Maynard-Reids' 2025 Annual Letter

 

January 1, 2026                                                                                      397 SE Highland Park Dr

                
College Place, WA 99324

Dear Friends and Family

 

Here is the 2025 edition of our annual letter:

 

January:

Classes at the Robert Webber Institute for Worship Studies began on January 1. However, it was all online. For Pedrito to avoid waking up at 5:00am (West Coast time) to teach, he set up base at the Maynard-Pemba’s home in Florida.

Vie attended several Fairs this year for her Real Time Pain Relief. Many of her regular customers keep coming back with raving reviews of improved well-being and healing. The year began with the Family Expo at the Hapo Center in Tr-Cities. Here is the link for her products: https://vies-pain-relief.square.site

As a member of the Steering Committee for the Pastoral Leadership Evangelistic Council (PELC), Pedrito met with the Black Regional leadership in Scottsdale, Arizona to plan December’s event at Oakwood University. He took the opportunity to visit Joy Alexander in Tucson.

February:

Olive Hemmings was one of the guests for Black History Sabbath Celebration here at WWU. She made a presentation on “The ‘Black Jesus’ of St. Matthew, Bonhoffer, and Bob Marley.” At the University Church main service, Pedrito was surprised and honored for his 17 years as the Senior Diversity Officer of the University.

 

 

 

On Valentine’s Day Pedrito received a copy of his latest book, “James” in the Seventh-day Adventist International Commentary. Vol. 14. From the day he signed the contract until that day, it was 12 years.

The annual Church Worship class field trip to a couple of African American churches in Seattle was memorable. Our son, Pedrito II, took all of us on a lovely tour of the city.

March:

NADOHE (National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education) held their annual meetings in Chicago. Pedrito could only be there for a day and a half. He had to be back in Walla Walla for his Worship Class practicum.

 

March found Vie busy with upgrades for the house – replacing all the carpet with laminate and began redoing the back deck. 

 

 

 During the first week of Spring Break, Pedrito joined the IWS President and Board chair in exploring a new home for the school in Pasadena, flew back up to Seattle to preach for Education Day at Maranatha SDA Church, and flew back down to LA to join his sister Audrey on a cruise to Catalina, and Ensenada, Mexico.

 

April:

Vie tries to be in Florida every year about this time. It’s birthday time for Natasha’s daughters, Mayamiko and Dalitso. Grandma had to be there!

After years of fundraising, Walla Walla University held the groundbreaking for the new Student Life Center on Alumni weekend. Pedrito II usually comes for that weekend, and we were so happy to have him even for a brief visit. It was also a delight to see and host Cyndy Dinwiddie and Matthew Epp for the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May:

 

InTents, an annual student-led evangelistic series started by Pedrito in 1992, was part of Pentecost 25 (a nation-wide, year-long evangelistic initiative across America, Canada, and Bermuda).

 

 

Pedrito was the keynote speaker for a meeting of Diversity officers at Gonzaga University.

 

 

As always, The Spring Fling in College Place is a big event for Vie’s Pain Relief.

 

 

 

 

We spent some time with the Maynard-Zhangs while we were in the Seattle area for Regional Convocation. There Pedrito gave a seminar on the Holy Spirit post-Pentecost.

 

 

 

 

We made our annual trip to Milo to give out almost $1 million in scholarships from Walla Walla University to a great group of seniors at the Academy. As usual we spent some time with Lorraine, and she took us to a gorgeous 30-acre peony farm.

 June:

The annual meeting of the Senior Diversity Officers of the North American Division of SDA (NAD) higher education took place at Union Adventist University. We passed through that institution many years ago; but this was Pedrito’s first opportunity to spend time there. As the longest tenured D.O. of the group, he was invited to give tips and tricks for success.

 

Another publication for Pedrito arrived this month: Maranatha Study Bible; published by Safeliz (an SDA publishing house in Spain). It was originally scheduled to be published in 2010 by the Review and Herald. But the Andrews Study Bible (to which Pedrito also contributed extensively), seemed to have beat it to the punch.

