WINGHAM – What started as relief work to help the Wingham Protestant Reformed Church while it was without a pastor has turned into a permanent position.
In the fall of 2021, Rev. Daniel Holstege began assisting the local church every other weekend, while he too was between work.
Holstege was raised in Michigan on a produce and flower farm. The first-born son of a farmer always had thought he would follow in his father’s footsteps, however when he began to pursue his business degree he had a change of heart.
“Growing up in the church, my pastor told me several times that he thought I should consider being a pastor,” Holstege explained. “He must have seen something, but I didn’t think I wanted to be one. But after my first year of college, I sort of had a crisis of direction. I wasn’t really enjoying the business classes so that summer I sat down with my parents and they sort of pulled it out of me that I thought I might feel a call towards the ministry.”
He said he switched his degree, enrolled at Calvin College, went to seminary for four years, and never looked back.
After completing his studies, Holstege worked in a church in Michigan for five years and got married to his wife Leah, before he was called to go to the Philippines as a missionary where he lived with his family and worked overseas from 2016 to 2021.
During their time in the Philippines, they lived near Manila but got to experience alot of what the Southeast Asian country has to offer.
“When the pandemic began, everything just changed,” he recalled.
The family was scheduled to take furlough in 2020, but once the global COVID-19 pandemic was declared Holstege and his family were not able to travel out of the Philippines. Their furlough was delayed by seven months, until December 2020 when they were able to travel back to Michigan for six months, with the plan of returning to the Philippines. In the summer of 2021, their airline tickets were cancelled and Holstege said he was left with little work to keep him busy.
“We were sitting around waiting, I was doing a lot of research-type work and preparation for classes to teach, but eventually you kind of get the itch to be more useful,” he said.
In this time, Holstege learned that the only Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario was without a pastor and in need of help.
“I was asked by a church in Michigan if I was willing to come here to help. There were a couple other options I had – one was to go to Singapore, one was to go to Iowa – but this one appealed to me the most,” he said.
In the fall of 2021, Holstege began commuting to Wingham from Michigan every other week to help the local congregation.
“Then we developed a relationship and a love for the people here and the area and the Lord was using various circumstances in the Philippines and our churches to make it clear to me that He was leading me away from the mission field for now and back to a local church,” he said.
Last November, Holstege was offered a permanent position in Wingham. He took a few weeks to consider the offer and discuss it with family, before the Holstege family moved to Wingham on Dec. 29, 2021.
He said himself, his wife, and five children are all settling in nicely.
“My wife is from a small town in Wisconsin and she kind of likes the small town, rural setting,” Holstege said.
