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Caleb and Melba Voskamp are alumni of Veritas Press who now own and operate a publishing venture called The Keeping Company, where they specialize in heirloom quality books and keepsakes geared toward creating cherished family traditions. Discover how their unique approach to creating resources—from countdown spirals to children's books—celebrates Christian life's meaningful moments and encourages families to keep company with Christ.

The Voskamps share insights into their creative process and upcoming projects while reflecting on how their Veritas Press education continues to shape their professional and personal lives.

Want to explore their work? Visit https://thekeepingcompany.com/

Or, you may tap the links below to view specific books mentioned in this episode:

• God Made Only One You: https://thekeepingcompany.com/products/god-made-only-one-you-a-celebration-countdown-of-gods-gifts-blessings-and-creation-and-your-unique-and-wonderful-place-in-it
• Gratitude Journal: https://thekeepingcompany.com/products/gratitude-journal-gratitudes-and-beatitudes
• Christmas and Easter Devotional: https://thekeepingcompany.com/products/advent-lenten-devotionals-celebrating-christ-from-the-cradle-to-the-cross
• Children's Christmas Book: https://thekeepingcompany.com/products/the-light-gift-a-messiah-manger-storybook

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have people with us as guests that I am so excited about because they are former students of ours. Melba and Caleb Pearson. Excuse me. We got that wrong before. Melba Pearson was Pearson before she was married, but now she’s Voskamp. Guys, welcome.

Melba Voskamp:
Thank you. Thank you so much. We're so excited.

Marlin Detweiler:
It is so great to have you all here. Tell us a little bit about each of you. Tell us a little bit about your backgrounds, how you came to Veritas and where you went after Veritas.

Melba Voskamp:
So my family started homeschooling when – I'm the oldest, and my parents started homeschooling when I went into kindergarten. By the time I was ready to go into high school, my mom was pretty busy with my brothers, and they both had kind of special educational needs. She was looking for some sort of program that would give me a really great classical Christian education, something that I could do a little more independently on my own and have some interactions with other students and other teachers. I'm not entirely sure how she found Veritas, but she did.

Marlin Detweiler:
We are grateful for that!

Melba Voskamp:
I started Veritas in seventh grade and continued through my graduation from high school. I did all of my high school classes online exclusively with Veritas, and it was a fabulous experience. It's an experience I look back on with a great amount of enthusiasm. It was great. After that, I took a year off from academics and then I got my bachelor's in art history at Harvard.

Marlin Detweiler:
I recall you were our first Harvard student, which was exciting to me. And, of course, I had a chance to visit with you at Harvard briefly one day. And that was fun.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I remember that conversation that we had. It was great. Yeah. And then after my time at Harvard, I went on and I got my master's at NYU in art history museum studies. Shortly after that, I met Caleb, who I had originally met through Veritas. And now we live up in Canada and run our own business.

Marlin Detweiler:
Caleb, what's your background? How did you come about these relationships?

Caleb Voskamp:
So, yes. My story is a bit similar to Melba's in that my parents had started homeschooling as I was the oldest, when I entered kindergarten. My mom read up on Charlotte Mason Ambleside online, the whole nine yards. We started out with the original Veritas flash cards, the history cards. And then we also had the old cassette tape that sort of had the song singing through that and every week going to swimming lessons. We would pop that in, and you would sing through all.

Marlin Detweiler:
I don't want to do it today, but I'll bet if I started the song, you could sing it through with me.

Caleb Voskamp:
I know good chunks, but there are parts like, okay. I mean, sometimes I'll be humming in my head, and I'm like, okay, I'm getting the sound here, but I still find it helpful for hanging. Like, where in the timeline is that? And that gives the order of things. Absolutely.

So I guess that was chronologically in my life the first experiences with Veritas. I think I was about 12 or 13. I was in the second cohort with Veritas Online. It was still back in the WebEx days. I wasn't the first.

I know I was in the second batch of classes, and I had Mrs. Hensley. She was a great teacher. I loved Omnibus. So that was the start of that. I did not go all the way through. In Canada, to get into our version of colleges, universities, you only need six credits from high school. So I did that. Melba and I sort of lost touch.

