The eldest of three daughters, I was born in Jamaica and spent most of my early life there. My father was a sugar planter and I was fortunate to enjoy the rather privileged life of the sugar estates of the past. My parents were nominally Methodist but not very active churchgoers. It was in the boarding school my sisters and I attended that, when I was thirteen years old, I experienced a very profound religious conversion. As a result of the latter, my father also gave his life to Christ and our entire family came to be very active in the church, my father becoming one of the most prominent Methodist laymen in Jamaica .

When I was about fifteen I felt a call to ministry, but since women were not at that time permitted to be ministers, I became a high school English teacher, doing my undergraduate work at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario . I was to remain a teacher for some nineteen years. In the meanwhile, I married a young barrister - turned - Methodist minister from Guyana in South America and in the years that followed we served churches in Jamaica and in Guyana .

In 1976 we emigrated to the United States and my husband pastored churches in Dorchester, Braintree, Waltham, and Brockton . In the meantime, I worked in the United Methodist Conference Office in Boston as Director of the Media Resource Center . This gave me the opportunity to become au fait with the United Methodist system and to travel across the States and even as far afield as  South Africa . Working close to Boston University , it also afforded me the chance to study for the M.Div. degree at BU. We moved to western Massachusetts to co-pastor a parish in 1993 and my husband died there in 1997. In 1999 I was appointed to the United Methodist Parish of Middleboro where I have been for seven years.

My major pastoral gifts are in preaching, working relationally with my people in the churches, and in providing visionary leadership in a World Church which is rapidly changing. I have tried to keep up with cutting edge happenings in the church through attendance at conferences (the most recent being the Asuza Street Centennial of 30,000 persons) and in wide reading. I am committed to helping laypersons to use their God-given gifts in service both in the local church and in the community.

I have two children, both of whom have also studied at BU and have gone on to do MBA's. Karin Indira is Global Marketing Director for a large Indian conglomerate and lives in Charlestown . In September, she will marry Dr. Carl Simon Shelley, a Mass General research scientist and adjunct Harvard professor. Roger Jai works for the Consulting firm of Accenture and he and his wife, Lizette, reside in San Francisco . Lizette is an Occupational Therapist. We are a very close-knit family, proud of our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural background.

I have been very much involved with the Walk to Emmaus program since 1984 and have recently served on the Chrysalis Board of Directors. The Alpha Course is very dear to my heart; I have visited the Alpha Church , Holy Trinity Brompton in England and served on the New England Alpha Board of Directors for some five years. I have also served on the Greater Plymouth Board of Habitat for Humanity.

I am even more excited about the Good News of Jesus than I was 57 years ago when I was first introduced to it. I look forward to joining you in living and in sharing that Good News in the days ahead.

Thelma

Philippians 3:13,14