round-trip). He still taught classes on the main campus and on weekends had preaching appointments and recruiting stints – like one to Valley Crossroads Church in the Los Angeles area. He spent a lovely time with his sister, Audrey, while there. The sweet-sour part of the month was that our 1989 Nissan pickup died. But we were fortunate to lease a brand new Toyota Tacoma pick-up with only 1 mile on it! The savings we gained from refinancing our house paid that new expense. It’s Vie’s; she loves the big vehicle!

We always look forward to taking the Worship class on a Field trip to Seattle to experience African American worship at Emerald City Community SDA Church and New Beginnings Baptist Church. And of course spending time with the grandkids. Vie also got to go to Florida and spend a couple weeks with Mayamiko and her parents. Pedrito is President of Rotary of Walla Walla this year. His signature project was a trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He took along with him three Rotarians and their spouses to engage in a humanitarian project of building cisterns for clean drinking water in a poor area of the region. They also assisted in laying the flooring for one of the houses for a poor family. (For photos see: http://www.wallawalla.edu/campus-life/spiritual-life/gallery/san_miguel_de_allende_mexico_trip_2011)

After Vie returned from Florida in March, we headed to Rosario Marine Station (Walla Walla University’s campus in the Puget Sound) for the North American SDA Campus Ministries Convention. There Pedrito represented the Administration and welcomed the delegates to WWU. Then he was off to Andrews University in Michigan, to be one of the Plenary speakers for their annual Worship Conference. The next out-of-town trip was to La Sierra in April for the annual West Coast Religion Teachers’ Conference. The conference was great; but spending time at the home of Pedrito’s friends and colleagues, Kendra Haloviak and Gil Valentine, was most special.

Some of you might remember that Pedrito is the Ombudsman at WWU (as well as Assistant to the President for Diversity). In those roles he has inaugurated the first Peacemaking Weekend at the University. It began with a Steel Band concert in the city plaza, and included a presentation by Doug Morgan from Washington Adventist University. Later in the quarter, he brought in Alvin Ziontz to make a presentation on Rebuilding the American Indian Nation, for the first in a series of Diversity Lectures.

The 35^th Regional Convocation at Camp Berachah was spectacular! The music was diverse and heavenly; the preaching was dynamic and powerful. Pedrito taught the SS lesson, promoted WWU, and was the MC for a fabulous concert, featuring Le Voce -- 3 operatic sopranos who brought down the house! As always, we ended May with a trip to Milo Academy in southern Oregon where Pedrito gave out over three quarters of a million dollars in scholarships for Walla Walla University.

Let us pause and let you know about our kids. Here is what’s on their websites: Dr. Natasha Maynard-Pemba is the Training Director at the University of Florida's Counseling and Wellness Center. She received her Ph.D. from the Counseling Psychology program at Arizona State University. She counsels individuals, couples, and groups with a variety of clinical and developmental concerns. Natasha uses several primary theoretical orientations in her therapy and supervision including interpersonal, family systems, and cognitive-behavioral theories. She is interested in issues of diversity, specifically issues of cultural adjustment as it relates to stress. She is the faculty advisor for the Jamaican American Student Association (JAMSA) and served as co-faculty advisor with Dr. Robinson for the Multicultural Psychological Association through the Psychology department for several years. As a way to continue meeting the needs of underrepresented groups, she and Dr. Hernandez developed an innovative bilingual group called ¿Qué pasa? She has a strong interest in training activities and supervision and oversees the training program.

Pedrito Maynard-Zhang is a software development engineer for Microsoft in the Bing local search group. Before this, he developed software at amazon.com in the customer behavior group. Prior to developing software, he was doing his other passion, teaching as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science & Systems Analysis at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. (Nope, no affiliation to that other Miami.) However, as much as he loved teaching there, it was just too far from the west coast and family. So here they are, back in the wonderful Pacific Northwest. He received his Ph.D in Computer Science in 2001 from the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University (and picked up a Masters of Science in Computer Science along the way). He did his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering at Walla Walla University, a liberal arts university in Southeastern Washington State. His general area of expertise is Artificial Intelligence with an emphasis on Multi-agent Systems, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and Machine Learning.

