Stickywrites

Yesterday Andrew & I said goodbye to our sending church, Park Cities Presbyterian Church, in Dallas.  We have so many friends and pastors we absolutely adore there and will miss it DEARLY – the fellowship, the teaching, the worship, the ministries.  So many people have helped us get to where we are now, and we felt so blessed by their presence in our lives this last year as we went through this missions process of applying, itinerating, and preparing to go.
We were able to speak in the service yesterday for our official “commissioning”, in front of the entire congregation at 2 services.  What a privilege!  (A scary privilege, but after speaking earlier this year in front of thousands of members and many times these past several months, we’re getting accustomed!) Our parents came in, Andrew’s sister Bethany flew in from DC, and of course, our Dallasite brother & sister-in-law, Erin & Aaron, attended as well.   It was amazing to look out at a sea of faces and know these people are praying for us, supporting us, encouraging us, and are living as Christ’s body and extension of His kingdom in Dallas – and to the world.

It was a fun visit but the goodbyes were difficult and emotional.  We said our last face-to-face goodbyes to Andrew’s parents, Aaron & Erin, and Bethany. Please pray for us as we still reluctantly face two more weeks of these emotional and often stressful farewells. We know this is a necessary part of leaving, but it is turning out to be harder than we imagined.

Mom, Dad & Matt after ceremony

Did I say I was glad to be back in Dallas? Our “home” without a home so to speak? Well, when we returned from our 6-week stint away, we left again – this time to see Matt, my little brother, get inducted into his medical school in Houston! Wow! I am so proud of him and it was great to see him and my parents and sister (who also just finished taking the Texas Bar Exam and just graduated from Law School at UT – did I mention my siblings are smart?) who all attended and drove to Houston for the night. Houston reminds me much of Bangkok – hot, humid, boggly, and mosquitoey mostly ALL the time. I like to make up my own words (e.g. mosquitoey). However, the trip was a big one for us because I had to say my first big goodbye – to my brother. It does not yet seem real that I won’t get to see him or talk to him whenever I want. I was thankful to have the opportunity to get to see him before we left and before school gets really busy for him.
Matt’s Program
Matt walking down the aisle to receive his white coat

The same morning we left for Houston, we also welcomed Sgt. Mike Leeman back from Iraq after he has been there serving in the army for over a year! We are so proud of him and are excited for him to start Officer Candidate School in Georgia soon.
At the airport with Mike, parents, grandmother, Brian Steinbrueck & Andrew

First week of August we found ourselves at Penn Station in Baltimore, a far cry from NYC’s massive Penn Station we had departed from only 3 hrs before. We visited Camden Yards, the Bronsons’ favorite baseball stadium and home of their beloved Orioles before flying in Bethany’s Rodeo to Ocean City, Maryland for a week at the beach with the Bronsons, the Jacksons, and the Crowleys, both family friends of the Bronsons that go way back!
Orioles game at Camden yards
Bronson kids with friends at Orioles game

We had a few run-ins with some rather pesky, biting horseflies that seemed to love the scent & taste of OFF! repellant, but we managed to enjoy our hard life of being at the beach in a beautiful house a family friend allowed us so graciously to use. A family vacation was great for the Bronsons all to enjoy with the many changes that are taking place in all of our lives right now!

The Bronson kids (Andrew & me, Bethany, Erin & Aaron)
Steamed crabs Maryland-style (pre-mess)

Finally, we returned from 6 weeks of being gone from Dallas, (basically the majority of the hot summer) – we had been to St. Louis, Missouri; New York City, Amsterdam, Baltimore, and the East Coast of Maryland. We were rested from our week at the beach, but feeling rather weary of returning to once again living out of suitcases and scattered miscellaneous boxes, bags, duffels, you name it, and really missing a place we can call HOME. It has been a difficult and humbling thing to realize our need to ask people – family & friends – for help during this time. Obviously not only for financial support for our 2 years we are preparing for, but just for other means of support – a place to live, a place to store our stuff, help with packing & moving several times, getting all of our ducks in a row before leaving the country. I’ve had to realize again & again that I cannot do everything myself and that we have to swallow our pride many-a-time as we prepare to go and even over the next 2 years. But wait!! Suddenly Erin & Aaron are moving to DC for a new job! Which kind of foils our plan to live with them til we leave in September. However, not to worry – Brian & Katherine Steinbrueck to the rescue! Our Vanderbilt friends move to Dallas for a new job while we are gone in New York and alas! they have an extra bedroom for us. They are so kind to host us for a few weeks before we leave again to see my parents & the Rogers family at the Texas coast for the last time. So today we moved yet again – out of Erin & Aaron’s house, and into Brian & Katherine’s house. Andrew & Brian are currently out buying a bed for us to sleep in!

