Bethany Aichele, wife of seminarian Daniel Aichele

My husband, Daniel, is in his third year of seminary. Before coming to seminary, we helped to plant Hope Free Lutheran Church in Killdeer. The church planting process helped us to see the call to seminary that God had for us. The first two years of the church plant were very small. We realized that if we weren’t intentional about inviting people to come to church with us, it could be pretty lonely! This gave us a very missional approach to life. We felt like missionaries in our own little town. We had already lived there for six years and had existing relationships. It really gave us a new mindset in our day-to-day life in the community.

We did not have a pastor for the first two years of our church plant. Daniel would lead the service–he usually lined up guest preachers, for which we were very grateful–and I would play piano. We would trade off holding kids between the hymns. As our search for a pastor continued, we began to wonder if we would actually get one to come all the way out to our small western North Dakota town. This search definitely highlighted the shortage, and need for more pastors. We thought, either we wouldn’t be able to get a pastor to come and our church just might fizzle out, so we would go to seminary and help to meet the need, or, God would send us a pastor and the ministry would thrive, and then we would go to seminary to help another church needing a pastor. Either way, we were headed to seminary!

Our church ended up calling a pastor, and after working with him for a couple years we headed to the Free Lutheran Seminary ourselves in August 2023. It was hard (especially for me and our older kids) to leave our new house, friends, a real job, and most importantly, the new church in Killdeer.

We have now settled very comfortably into seminary life and feel very blessed by all the new friends we have made on campus. There are so many seminary children on or near campus. Our six children love to step out the back door and instantly have neighbors waiting to play. It has also been a blessing to see the different ways the Lord has provided for us while we are here preparing for pastoral ministry. It was scary leaving a fulltime career paycheck, but we have learned that God gives us our “daily bread,” just how much we need, when we need it. Our faith and trust in Him has been tested and has grown a lot in this process.

Now, we look forward to meeting new congregations both on internship next year, and permanently in about eighteen months, and doing life with them and loving them.