 

 

 

 

Pedrito had one of his largest cohorts of graduate students at the Robert Webber Institute for Worship Studies (IWS): 13 students. A great group! Little did we know that this would be the last time on the campus in Jacksonville. A few months later it was decided to close the school because of financial demands. We are all in mourning.

 

 

July:

In the Spring of 2024 Pedrito informed the Walla Walla University of his desire to return to full-time teaching as of July 2025. After 27 years involved in administration, he wished to end his academic and ministerial career where he started 55 years ago. His desire was granted! It has been glorious being in the classroom, full-time. He, however, happily acquiesced to the President’s invitation to be the Diversity Ambassador for the University.

 

A highlight of the summer was our trip to Italy. We attended the wedding of our dear friend and former student, Rachel Davies. You will remember that we spent Christmas with her and her fiancé, Alberto, in Australia a couple years ago. At the wedding Pedrito played the organ and read the scripture in the lovely cathedral in Noli. We rented a car and drove 1000 miles around Italy: Milan to Finale Ligure for the wedding; then to the Vatican for a couple of days; then to Florence to see
the famous Michelangelo sculpture of David. In Venice the highlight was the gondola ride through the canals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In between all of our travels and teaching this summer, Vie finished ripping up and rebuilding the back deck!

 

 

August:

The month began with the joy of having Larry Veverka stay by us for a few days. It was for the funeral service of Ione Brunt; thus a sad occasion. But the joy of seeing Larry’s daughters’ (Leanne and Lori) and many of our former colleagues from the School of Theology brought some rewards.

 

 

Our VW Bug turned 60 this year. We gave it a new paint coat as part of the celebration. Incidentally, the Avalon which we purchased in 1995 with 10 miles on the odometer, now has over 400,000 miles. It got a cleaning for its 30^th birthday.

 

 

 

The big Walla Walla County Fair at the famous Walla Walla Fairgrounds saw Vie interacting with so many old and new customers for her Real Time Pain Relief.

Mid-August we took a quick juant to LA to vacation with Pedrito’s sister, Audrey, along with her daughter Ruth and cousin Liz. We filled the days with a boat tour, visit to the Long Beach Aquarium, eating at great places such as Fuego and Yamashiro, etc., etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Outreach and Cultural trip to Thailand had a team of 17, the third largest team in its 22-year history. We were so blessed! The sentiment of the group was that we came to serve and bless the people of Thailand; yet we came away even more blessed. See blog and photo site (at the end of this letter for more).

 

 

 

 

 

 

September:

Vie jumped on a flight to spend some time with Natasha and family the day after Pedrito returned from Thailand. It was so good to have grandma around for a couple weeks.

Pedrito was invited to give the keynote address for the faculty and staff of Walla Walla Community College. He also gave a pep talk to the new incoming Freshmen class at Walla Walla University’s Jump Start. In both instances he highlighted the joys of higher education.

 

Teaching Christian Ethics to Nursing students on the Walla Walla University campus has always been a delight and a rewarding experience for Pedrito. This autumn term was no different.

October:

 Another exceptional year for the vegetable and flower garden came to an end. Again, take a look at our Garden album on our Flickr site. We also did a lot of canning grape juice and pressing apple juice. This year Apple Juicing weekend was over the top. Natasha and her daughters came up from Florida; Pedrito II came down from Seattle; our cousin Joy came from Tanzania; and Lorraine came from Portland. We had a blast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also got to see Olive Hemmings again. She was one of the North American Division of SDA, AAA accreditors for our university’s scheduled visit.

  

The month ended with a wonderful reunion of the Thailand 2025 team, enjoying a delicious Jamaican meal at our home.

 

 

November:

The opportunity arose for Pedrito to represent WWU at a College Fair in Bermuda. On Sabbath he preached at Southampton church and on Monday recruited at the Bermuda Institute next door. It was a great opportunity to spend some time with Gwen de la Chevotiere and family and also reacquainting with many friends and acquaintances from WIC and WWC.

