Users/RichLindvall

The Lindvalls

Davis, 1987-1994

Hi! I'm Rich Lindvall and our family lived in Davis from 1987 to 1994. Before moving to Davis, we worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators for eight years: Rich in Colombia and Papua New Guinea and Kristy in Malaysia. Our first house in Davis was at 630 Anderson Road, a rental owned by the Mrak family. We soon purchased a house of our own in East Davis at 2429 Temple Drive. Some great years for sure. Our son Micah, then later Ruthie and Karis were born up at Woodland Memorial Hospital. Sweet memories of walking down to Slide Hill Park or over to Birch Lane School with our kids.

Internationals, Hikes, Picnic Day!

We did a lot of reaching-out to international students over the years. Many great meals/English classes/seminars with friends at the International House. What a great place with so many ways of taking part in welcoming "the world on our doorstep"! We also enjoyed long walks along Putah Creek, apparently the inspiration for Tom Fogerty's (Creedence Clearwater Revival) song "Green River." One of our favorite annual events was Picnic Day and in particular the Picnic Day Battle of the Bands. Such an incredible venue—there on the grassy banks overlooking Putah Creek. Our favorite was the Stanford Band (sorry Aggie Band) with their usually hilarious drum major. We understand that in 2007 our own Oregon State University band even took part!

A Tale of Two Churches...

For five years we were members at Grace Valley Christian Center. As part of Gerrit Buddingh's "cell group" we became good friends with Clarks, Grensteds, Steven Smiths, Bonettis, Mike Moroskis, Bassos, Lischeskes, Johnsons, Spencers, Hashagens. Others we remember are the Spartzes, Chapmans, Morejohns, Burtons, Manderfields, Sorbellos, Bimsons, Peter Droubays, Merkels, Trotters, Dyers, Gianninis, Farvers, Jackuras, Pinas, Roths, Daniel Washabaughs, Robys, Thompsons, Ron Gulys, Clumpners, and of course Pastor Mathew and Gladys. When we first began attending Grace Valley we felt as though we'd "died and gone to heaven." We experienced an amazing sense of belonging to a life-long group of committed believers. It was only after we began inquiring about the inner group known as "flock" that we became concerned about the extent of control the leadership exerted over people. In a series of "progressive revelation" one-on-one meetings with the leadership, we were gradually brought to an understanding as to what joining "flock" entailed. As it was finally explained to us, if we were in "flock" every area of our lives would be "on the table" for the leadership to touch. And the clinching question: "Do you trust God enough to allow Him to direct you through us?" Yikes! We understand the Biblical concept of discipleship, but this was something beyond that! We also were becoming more aware of a pattern of public humiliation of members who were "out of sync" with the leadership. In 1992 we left GVCC over our concerns related to Spiritual abuse. To this day we continue to be shunned by our friends there. (A number of friends who once shunned us have since left GVCC and are now shunned themselves.) We found new friends at University Covenant Church, especially the Hunts, Sorbellos, VanZanten/De Ropps, Houcks. Thanks, guys, you were lifesavers for us! UCC was truly a place of refuge and healing for our family. (For more on this chapter of our lives check out the Recovering From Spiritual Abuse page!)

On to Oregon!

We moved to Oregon in 1994 and are currently living out in the country near Corvallis. We continue to reach out to international students, now at Oregon State University, home of the mighty Beavers. :-)

Current Family News

Kristy and I now have five children: Micah, Ruthie, Karis, Marnie, & Ellis. In June 2007 Micah married Olisa. On August 3rd Caitlin Lilian was born! She's a sweetie!!! And what a smile! God is good--all the time! If you ever feel like a foreigner in the land, remember that we are not home yet! And we know the best is yet to come! Thank you, Jesus!

May the Lord bless you!

Rich (& for Kristy, Micah & Olisa, Ruthie, Karis, Marnie & Ellis)

<lindvall AT casco DOT net>

P.S. I'm in the process of creating the Linn Benton Christian Home Education Wiki and also one for Corvallis and another for Philomath, Oregon. Feel free to visit!

RichLindvall's Statistics

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2007-07-21 12:56:40   If you want to you can go to wikispot and create a wiki for Corvallis. Let me know if you need any help. The process is free and hopefully simple. —JasonAller

2007-07-21 19:40:26   Indeed JA speaks the truth —StevenDaubert

2007-07-22 20:04:50   I undeleted the redirect, which should solve the problem. Those comments of his were added before userpages went into users, hence the reason why the links didn't go to where his userpage should be now. I made a mistake and didn't check incoming links before deleting the redirect. —WilliamLewis

2007-07-27 08:59:32   Hey Rich - Yeah I was here when W came to visit. A few of the other volunteers met him and got pictures with him wearing a Peace Corps hat. How did you get into working for SIL?

—KenjiYamada

2007-08-21 01:08:41   Albania is not so bad now. There are cars and nobody is starving. The government is massively corrupt and civic values are pretty weak, but there are people working on that. —KenjiYamada

2007-08-22 14:04:13   Thanks for your nice comment, Rich. —rkong

2007-10-24 19:34:44   The photo alignment trick used to be the only way to align a photo a few years ago on the wiki. Sometimes those old workarounds come in handy. :) It's still always better if there's a local photo uploaded, as that means the photo is under Creative Commons and can be used by other people and wikis... but you'd need to be the photographer (or have the photographer's or image owner's permission) to do so. Nice work slowly and steadily documenting that little corner of Davis. —JabberWokky

2007-10-30 08:18:35   Thanks for fixing my typos, the cats really appreciate it. —FeralFeline

