Presbyterians Have New Pastor

CAPE MAY- A world traveling minister from the Midwest has settled in Cape May after a busy early career that included teaching and preaching on three distant continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. 
Her travels also produced a husband, who is a professor at Villanova University, and their twin sons, currently 16 years old.
The 57- year-old Rev. Dr. Nicole Wilkinson Duran is a product of Steubenville, Ohio. She arrived in Cape May in November to begin her new duties as pastor of the historic First Presbyterian Church, 500 Hughes St.
It started off smoothly for her and her new congregation right through Christmas. Then came the Blizzard of 2018, which blew mightily in early January, bringing 18 inches of steady snow and strong winds to go along with it. 
About the only way to get to church on that Sunday morning was by dog sled, but even the canines were barking in protest.
To avoid falls and possible broken bones on the slippery sidewalks and roadways, the church canceled service Jan. 7.
The pastor was shocked by the size of the snowfall. “I never expected it to snow this much in Cape May,” she said as she looked at the piles of white outside the window. 
Duran and her family are no newcomers to Cape May; they having vacationed in the summer when the beach and the ocean are among its main attractions and thoughts of winter belong in Alaska and the North Pole.
The pastor is an excellent swimmer and it is coincidental that the Atlantic Ocean is a block or so from the church at Hughes and Decatur streets which chose her to be its spiritual leader.                              
Long before she discovered Cape May, Duran was bringing her Christianity to other nations and continents via teaching and preaching in Thailand for two years, South Africa for six months, and Turkey for a year and a half.
Two of the biggest moments of her life occurred at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. She not only was awarded a doctorate degree in the New Testament there, but she received a bonus when she met fellow student Metin Duran, a native of Turkey who was to become her husband in a post-graduate marriage in Ohio. Their marriage has produced twins Nazim and Ahmet.
Eventually their paths led to the Philadelphia area where Metin was accepted on the Villanova faculty and his wife served as pastor of churches there as well as in other religious-oriented positions.
Given her international background, Nicole by her very presence will be bringing some of that diversified flavor to a community whose history is about all-American as “The Stars And Stripes Forever.”
Her plan is to encourage and bring more people into the church and to hold Christian outreach programs to accomplish that goal.
Barring huge snowstorms that might interfere, Duran is optimistic that with her strokes, and those of others, everything will go swimmingly well in her new assignment.