Marlin Detweiler:
My understanding is that you all actually met having taken several classes together.

Melba Voskamp:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
So what the audience, our listeners don't know, is that Melba and I were talking a little bit before you got here, and here's what she said. I want to hear your version. So when I asked when did the romantic interest start? Her comment was, “Well, for Caleb, it was during the classes that we took together. But I was disinterested at that point.”

How do you respond to that, Caleb?

Caleb Voskamp:
Well, in hindsight, that was a pretty fair assessment. You keep growing through life. But I really thought the world of Melba. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was well-spoken, and I don't think she was really interested in boys. Well, not me as a boy.

So I sort of let that go, but I always had in the back of my mind, like, nobody really measured up to Melba. In third year, I had, well, actually, my friend was doing an exchange program in the UK, and they had a ridiculous three weeks off for spring break.

So we started a grand tour. We lined up ten cities and did it all in 21 days. I was just posting stuff on Instagram, and we got to Vienna. Being young, we were just doing the free tour guides, and the tour guide wasn't that great. The tour ended in Vienna in this courtyard with this beautiful old church, by far the oldest-looking thing we had seen all day.

He doesn't address it at all. He does not talk about it, mention it, or even know the name. I had no idea. He didn't seem to know anything. So I took a picture and posted it on Instagram, and Melba then messaged me and said, I've been there.

That was the start of reconnecting, and then grabbing coffee. The rest is history, starting dating.

Marlin Detweiler:
Over the "rest is history" kind of thing too quickly here. So I'm going to give you a chance to now push back, Melba. I'm not trying to cause a fight here, but I'm trying to play fair. So give you a chance. What was it that happened that caused her to determine, to decide that now she was interested in you, more than just a casual relationship?

Melba Voskamp:
Well, Caleb reached out. I was a junior in college, so it was my third year of university. He reached out and said, I'm going to be in Boston on business. I later found out that the business was kind of a... He did technically have a business meeting, but he scheduled the business meeting around me, not me around the business meeting, which is what I thought was going on.

Marlin Detweiler:
Any red-blooded young man would do that. Good work.

Melba Voskamp:
He said, hey, do you want to grab a coffee? Catch up? It's been a while. I said, sure. We ended up having a really delightful chat over coffee. We talked about books. We talked about Veritas, of course. From that very first conversation, it's funny that we're here today talking about books that we've written and published together because that was our first conversation outside of school—talking about our favorite books, our favorite children's books, our favorite young adult books. We probably spent 2.5 hours just talking about books and drinking coffee, and it was great.

Caleb Voskamp:
On our second or third day, we actually got a bunch of children's books, spread them out all over the floor in your dorm room, and read through them all.

Melba Voskamp:
We went to all the fun secondhand bookstores in Boston, bought children's books, and shared our favorites. From the beginning of our love story—well, from before that—our individual interest in books has been a big part of our relationship all the way through.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's common practice for someone like me to say to someone like Caleb, you did well, but I'm going to say that both of you did well.

Melba Voskamp:
Thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:
This is exciting. It's exciting to me to see that people met as part of our organization and classes. It's turned into your relationship personally and what you're doing together in the publishing world, which we'll talk about in just a moment. That's exciting.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah, well, thank you. We're sitting here because of you, too.

Marlin Detweiler:
So, what reconnected us—Veritas, me, and the two of you—was that you reached out and said, hey, we've got a book we'd like to send you. We'd like you to see it. We'd like you to know about it. Tell us about that book, and then tell us how you got to the point of that book becoming a reality and what you're doing from a publishing standpoint.

Melba Voskamp:
The book we sent you, the big one we wanted to introduce you to, is called God Made Only One You. It's a children's picture book, and we wrote it and dedicated it to our first child, born in July. It's the fourth book we've worked on together.

We started The Keeping Company, which is the company Caleb and I run together.

Marlin Detweiler:
For some of you listening who want to look at what you've done, The Keeping Company is what to Google.

Caleb Voskamp:
Yes, so thekeepingcompany.com—that's us. We're also on Amazon now, but we always prefer to serve people directly.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well clearly if people want to know about the organization you can learn more at your website there. Amazon I understand you buy books at Amazon, but you don't learn about the history of a company.