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Holland) after a very generous friend offered the trip to me for virtually free travel costs!! Amazing! Chris and Tang Dalo are former co-workers of Andrew’s from his 2 years in Bangkok and now live in Connecticut. We loved travelling together and just had a blast seeing the sights, eating Indonesian food, traversing the city by foot & tram occasionally, and seeing President Bush protests.
If any of you have ever seen this beautiful canal city, it is well worth the trip. The city is gorgeous, formed by rings and rings and more rings of circular streets & circular canals, one after the other after the other. Walking is the preferred mode of transportation, but we soon learned that crossing the street can be a hazardous situation as you check left and right several times for: Trams (innavigable from their tracks, so better watch out), Haphazardly driven bikes (don’t suddenly dart out in the road or you may lose a limb), Buses (narrow streets don’t allow for much room), and of course, Cars, Pedestrians, and Things-Left-Behind-By-People-Not-Cleaning-Up-After-their-Pets.

A bike parking garage!

Tang in a wooden Holland-ish clog

We had a fabulous time, though, and visited the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt’s House, the Anne Frank Huis, (where she and her family hid for 2 years before being taken to concentration camps), the Heineken Brewery, and a Canal Tour. We also came across a few sights that probably could not be seen anywhere but Amsterdam, including a public urinal and a street performer making bird chirping sounds (for money.)

Chris using a blatantly public urinal (we didn’t think he was using it, it was supposed to be a photo op, but oh well)

Tang and I in the Museum Park square between Rijksmuseum & Van Gogh

One of the many canals circling the city center

Heineken Brewery (one of our favorite experiences!)

In July, we ventured to New York City for MTW Pre-field Training. We were paired with a Korean-American church, Living Faith Community Church in Flushing, Queens, near the Mets’ stadium and where the US Open takes place. The churhc is in a neighborhood with pretty walk-up houses, and hydrangeas abound!

Our ministry with the church was mainly advertising for their Vacation Bible School in August, but we spent most of our time fellowshipping with them and taking part in Sunday worship services by giving our testimonies and giving the Children’s Gospel presentations. The area of Flushing is a dense area of mostly Korean and Chinese. In fact, most of the businesses in the area (including our daily staples of Starbucks & Dunkin Donuts) had Chines & Korean characters on their signs. There’s way more foreign languages spoken and seen in Flushing than English!

We were excited to be living in an Eastern European community in Sunnyside, Queens, and going to our daily MTW classes/lectures in Long Island City, Queens, which were both closer to Manhattan midtown. We found ourselves excited to live in a new area of NYC, because we both knew Manhattan well and have spent much time there previously. Queens is probably the most diverse place on Earth! It is said that more than 160 languages are spoken and over 150 nationalities found there. Riding our 7 train every day we mostly saw Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, Indian, and many other cultures, so it was refreshing to be in such a diverse borough. I could not have fathomed the enormity of Queens before living there…in my mind NYC to me was Manhattan, so Queens was venturing into a world unknown! Queens is cheaper than Manhattan too – we found many ethnic restuarants that we frequented – mostly Thai, Lebanese, Turkish, and Japanese.

Our classes every afternoon centered on many facets of missionary strategy and living: Language learning acquisition, church-planting philosophies, evangelism, and cultural textualization of planting churches and starting ministries. Our last week in New York we found ourselves procrastinating just like the good ole days at Vanderbilt….we finished all our final assignments in the last 2 days of the month. We scrambled to see and visit with all our friends in the city, and loved the last bit of time we were able to spend with them. We celebrated our last night by kareoking with some of our Thai friends and Andrew’s former co-workers from Bangkok – can’t wait for all those kareoking opportunities in Thailand!!

The two other “Asia-bound” missionaries serving at LFCC, Matt Gillingham & Mary Bell, as well as friends John & Sue Burch, MTW staff.

Flowers in Flushing, near our church, Living Faith Community Church

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