Vie’s birthday – This was a momentous year, for Vie, one that she long dreaded. Yes, this year Vie turned 60. She begrudgingly agreed to let us celebrate – as long as we kept it within the family. With that little bit of freedom we were off. Of course, to truly celebrate with family we needed ALL the family there, so the first order of business was arranging to surprise Vie by flying Natasha and Mayamiko in from Florida. Sadly, Evans was not able to join us. But we did manage to get Natasha and Mayamiko here sorta secretly – Vie says she knew we would pull this off. What Vie didn’t see coming was that everyone had pitched in together and bought her a new refrigerator. That truly surprised her and we’ve seldom seen such a reaction out of her. The goal was to make the celebration memorable and to that extent I think we were successful.

In June the university invited the General Conference Vice President for Education, Ella Simmons, to speak for commencement. Ella and her husband, Nord, joined us at our home for a wonderful Friday evening meal. We had a memorable visit and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Pedrito traveled to the Netherlands in June for a series of meetings. His focus was on “Tearing Down Walls; Building Bridges.” The church in Holland is largely immigrant church (as it is all around the western world). He has a burden to make the gospel contextual if there is going to be any semblance of growth in the post-Christian society. The sermons were well received and his hosts did a great job of showing him the sights of this delightful country.

After returning from the Netherlands, Vie and Pedrito headed for Goldendale, Washington to the new Project Patch camp for the annual Cabinet Retreat. This new retreat center provides a safe haven for troubled families to meet and get help with various issues. The setting was beautiful and we engaged in some meaningful long-range planning for the university. Our time together is always powerful and invigorating.

Summer was busy with Vie doing many projects around the house, and taking on the big project of redoing the body of our 1965 VW bug. She taught herself to weld and all the other things that go with car body work! We spent 4^th of July in Seattle with Pedrito II and family and viewed the fireworks at the Iron Works Park. It was a great show. Pedrito’s year as Rotary President came to an end at the beginning of July. At the Award’s Banquet the Club sent him off with a wonderful Roast! Our son Pedrito II continues as a "software development engineer 2" at Microsoft, but was promoted to the upper of the two levels in that band. We are proud of our children.

At the end of August we (Vie is not able to go every year, but she came this year) took our annual short-term mission trip to Thailand with a group of students from Walla Walla University. This trip included two alums and a student from Loma Linda University. It was the best team we’ve worked with to date. Part of the team taught English at a local elementary school and the other part of the team worked on Uncle Prasarn’s and Nang’s farm. This year at the farm was especially challenging as the heavy rains of the past couple years have washed out the roads on the farm making them impassable for their small tractor. We prepped some of the roads for the loads of gravel we’d raised money to bring in. But the heavy rains kept most of the gravel from being delivered during our time there. We left funds so the work could be continued after we left. As many of you know who follow world news, Thailand is still being hit with heavy rains – the worst in 60 years. We pray for the people there as the challenges they face are enormous and their resources are scarce.

In addition to the work, we took time on the weekends to experience some of the great cultural experiences that Thailand has to offer. These included a wildlife refuge, elephant rides, shopping, and an amazing day at the Tiger Temple – an outdoor Buddhist monastery that is a tiger rehabilitation program. It’s the only place in the world that people can spend a day interacting with tigers of all ages. Even the most scared in our group found the experience exhilarating. And for Lorraine, well, it was what she called her One Perfect Day in Life. ‘Nuff said.

A few days after we returned home we headed south to spend a week with Natasha and family. Vie simply had a blast with Mayamiko! Pedrito went there primarily to get away and have some time to hibernate and meet a writing deadline for part of the new SDA Commentary on James. We could only spend a week because school began the next week. Although Pedrito’s School of Theology was kind enough to allow him a lighter load this term so that he could put more time in the writing. In the winter term he’ll take an overload to make up. So this Fall he only taught one course to the nursing students on the Portland campus on Mondays (flying most of the time via Seattle).

