Bridges Vision 09 Conference

All three of us traveled to San Diego for the Bridges International Vision 09 conference, December 27 - January 1.
It was Myla's first airplane ride... she was pretty good! Here she is, waiting for me to check us in... :)



Here's a picture of a group of us out on the town... the girl, Charlotte (from Hong Kong), who took the picture is hilarious. Her caption on facebook where she posted this picture is "Andrew is so sunshine!"


One of my favorite parts of the week was sitting in the back of the meeting room, looking at the hundreds of international students from all over the world, and watching them hear the gospel, learn about Jesus, and be challenged to take the next step in their spiritual journey.
This particular day, I got to listen to student testimonies, and my favorite was this girl's testimony. She is from a VERY closed Middle Eastern country. She told everyone there that a year ago, in her home country, her taxi driver gave her a Bible. "I was so afraid!" she said about receiving the Bible. Here she stood, a year later, a college student in America, telling a group of college students that God changed her life. She said meeting Christians with Bridges really helped her grow. She told us, "I don't know if God will call me back to my [my home country]. If He does, I'll go. But I might be killed." WOW. A sweet day to just watch the Body of Christ and be amazed at how big our God is. This is a picture of her, giving her testimony.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!
Love,
Andrew, Tricia, and Myla (4 months)

Thai Christmas in Denton

We couldn't resist another Thai Christmas, so we invited some Thai friends over to our house to celebrate Christmas! It was great... so fun to be with Thais and remember that we really did live in Thailand.

The first group picture (some came late) before I hacked in to the turkey. Ellen (to the left of Tricia) is a student at UNT in Denton and just loves Thais. She has a great relationship with a group of them and that's why we were able to invite them over for Christmas dinner. David (front right) was on our Stint team in Thailand and he was in town for the party.

We sat in our living room to eat dinner and then had our White Elephant gift exchange.

See the chicken on the left? When you press it's wing, it walked around and lit up and sang a song. It was the most coveted gift! It got stolen until it was "dead." Who would have thought?

So sad to let her chicken go!

Our last activity was reading a compilation of the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke. We got people to be actors to act out the story as we read it. It was a really funny way for them to hear the Christmas story, but we got to explain why it's so special to us at the end.

Plaa (on the couch) was Mary. She was not into it at the beginning. Kysang (standing) is the angel, telling Mary she is going to have a baby.

"Elizabeth" is holding the chicken as John in her womb. You should have seen her act out when it was actually birthed. Hilarious!

Narm (standing) is a shepherd. She's holding a cane of M&M's as her shepherd's staff. Sitting on the couch is Pat playing Joseph.

May is a wiseman pointing at Mary on the couch holding baby Jesus (the chicken) wrapped in swaddling cloths (Plaa's scarf).

At the end of the night, we took a picture of everyone with their gifts. So fun!

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Cross 09

November 9th - 11th was the Cross 09 event for Campus Crusade for Christ movements all over the United States. Since our staff team is an ESM (Ethnic Student Ministry) team, we got to host other staff who wanted to participate in cross-cultural ministry! Some staff from the University of Texas in Austin and the Regional Office came to do ministry with our team.

Andrew and I are still raising support full time, so we are not able to be on campus right now. BUT, we got special permission to participate in Cross 09! It was great for us to have some renewed vision. We are spending our time only meeting new people, sharing our vision with them, and asking them to join our team, and this is difficult work for us. It can be hard for me (Tricia) to remember that God is the great Provider, and that He is sovereign over the timing of our support-raising. But I was super-encouraged to be around other staff and to get to interact with students.

The highlight for me (Tricia) was getting to visit the Destino movement at UNT here in Denton. Erin, our team leader, has been meeting with a group of Latino-American students who are interested in growing spiritually. Recently they told her they aren't good at reading the Bible and want to understand better how to understand scripture. So she is spending Tuesday nights with them, telling them about how the entire Bible is the story of the Creation, Fall, and Redemption of all created things, and how it all points to Jesus as the Redeemer. During Cross 09, though, the Destino group wanted to learn about evangelism, so Erin asked me if I would come lead the workshop. Of course I would! I love talking about evangelism and doing evangelism training. Here are some pictures from the Destino night:

We started out at Olivia's house and her 3 other friends and our group of 8 staff all ate dinner together

Then we headed to UNT and Erin introduced our time together

Some students and staff in the audience

On the right is Daniella, a student who is really interested in becoming a Christian since the evangelism workshop!

You can see the diagram in the background. Another staff friend taught it to me, so I passed it along when I taught it to the students. It explains how the invitation to be in a relationship with Jesus is more like a marriage covenant than a business contract.

Back in Business

So much has happened since we left Thailand and moved to Denton, TX. Here are a few updates...

We bought our first house!

I made it through the Texas summer in my last 3 months of pregnancy.
This was taken the night before Myla was born on a date to the Square in Denton.

We prepared our house for the arrival of our daughter, Myla.

Myla Abigail Dealy is here! Born on August 19th, 2009, 21 inches long, 7 pounds 11 ounces.

We have been assigned to the Dallas Metro Ethnic Student Ministry (ESM) team. We'll be raising financial support full time until we've reached 100%, but after that we will be doing a lot of work with international students on many campuses in the Dallas area. (UNT is 10 minutes away, so we'll get to know lots of international students there!)

Our Apartment

I haven't posted in months! I took these pictures a while ago and forgot to put them on.

If you're wondering what the inside of our apartment looks like, here it is!

This door is our front door. So the door and big window are in front behind the TV. The short cabinet to the left is the shoe cupboard b/c Thais keep their shoes in a cupboard by the door, they don't wear them in the house.

This is what you see from the front door... the living/kitchen room, separated by a classy pleather couch...

A better view of the indoor kitchen... that door leads to the outdoor kitchen (sink, stove, and washing machine outside).

Door to the outside kitchen (and to our Thai neighbor's outside kitchen)...

Stove/washing machine. Emily lives right over that wall behind the washing machine!

This is the "ant cupboard." People keep their food in here so ants don't get in the food... and the ants stay away because of those purple bowls at the bottom. The bowls are filled with water and ants can't swim! We had terrible ants in Chiang Mai, but since we're the first to live in our apartment it isn't so bad yet. We have more spiders than anything else.

Close up of the "moat" bowl...


Upstairs there are two bedrooms that each have a bathroom attached. These bathrooms have a shower, toilet, and sink all in about a 15-square foot room. We have one "dry" bathroom in our bedroom and the "wet" bathroom in the office room.

So here's the office...


Leading to the wet bathroom...


Our hot water heater! I couldn't get a good shot, but that shower head points directly down to the toilet.

I guess I forgot to take pictures of the bedroom... maybe I'll get some soon.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving Party was a huge success! There were about 40 people there and 7 different nationalities represented! So many of our non-Christian friends came and it was really special to get to tell them why we are thankful.

Here's our team with Trina Turkey...

We put in a DVD of a football game so it was just like real Thanksgiving...


The food! But no turkey. Just to the right of the sweet potatoes were 6 grilled chickens as a substitute.
Before:

And after!
The desserts got their own counter because there were so many!

We passed the mic around to share in our Thanksgiving tradition (started last year in Thailand!) of giving thanks for whatever you want. This was our chance to tell students we really are thankful because we believe God provides all good things. Lots of students participated.


The cafe was so full, a group of students sat outside to eat. No one wanted to use the Thanksgiving napkins because they were "too pretty" -- they wanted to take them home as souvenirs.