When she was ordained before her home congregation near Artesian, S.D., the Reverend Ellen Larson Davidson knew — like many young ministers — that her first call would likely take her far from home. In Ellen's case, it took her farther than most.

Ellen was installed as minister at Fintray Kinellar Keithhall in Sept. 2007. About nine miles from Aberdeen, Scotland, the rural parish serves 234 members in four villages: Blackburn, Hatton of Fintray, Kinmuck and Keithhall.

"It has been wonderful getting back to the rural parish," says Ellen, who earned her master's of divinity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. "I find more similarities between the rural congregations in the Midwest and the Scottish villages than I do between them and large city churches."

Still, Ellen didn't always know she wanted to work in the church. At BVU, it was the late Dr. Laura Inglis, associate professor of philosophy and religion, who steered Ellen towards the ministry.

"When I was at a point when I wasn't sure I wanted to continue in social work, Laura looked at me and said, 'You'd make a great minister. The church really needs you,'" says Ellen. "It was heart breaking when Laura died just the week before I started seminary. She took the time to hear my voice in a world where not every Christian believes that women are called to be ministers."

Ellen graduated from BVU with a philosophy and religion major as well as a distributive major combining social work, sociology, communications and women's studies. She was a member of 10 campus organizations and was named philosophy and religion's senior of the year. She met her husband, Scotland native and fellow reverend Mark Davidson, while attending Union. Wanting to serve with him on the same side of the Atlantic, Ellen worked out a plan where she would be allowed to serve a Church of Scotland parish after being ordained by the Presbytery of South Dakota and completing a process of familiarization in Scotland under a senior minister.

As both the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Church of Scotland derive from the reformed tradition, Ellen finds differences between the two are often more cultural than theological.

"The Church of Scotland is the national church so every household is under the care of the parish minister no matter what their religion (or even if they have no faith)," says Ellen. "In the United States, a community has many churches, whereas over here people have family memories of the single church and a strong tie to it; it's their church and they feel that you are their minister even if you only see them once in a while."

"My congregation is both aging and youthful, a mixture of longtime residents who have been farmers and tradesmen and of new people moving for the North Sea oil industry or to get out of the city," says Ellen. "They are a perseverant bunch. They never give up on the ministry to their communities."

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