INTRODUCING: Spencer Lindsay
INTRODUCING is a blog series introducing you to some of the members of Redeemer. You will meet some of them through their fact file, their life story, or their faith journey.
Hello, I'm Spencer and I am married to the lovely Belle! We have 3 children, Winnie, Albert, and Leah and we have been attending Redeemer for a little over two years now, which is about the same amount of time we have lived in Colchester. I am American, and I am from a very beautiful state called New Hampshire. You'll find it on the northeast coast, north of New York City and just south of Canada. It was in New Hampshire where I first met Belle, where I was baptised, and where the first seeds of God's plan to move me over to the UK were sown (not in that order).
I grew up in the Methodist Church, it was the same church my mom had grown up in as well and most my moms side of the family attended this church. My dad also still works for this church today, as the director of music/organist. The Methodist conference in New England owns a handful of
summer camps that they run, and when I was a kid I attended one of these camps, called Wanakee (it is a native american name) from age 7 through age 18. Wanakee was a big part of my childhood, and a big part of my faith as well. It was the first place outside of church where I really got live with my faith on display, and it was the place where I learned to truly appreciate the feeling of God's presence in His creation. It was also the place where I was baptised when I was 19 years old.
I mentioned seeds of God's plan for me in the UK were first planted here as well, and that came at age 10, when I met my now brother-in-law Chris. Chris is Belle's eldest sibling, and he came over to the US and worked at Wanakee while he was on his summer holiday from University, and ended up being my camp counselor one year. I say that this was God planting seeds, because prior to this Chris had no connection to Wanakee, he had just worked with an agency that places students with camps, and by God's grace, he ended up at my camp.
Fast forwarding a bit, I then graduated High school in 2014, and I graduated a half year early so that I could join the Army. Once I'd finished my Army training I began attending a Christian University called Gordon College, where I would go on to get a Bachelors Degree in Kinesiology (movement science) and a minor in Sports Management.
It was after my first year at Gordon where I would go back to work at Wanakee over the summer, and met Belle. Belle and I dated long-distance throughout the rest of my time at school, seeing each other during school breaks and the holidays. We were then engaged in December of 2018 and originally due to get married July of 2020, which unfortunately did not happen due to the travel restrictions at the time. This was certainly a challenge, to put it mildly. When you do long-distance for 5 years and then have to put your wedding off of course that is difficult. But throughout this whole time we never stopped trusting the Lord. We felt we knew He intended us to be together, but that we just needed to trust His timing.
So we continued to wait, planning that once we got married we would file Belle's visa application to move over to the US. We were then married in July of 2021 and began pulling everything together to file the visa, which if you know anything about the US, this is perhaps the most arduous and bureaucratic system known to man. However during this time, we found out before Christmas that we were expecting! Amazing news of course, and in our heads it was so exciting that we were going to have ONE baby, because whoever would assume it could be more than one?
Well, the first ultrasound that Belle attended with her Mom (I was still living in the US at this point) where the nurse asked 'Do you have a history of twins in the family?' to which the answer was 'no', and her reply was 'well you do now'. I won't lie, finding out from 3000 miles away that I'm going to be a father of two instead of one, was a bit of a shock. I was of course very happy, but with all the visa admin/bureaucracy work that still needed to be done, I was now a bit nervous. Luckily Belle was over in February, and it was then that we felt God was actually calling us to be in the UK.
After significant worry and many hours of prayer, I landed a job in the city working in a very niche but exciting part of finance where I still work today. At first, Belle and I lived in a very small town called Kenley, which is in Surrey. But when our landlord decided to sell our flat, we began looking elsewhere and this is when we decided that we would move to Colchester. The transport links into the city were good, but we also wanted somewhere we could have a back garden and feel a bit more of a community, which we have certainly found at Redeemer.
Our time at Redeemer has been fantastic for both mine and Belle's faith. Seeing Belle get baptised last year is perhaps only behind the birth of our kids and our wedding as one of the happiest moments of my life. I have felt closer to the Lord here at Redeemer, and the community we have here is so special. I've been part of a handful of churches, and I have not felt community like this before, it is a testament to the Holy Spirit being very much alive within us.
Looking back on my journey to get to today, I can see God's hand active in it all. From the circumstances of how I met Belle, to the circumstances that landed us here in Colchester, even my job. It is an incredibly humbling thing to realize that I did not do this myself in almost any way, but at the same time it just makes me appreciate even more how blessed I have been.
Albert, Belle, Leah, Spencer & Winnie ;-)
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." — Proverbs 3:5
