A single phone call nearly 20 years ago turned Jenni Whitford’s whole world upside down.
Jenni and her young family had only just returned from vacation when her husband’s workplace called.
“I came home from a session meeting and got a call that my husband, Ken, had collapsed,” recalled Jenni, who was then serving as a three-quarter-time Christian educator in her home church, First Presbyterian in Jackson, Michigan.
When they arrived at the hospital, Jenni and her two children, ages 9 and 12, learned that 36-year-old Ken Ellis — a dedicated husband and father — had died of an aortic aneurysm.
If tears are a gift of the Spirit, then the Rev. Dr. Judi McMillan has been blessed.
Even if some of those tears have been other than joyful.
What began for the PC(USA) pastor 20 years ago with tears of happiness when she relocated from Nebraska to Michigan to accept a call as an associate minister at a large, non-Presbyterian church in a suburban university setting didn’t end as auspiciously as it had started.