2007-10-30 08:57:45   Hi Rich, thanks for sharing your experience with Grace Valley above. That sounds pretty scary. Can you add some text or links that would make Recovering From Spiritual Abuse centered more around Davis? Maybe by linking your userpage or others on the wiki detailing abuse, churches in general, etc.? —CraigBrozinsky

2007-11-01 10:11:08   Hah, well, there's still a lot more of it that I couldn't get photos of because it was closed off. During the late fall, they are only open on weekends, and I happened to be there on a weekday when most of the stuff was closed. Luckily I live just down the street, so someday in the near future I'll get more in depth with it, take some more photos. —MaryLieth

2007-11-02 01:44:17   Wow! Maybe you should consider writing something on the Santa's Village page about what you remember, even if it's just a description of what it was or some little anecdote. Most people I've talked around my age don't know of it (or know only by the highway 17 sign). The Scwiki is sorely missing a lot of historical information, due in part to the fact that there is just so much that has happened here —MaryLieth

2007-11-03 09:45:22   My wife (getting her doctorate here at Penn State) is a research chemist, and we both like small towns in non-freezing climates. I'm a business owner and can work anywhere. If you list the small towns with research universities below the heavy snow line, Davis is on the short list for us to return and settle into. Add the proximity to large cities with good arts and theater, and it is quite possible we'll be returning. Of course, life is delightfully unexpected, so who knows... —JabberWokky

2007-11-05 21:13:28   Check out this article. Maybe you can use in on recoveringfromspiritualabuse? —JasonAller

2007-11-24 09:39:53   if you want to watch some encouraging videos, watch this or this. Make sure you don't forget about genocidal wars for empire in your quest to escape from spiritual abuse. —PxlAted

2007-12-03 13:00:57   Re: the seed stub... the image used in the DavisWiki is from me... feel free to copy it. Basically, just create an entry named "Seed" on your wiki, and then you can use [[Include(Seed)]] to add it. Check out the Seed entry here for an example to work from. —JabberWokky

2008-05-14 19:13:54   Next time you edit a page, try *not* to remove my comments, especially if they haven't been responded to... —StevenDaubert

No worries, I figured this was the case. The [[comments]] box only adds the box for comments, you could just put a ------- which should turn into a line, and have the comments below that! Have a great night! —StevenDaubert

2008-05-19 14:52:08   Hello Rich and Family, Thanks for the picture posted. It is good to see such manifold blessings in your life. We are living in Winters and attending The Father's House in Vacaville. Much healing since we left and now moving on in Christ. Our son Nate and his wife Melissa attend with us and Toby and Rebekah were married in 1999.They are at the Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastor's College in Maryland with a vision to plant a church in SF. Please pray him and his family as they prepare over the next year for this launch. Looking forward to hearing more from you by e-mail or wiki. God bless you all, Ron and Sue Piña <rpcolada AT hotmail DOT com> —ronpina

2008-07-01 14:04:59   Hey, Rich... the seed icon is here. I had a couple variations on it when I made it, and I can see if I can dig them up for you, but you're welcome to use that one without any credit (i.e., as the original artist, I give it to you freely). —JabberWokky

2008-07-20 12:15:43   in response to "2008-05-19 14:52:08 Hello Rich and Family, Thanks for the picture posted. It is good to see such manifold blessings in your life. We are living in Winters and attending The Father's House in Vacaville. Much healing since we left and now moving on in Christ. Our son Nate and his wife Melissa attend with us and Toby and Rebekah were married in 1999.They are at the Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastor's College in Maryland with a vision to plant a church in SF. Please pray him and his family as they prepare over the next year for this launch. Looking forward to hearing more from you by e-mail or wiki. God bless you all, Ron and Sue Piña <rpcolada AT hotmail DOT com> —ronpina" - I must caution you, and unfrotunately the pattern seems to be following this family to some extent. You mentioned your involvement in a church that was following shepherding or authoritarian abuse. And someone (shown above) commented that her daughter wqas now married to a pastor's college candidate with Sovereign Grace Ministries. I wish it were not true, but Sovereign Grace Ministries is guilty of EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS you former church was that you left! (and sounds like this woman also attended) Please warn her and her daughter. If you goggle SGM and cult, or shepherding you will find lots of info on the movement and its history, change to calvinism suddenly, etc. Change in leadership, deceptive practices, etc etc. Just oculd not read that post without responding. I fear for her family if they are involved in SGM in any way, esp in leadership. GOd bless. Check out sgmrefuge.com and sgmsurvivors.com for more stories of spiritual abuse similar to your own. God be glorified. —Concerned

2009-05-11 08:15:28   Hey Rich, could you add an intro and some links to provide context to the essays you've been posting? Some of them are a bit puzzling if you just come across them, and most are "dead ends", with no link to get back to related entries. I added an intro to ["A divine indictment of abusive leadership, and a divine promise of restoration for the abused"], but ran into the additional problem that I wasn't exactly sure the context of the entry myself. Basically, I'm thinking that an introduction to provide people with enough information to understand what they are reading and links to read more would be really helpful on those entries. (I know when I first started reading them, I was stumped as to the context, and am not sure I fully understand their context even now). —JabberWokky

2009-06-16 12:56:10   Thanks for deleting the list of names from the "recovering" page. I heard my name was on there and it bothers me that someone would put it up. I guess its like "outing" someone without their consent. It is my story to tell. I still dont' understand why you created the page for the merkels though. He's not a public figure and my guess is he doesn't know all of this info is published on the web about him. You are very involved and I recognize your sincerity, but don't assume others share your zeal about connecting themselves publicly to this church. Let them create their own pages and share their stories. —lddavis