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Reverend Laura Crites, the Associate Pastor at First United Methodist
Church in DeKalb, is a Commissioned Elder in the Northern Illinois
Conference. She is a Master of Divinity graduate of Garrett-Evangelical
Theological Seminary. A native of Carbondale, IL, she has lived in
Elburn for the past 13 years with her husband, David and her two
daughters, Christine (15) and Michelle (12).
Pastor Laura has served the congregations of Western Springs and
Woodridge in Northern Illinois and the two-point charge of Woodland and
Crescent City in the Illinois-Great Rivers Conference. She is interested
in ecumenical and interfaith efforts and is an active alumnus of the
Jewish-Christian Dialogue consortium through Sacred Heart University
in Hartford, CT. She has lived in the Philippines where she attended her
first year of college at Ateneo de Manila University, and has been
involved with the Lithuania Initiative through the General Board
of Global Ministries on site at the United Methodist Church in Taurage,
Lithuania.
Her passion for pastoral care, teaching and preaching has developed
naturally over the years. Her work as a mental health counselor (with a
degree in Psychology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale),
teaching English and Sociology at SIU-C for the Achieve Program (an
academic support program for learning disabled college students), and
her love of story-telling have provided a helpful backdrop for the
fulfillment of her calling as a minister in the United Methodist Church.
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