 

 

 

“What’s Unique About Adventism?” was the title of a School of Theology colloquium presented by Pedrito. Looking at Adventism through the prism of “Wholism” was his focus.

The annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the Adventist Society for Religious Studies (ASRS) took place in Boston. It was a year for thought-provoking presentations and great fellowship with Pedrito’s academic colleagues.

 

 

While in Boston, we received the sad news that Uncle Prasarn died. We were, however, thankful that they made special arrangements for the service to be streamed from Thailand so that Pedrito could watch it (at 2:00am) and even got to talk with Auntie Nang.

December:

Vie and Pedrito were both able to attend the Pastoral Evangelism Leadership Council (PELC) at Oakwood University this year. Vie and her friend Juliette Knight were vendors for Real Time Pain Relief. Pedrito is a member of the steering committee for the event, representing the North Pacific Union of SDA. He has been taking at least two Theology students with him since 1992. This year accompanying him were Juvon Debique and Jayden Calderon. It was a significant moment for Adventist Black Theology. In

1990 Pedrito was instrumental in starting a Black Theology sub-group for ASRS. This year we reformalized into ABARS (Adventist Black Religious Scholars) with Oakwood University as our home and officially had a plenary session at PELC on “Adventist Black Epistemology.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While at Oakwood the December issue of “Message Magazine” was released with the cover article, “A Contemporary Beast” written by Pedrito.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty years ago, Pedrito received the Walla Walla Chamber of Commerce and the Walla Walla University Community Service Award. The day we returned from Alabama we headed downtown to receive the award for the second time.

 

 

 

 This year’s Christmas gathering was in Florida. The entire family (Maynard-Reids, Maynard-Zhangs, Pemba/Maynard-Pembas, along with Evans Pemba’s brother, Zander and family, and cousin, Twanda) gathered on St. Georges Island just off the coast of the panhandle of Florida. We had a blast++!

 

Some traditions are hard to die or not worth dying: Whenever Lorraine can’t make it to the family Christmas celebration, we get together soon after (or, like last year, in February) for gift exchange. This year we did it a few hours ago on New Year’s Eve.

 

 A tradition we're adjusting slightly is to include Pedrito II's and Natasha's portion of the annual letter here at the end rather than incorporating their highlights into the monthly renderings Here is their “Year in a Paragraph.”

Maynard-Zhang:

pedrito ii continued leading research for Amazon Community Impact and Amazon Future Engineer. For his motorcycle trip this year, he made an epic trek to Alaska and back. Margaret continues to work at the intersection of AI, art and design, speaking at conferences from Google Cloud Next in Vegas to AI
Community Summit in Bali. Jasper started at Leschi elementary school as an intervention tutor. They also finished teaching a full academic year at UW as a data visualization guest lecturer. And they started working on a new juvenile fiction book. Leo got accepted into UW’s BS/MS computer science (CS) program; he expects to graduate with his Bachelor’s in 2026 and his Master’s in 2027. He has also been working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for the CS department and conducting research.

Pemba/Maynard-Pemba:

Mayamiko is in 12th grade applying to colleges and is captain of her soccer team.  Dalitso is in 8th grade, played a role in Mean Girls the musical at her school, and continues to enjoy drawing. Evans continues to build a thriving audiology practice and got a surprise visit from his siblings for his birthday this year.  Natasha celebrated several 20th anniversaries this year - 20 years since graduating with her doctorate, moving to Gainesville, and working at UF. Evans and Natasha also celebrated their 20th anniversary this year.

 

 

 

 

Well, that’s it for life at the Maynard-Reid’s (and Maynard-Zhang’s and Maynard-Pemba’s) 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: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143715478@N06/albums/  and visit Pedrito’s blog as well:  http://blessingsfrompedrito.blogspot.com/.

We would love to hear from all of you, so drop us a line at pedrito@wallawalla.edu or violet.maynard-reid@wallawalla.edu or “friend” us on Facebook.

Blessings,

Vie and Pedrito