Melba Voskamp:
Yes. Yeah. So it originally started with kind of advent resources and Christmas resources, Christian family resources for celebrating the Holy Seasons. And Caleb started that actually when he was 14. So the whole time we were doing Veritas together, he was simultaneously creating products and running his business and all of that.

Caleb Voskamp:
The main one is the countdown to Christmas, a 25-day countdown. I later made it to also do birthdays, ten days. Why? Children were counting down from ten, and it’s a good number to countdown to a birthday from. So then we had been discussing how to add more meaning to that. What about a ten-day children's book? It can be used for birthdays or independently, a countdown of God's wonders and blessings culminating in the wonder that God made you, which is pretty spectacular.

There’s a Louie Giglio sermon series, Indescribable, and he talks about the vastness of the stars breathed into being. We also see in Genesis and Job that the breath in our lungs was breathed there by God. So we wanted to tie and bookend those together. We start with countless stars, then start our countdown and end with the wonder of God making only one you. To skip ahead a little.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah. So that's the premise of the book—this countdown from God breathing into existence the wonder of the stars. Then you count down through all of God's wonders and blessings to God breathing life into you as a unique person with a glorious purpose.

Caleb Voskamp:
Tying into the other countdown resources. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
So what are all the resources that you have created at this point? There are four books that have been published, the ones that you described, and a couple of others. Feel free to describe those, too. What other things have you done so far?

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah. So the main third resource we have is by Caleb, the countdown spiral. It's a wooden spiral, and you can use it to countdown to birthdays or anniversaries. You can use it to countdown the days of Advent to Christmas or the days of Lent to Easter. The adult book we wrote is actually a devotional designed to accompany this wreath. That book was born from my art historical background.

We were thinking, what’s a way to combine Caleb's interest and my skill set? So we created this devotional that features classical artwork from history with names of Jesus and daily devotionals to guide you through the seasons of Advent and Lent. We have the children's book, God Made Only One You, that also has the countdown element.

We have another Christmas children's book. That was our first book together. It’s a cute story about a little shepherd girl who helps people throughout her day. She’s headed to the hills to see her baby lamb but gets there too late for the birth. Later that night, angels appear and guide her and the shepherds to the manger, where she sees the birth of the King.

Just in the last couple of years, we expanded many resources to include a gratitude component. We have a gratitude collection. One book is geared towards adults or young adults. It’s a gratitude journal with daily devotionals and space to keep track of gifts and blessings. It reflects through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount.

So that's what we've done so far. We have other ideas in the works and hope to keep going.

Marlin Detweiler:
The need sometimes to be a little bit close to the vest about what you're doing next, because plans can change and you might set expectations, but you don't want to set until they're almost done. We deal with that in our side of the publishing world. But so let me ask some questions that might be a little bit less specific.

And then I'll ask you, to the extent that you're comfortable talking about, plans that are maybe for immediate. But if you, are you able. Well, try to be looking at yourself 30 years from now as it relates to this publishing. That sounds like a long time since you're not 30 yet, but I can assure you it goes faster than you realize.

Caleb Voskamp:
One surprising thing is that people reaching out, saying, “My parents bought this wreath, and now I’d like to buy one for my children.” That’s not exactly an answer to your question, but I’d like to see a lot more of that.

Tangentially, one of my favorite children's books is Peter Spear’s Noah’s Ark. As an adult, I love that book and can’t wait until our child is old enough to understand it. Peter Spear passed away a few years ago, but his works are still making an impact and are loved by all ages.

So I think in 30 years, I see people who grew up with it passing it down to their own children. Intergenerational is the goal, seeing it make that big of an impact. You would see that with Veritas Press, I would assume. That the children who grew up with the history cards are starting to use it with their own children. So I think that in 30 years or so that is what I’d hope to see more of.

Marlin Detweiler:
What is it about advent and anticipatory build-up that has captured your imagination?

Melba Voskamp:
I think one of the things that we think about a lot at the Keeping Company is the fact that, well, there are kind of two things. One is the idea that we as Christians are, in some ways, designed for celebration. We have this amazing gift of grace and redemption.