He continued his duties as Assistant to the President for Diversity. As part of that role he was part of the Walla Walla Diversity Coalition that coordinated the city-wide Freedom from Discrimination Month in October. Our focus was on how Asians were treated during World War II and immigration issues in general. A highlight was an honor he received from the local paper, The Union Bulletin. He was chosen as one of 8 famous persons in the Walla Walla Valley to be featured in the paper with a three-quarter page photo (published about 5 times before the year was out).

Much of Pedrito’s book writing over the years has been done in the solitude of his sister’s Audrey’s home in Pasadena. He went there for a few days in October. On a visit to our Aunt Cissy in Colton, we got a call from our brother Hugh that he was down the road at Loma Linda for a conference on mental health. (Hugh is the Director of Pastoral Care at the Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.) They 3 were able to get together for dinner and catch-up at a lovely restaurant in Old Pasadena.

While in LA, our University President asked Pedrito if he could represent him and Walla Walla at the Inauguration of the President of Oakwood University. It was a whirlwind trip, with only 3 hours sleep in 48 hours. But what a grand event it was as President Leslie Pollard was installed with all the pomp and circumstance. Pedrito also participated in a public roundtable discussion with a number of SDA university presidents on contemporary issues in Adventist higher education.

Pedrito takes many speaking appointments in the Northwest. On October 22, he preached 3 sermons at the Auburn City Church. It was a blessed day all around. We also got to spend some time with Pedrito II and his family. Can you imagine that our oldest grandchild, Jasmine, turned 10. She had the grandest birthday party at the beginning of the month.

Couple more notes on our children: Natasha was one of 3 nationally who received The Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors’ scholarship to support the cost of attending the 2011 Director's conference (October 24-28, 2011 at Arizona State University, her alma mater). As part of the scholarship she co-presented a diversity themed program at the conference. Pedrito II got another major promotion in the Software Engineering department of Microsoft.

November was a busy month of travel, speaking, and researching, with a bit of vacation thrown in. First WWU ask Pedrito again to travel to Toronto, Canada to recruit at Kingsway College and Crawford High Schools. Vie took the opportunity to come along and to spend a week with Janice and with Noel’s family. It was so much fun reliving the old times in the Thompson clan. Pedrito only spent a day there; he had to be back to teach in Portland and to head back down to Oakwood University. He was invited to preach at Madison Mission and to speak to the Theology students of the University. His friend, Pastor James Doggette, was kind enough to fly him in a few days early so that he could hibernate and get some research and writing done. It was great to see Dave, Juliet, and Jessica Knight, and the Gellineaus, and many other friends. He barely got back from there before he had to head down to San Francisco to the annual ASRS/SBL meetings. He and his brightest student, colleague, and friend, Olive, took some time to see the lovely sights in the city and to talk social justice, theology, and church politics.

The high point of November was the lovely vacation given to us by Fidel Perez. He and his identical twin, Raul, were members of the Junior Church that Pedrito founded in 1976 at West Indies College. He arranged for us to spend 3 days at a fabulous resort at Bavaro on the northeast coast of the Dominican Republic. It is the most fabulous place at which we have stayed. On Friday and Sabbath, Pedrito was the main speaker at a Master Guide Camporee in San Cristobal. Hundreds of MGs packed the hall. The energy was electrifying! Pedrito spoke 4 times on “WOW! –The Miracles of Jesus.” We had an amazing time!

Well, that’s it for life at the Maynard-Reids for the last 12 months. Thanks for your love and prayers. If you wish to see numerous photos of this year’s events, please visit our photo site: http://www.wallawalla.edu/campus-life/spiritual-life/gallery; and visit earlier entries, below, of Pedrito’s blog as well: http://blessingsfrompedrito.blogspot.com/.