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Melody joins the list from Kingston where she works full time at Queen's University for the Psychology Department as the Undergraduate Assistant http://www.queensu.ca/. A Canadian, she grew up in Stratford, Ontario where her ancestors pioneered and which is the home of the world famous Stratford Shakespearean Theatre http://www.stratford-festival.on.ca/. She is a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University (BA in Psychology & Sociology, 1975) http://www.wlu.ca/ and Queen's University (Certificate of Competence in French (Intermediate), 1987 and a B.Ed. Primary-Junior with French Second-Language Qualifications, 1991). She co-authored six publications (under her maiden name of Ackersviller) in the area of traffic safety research when she worked as a research assistant at Queen's University from 1977-82. Raised in an evangelical tradition, it was when she was preregistered into a Masters of Divinity at WLU that a fellow IVCF member recommended The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. As it addressed presuppositions which was to be her intended line of inquiry in the MDiv program, she withdrew and bought an airline ticket to Switzerland instead. An intense period of study followed in 1976 at Chalet Gentianna where her host family was Debbie & Udo Middelman. As she said to Dr. Schaeffer after chapel Service one Sunday morning in Huemoz, "I'd like to thank you for saving me two years of intensive study trying to understand where my university education had been wrong". Married to filmmaker Fernando Monte in 1981, they live a life of quiet dedication to the art of non-commercial filmmaking as an expression of belief, philosophy and art. Currently Fernando has 12 feature film projects (4 trilogies) that he is working on and Melody continues to cohabit with movie cameras, editing equipment, still cameras, video... well you get the idea. It is a home of two cultures & languages (he immigrated as a teenager from the rich Azorean culture that was under Salazar's Portuguese dicatatorship) where friends, good conversation & laughter are welcomed. Both of them are completely devoted to their dog, Artaud (named after the French creater of the "Theatre of the Absurd" 1896-1948) and amused by their bird Mikis (named for the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis 1919-present). She currently attends St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Kingston. Her personal motto is "It's better to listen in order to understand, than to listen in order to reply". You may contact her by writing to cworkers@yahoogroups.com.
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