There are so many good things to celebrate. There are so many gifts that God has given us. There are so many places that celebration is highlighted in Scripture. As a Christian family, as a Christian couple raising children, or as Christian individuals, we should be savoring those moments of celebration.

Whether that's the celebration of Christ's birth or the celebration of Christ's resurrection, a celebration of a birthday or an anniversary, just those everyday life moments are so special. They can so easily pass us by. If you take the time to slow down and savor something, a great way to do that is counting down to it.

As a kid, if you have your calendar on your desk, you mark the days to the start of school, the end of school, spring break, or whatever. Counting down to something is a great way to take a moment, pause, and savor the anticipation of that celebration.

That makes the celebration all the sweeter. So that is something that as you said, has captured our imaginations. The name of the company, the Keeping Company, comes from the idea of keeping company with Christ every day. Whether that's through the anticipation of walking to the cradle or the cross with Christ, whether it's gratitude with a journal with the idea of keeping company with Christ every day in gratitude with this posture of giving thanks, or as a child reading books that point you back to Christ every day.

That's what we're all about: encouraging families and giving resources for people to be able to savor that celebration and keep company with Christ every day.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wonderful. So what are some of the things you're comfortable talking about that are in front of you, things you're wanting to create or considering?

Caleb Voskamp:
The gratitude journal we did fairly well. It was again through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. We want to do a follow-up that looks at the Psalms.

A theologian, I forget who, talks about how the Psalms go from orientation to chaos to reorientation. You see David turning back to the Lord. We want to focus on that. It's not always hunky-dory; there are hard days when it's hard to give thanks.

That’s one thing we’ve been working on. The other one, a bit further out, is more mainstream if you will. I want to do a children's story about a robotic vacuum cleaner that gets lost.

Marlin Detweiler:
A robotic vacuum cleaner?

Melba Voskamp:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
You can go in a lot of directions.

Caleb Voskamp:
So there's a little story that goes, that when you're young, you want to change the world, and then you get a little older and you want to change your country, and you get a little older, and you're like, well, maybe if I could just change my town. Then you get a little older and you're like, no, maybe I could just change my family. And then you get old and you're like, oh, maybe if I could just change myself. If I change myself, maybe I can change my family, and my family could change the town, and so on and so forth. So I think the gist of the story would be something along those lines.

The robotic vacuum cleaner wants to clean the world and sort of escapes and wanders off. The moral of the story, so to speak, would be that there's value in cleaning and doing well what's in front of you, even if it doesn't appear to necessarily be world-changing. I haven't figured out exactly how the end of the story ties together.

And I guess the business side of my mind goes, I think there's like 15 million people who have bought robotic vacuum cleaners, and I think a lot more people are going to buy them. People seem to humanize them. You see so many memes and so many little videos of people treating them like little humans.

So I think a lot of young families will start having robotic vacuum cleaners, and there'll be a market niche for a story that goes along with that. Now it's a little bit outside of our wheelhouse, just a little bit. But I think it can speak to doing well what's in front of you. And I think that's something we've been talking about toying with for half a year now.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I don't know about you guys, but one of the things that I've enjoyed most in the curriculum creation aspect of our business is that creative idea formation time. I don't do a lot of writing, but I'm involved in the shaping of things on the front end, and I really enjoy that. Sounds to me like you guys are enjoying that too.

Caleb Voskamp:
May I ask like, so how did the art cards come about? When did you originally come up with that? How did you turn that into curriculum, and how did that then turn into Omnibus? Like getting Gene Edward Veith in, like Douglas Wilson, how did you bring those on board to write some of those essays? How did that work out? It’s quite the story. I’m sorry we are getting off track, just curious.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's a very long story to take that path. Maybe what we need to do is have Laurie and I record a podcast on that. The short of it is for the history cards and then the Bible cards. We became familiar with the idea of classical Christian education when we read Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning in '92. Then we took the initiative to start a school in Orlando.

That school is still a wonderful going concern called the Geneva School. We haven't been involved with it for 30 years or more. With that, here we are starting a school very early on in the resurgence of an interest in classical Christian education. We saw the importance and value of a timeline approach from creation to present for history.

