Rosalie Konynenbelt (Class of 1969)
Rosalie, the youngest of seven children, grew up on a farm near Nobleford. From her youth she knew Jesus as her Lord and Saviour and God as her heavenly Father, with the Holy Spirit ever present in her life.
Rosalie attended Immanuel Christian School for Grades seven to nine, as there wasn't a high school at Immanuel yet. The summer after graduating Grade twelve from Noble Central School, she was part of a Summer Workshop in Mission team in Regina for the summer.
A month later she headed to Michigan to attend Calvin College where she acquired a Bachelor of Science degree with a math major. Computer science was just taking off in the 70s and caught her interest. At that time it was mainly programming and being a people-person she changed to an education path. During college, she participated in a program spending time with troubled teenage girls.
Rose’s first teaching position was at Red Deer Christian School in a combined Grades Three and Four classroom. While living in central Alberta, she became involved in Citizens for Public Justice, serving for a few years on the local and provincial boards. She joined a “CPJ” group that did weekly visits at a prison and also invested time in helping raise funds for a Christian counselling organization. As a member of First Red Deer Christian Reformed Church, Rose served on their first outreach committee and was a founding member of their daughter church, New Life Fellowship CRC.
In 1990, Rose took a one year leave of absence to teach with the Christian-sending organization, English Language Institute China. She fell in love with the Chinese people. This led to teaching English on teams in ShangDong, Beijing, GuangZhou and Tibet over the next decade plus. She especially enjoyed three summers training Tibetan teachers and a three-month intensive teaching program with a group of vice ministers in Beijing prior to the summer Olympic games there.
Throughout the 1990s, Rosalie was back in Alberta at times during which she taught Grades Nine and Five for two years at Immanuel Christian School and subbed in classrooms when on home leave for a semester. She also had a three year term teaching at Ponoka Christian School helping start the Kindergarten program that was combined with Grade One.
When she returned from China the summer of 2003, Gertie Heinen's cancer had returned and ICS asked her to teach Grade Six (just days before the school year started). That led to ten more years of teaching at ICES. Rosalie retired in 2013 but still spent a few years substitute teaching until Immanuel became a charter school.
Over the course of her career, Rosalie taught as a homeroom teacher Kindergarten through Grade Six and Grade Nine, along with a few Junior High subjects and one High School subject. While in China, she taught university courses, post-graduate, and teacher training classes and later led teams in private Kindergarten through Grade Twelve schools.
The variety of locations, age levels, students and colleagues Rosalie engaged with through the years has led to many sustained friendships, and Rosalie is quick to say that she is oh-so blessed.