We also saw the value of the grammar of learning the scriptures, connecting to that. So the idea of those coming together and overlapping in parallel made a lot of sense. Students understanding that something that happened in the Bible didn't happen before recorded history, just because the Bible is older, or some other misconception that young children sometimes have, but to be able to place those things together.

And then it was just the idea of systematizing it in a way that we could build a regular school year for each. In this case, for history, five time periods. Bible, five portions of Scripture, three of them in the Old Testament, two in the new. Systematizing it made us determine how many weeks we were dealing with, how many events, thinking systematically, one event per week.

And so, as you know, the organization of it is kind of my niche. The content of it is kind of Laurie's niche. Those—the creative and the systematic—came together in what resulted. That's the short version of it.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah. It's funny that you say that about the creative and the systematic coming together because that's kind of why Caleb and I work well together. He's very much the creative powerhouse. He's going with all the ideas. I'm the one that tends to be a little more organized and systematic. Maybe I don't know if realistic is the right word. Maybe pessimistic is the right word. But it’s great.

Marlin Detweiler:
A healthy sense of pessimism is realism.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah, exactly. But you're absolutely right that sometimes in the production of things like the production or marketing or whatever, it can get really stressful and that's not, well, there is some hard logistics and stuff.

Marlin Detweiler:
Is it going to work?

Melba Voskamp:
Exactly. But the actual creatives, like when we're sitting down brainstorming ideas, bouncing ideas off of each other, that's when I think we have the most fun. That's when we really love what we do. I mean, that and seeing the final product and getting the email or the response from someone, that Instagram comment that says,”Wow, your work has been such a blessing, like it's blessed our family or it blessed me as a child and now as an adult, I'm coming back.”

Marlin Detweiler:
Gets you up in the morning, doesn't it?

Melba Voskamp:
Exactly. It's like the beginning, the creative stages. And then, at the end, seeing the impact. But yeah, bouncing ideas off each other and going through that creative phase is really fun.

Marlin Detweiler:
I have one last question, and I hope you can be quick on this because we're about out of time. But I really got to ask, can you help parents and students that might listen to this understand what they should expect and how they can benefit in the same way you all did from your education at Veritas? What would you offer them?

Melba Voskamp:
I would say easily, one of the strongest takeaways from my experience at Veritas was just a deep enjoyment and love of learning that has stuck with me through my entire life. It's really great because as an adult, running a business, being married to Caleb, doing this together every single day, that love of learning spurs so much of what we do. The creative process of brainstorming, trying to create something.

There are so many times when I think back to my high school days and I approach a business project or a project for our company creative project the same way I would have an Omnibus paper or a rhetoric speech. It's the same mechanics. And there are so many times during my week that I think back and I'm like, wow.

The skills that I learned through Veritas are still to this day, the skills that I'm using every day to do what I do. Those skills were taught, and I was able to practice them with just an immense sense of joy and appreciation for what I was learning and a thirst to always be learning more. So I think that it's definitely something you can look forward to.

Marlin Detweiler:
Oh, that's wonderful. Caleb, what would you add to that?

Caleb Voskamp:
My quick summary of the values Veritas Press provided was, especially in Omnibus, how everything is interconnected together. It's not a standalone silo; it all interconnects. The reading load was quite high, but it was good to read separate works together and have your brain connect things that you wouldn't otherwise.

That was the big value for me, and I think others would have similar experiences.

Marlin Detweiler:
I would echo that as a very important part of what we're trying to accomplish. We live in a world where most educational experiences are siloed. You take math class, you go across the hall to science class, and then you go to composition, and there is no connection. The whole idea of classical education in Omnibus, in particular, has been to build those bridges and to recognize the unified whole in the educational process because knowledge doesn't have compartments like that.

Melba Voskamp:
Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
Guys, thank you so much, Caleb and Melba. You guys are doing great. Keep up the good work. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Melba Voskamp:
Thank you for having us. This was so great. Thank you so much.

Marlin Detweiler:
Thank you again for joining us on another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of Classical Christian Education. We hope you'll join us next time.