Dec 03 2010
Turkey time with a Turk
(see pictures related to this post) There are so many things to be thankful. We had a great time especially remembering some of those things last week. We have four students over for thanksgiving: two from China, one from Turkey & one from India. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year that I do some of the cooking (The turkey and the stuffing – I’m proud of this…:-) ). This year we had a real treat. We were concerned because our Indian friend is a vegetarian and our Turkish friend doesn’t eat pork (usually sausage in the stuffing) so we asked our Indian friend to bring something that he enjoys eating in addition to the potatoes etc. We brought a wonderful vegetable curry with Indian Rice. It was very delicious, spicy but delicious. We will never forget this.
After a wonderful meal, we had everyone share something they are thankful for. It was neat hearing the student’s hearts. We learned about parents, friends here, opportunities. Our Turkish friend just got married in her country just before she came. Then my son took out the Risk board and we played a ruthless game of world domination…:-) One comment hit me. A student commented… “I feel like I am at home… eating dinner… playing games together… Oh I miss this.” (The jist of it…) Wow that was awesome.Here are some other praises for the week:
The thanksgiving party went very well. We had nearly 100 students (see all our November pictures). Every year we are concerned about food and every year God brings in more than enough through the faithful giving of people at Fielder Road. It is always the feeding of the 5000 personified. In fact we had enough to give trays to the Arlington night shelter. Liz McMurry as always did a terrific job organizing the dinner and the evening. Members of more that one Fielder Road Baptist Chruch small group did a wonderful job of making the students feel very much at home. Praise the Lord.- The pictures say it all about the Thanksgiving dinner at the Moores. Praise the Lord for his faithfulness.
It’s been a couple of weeks since our last message. A ton has happened in the mean time. I will jump directly to the praise and prayer reports. I hope this message finds all of you well.
The Fall festival at Christ Church Assembly of God was wonderful as 20 of us (Americans and international students) volunteered at this event. The students were truly amazed by it. One Chinese student was amazed that someone other than the government sponsored something like this for the community. He was touched. We have learned that in China volunteerism is in its infant stages and so this was a paradigm shifting activity for them.
Space weekend in Houston was probably our best yet. We took 50+ students and volunteers from UTA & SMU and we were hosted by our ISI team in Houston and Seabrook United Methodist Church. After visiting the space center, we were able to take pictures with an astronaut who spent more than a year up in the space station and then the students stayed with host families. I had the privledge of driving an Indian, two Russian, one Mexican and one Turkish students. They had a wonderful time! By the end of trip, there was sadness to leave their host families and I really felt like the people in our car were like family to us. God clearly spoke to them to show them his love for them.
The T4T discipleship group at TCU has started and we have met three times already (on Fridays). To see what God is going in the hearts of the different members of the group. It has been a real blessing. Further I am learning so much that can be applied to future groups.
Pray for TCU’s Thankgiving event hosted by McKinney Memorial Bible church also on the 20th as the students visit various homes.
Every year, Our small group at Fielder Road Baptist church works with ISI and the BSM at UTA to host an international student thanksgiving dinner the Saturday before Thanksgiving. This year was no exception. Nearly 100 students feasted on turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, potatoes, etc. It was a cornucopia of things to eat. they also were treated to the sounds of Greg Speed who we found had quite a broad repertoire of music for students to listen to while eating and chatting. This year we really worked hard on making the time conducive to relationship building and so it had more of a home/coffee house feel to it. It was a lot of fun.
On a sad note, one of our dear friends from our small group, Earl, passed away a couple of days before the dinner. It was very sudden and unexpected. We had gotten to know him well when he was in our care group and when we gave him rides to and from church. It was a very sad thing. Interestingly, his mother mentioned that one of the things that was so special to him was his church small group and that he was REALLY looking forward to this dinner. He even had a turkey waiting to be cooked for this event in the refrigerator when he passed away. This story really made us realize that we are not only serving the students we serve but also we serve those who serve the students. Thank you Lord for this somber, special reminder.
While Lisa and I were focused on the Thanksgiving Party for UTA international students with our church two others of our ministry teams hosted other “new” thanksgiving parties… Here’s what happened…
A lady from Iran who works in the int’l student office and brought her three daughters (soph at CC and two HS seniors) went on and on about how wonderful everything was and how much she and the students appreciated it. She called me the blessing man (I’ve been called lots of things over the years, but this was a first!) and said I would be blessed because of all that we did to make the students feel loved. We had lots of students from Pakistan and they really had a good time. I re-connected with several students I had met at the BSM retreat in Oct. and two of them lead different int’l student organizations on campus.
During part of the evening, I was talking to Ron Bunyard about the party, peoples, reaction, etc. and Geoff Carter, one of our small group leaders, came up to us and told us that there was a student who wanted to know how to become a Christian and he wanted us to come and help her. Ron, the local ISI minister, went over and shared with her the torn napkin (modified bridge) illustration… I watched from a distance. It was cool watching him and seeing him share something that matters so much to him to a new friend and watching some of our church people seeing it happen and obviously being encouraged by it.
control over it… There is no way we should have had enough food. When we started the evening, our estimate was that we would have half the food compared to last year and while we asked many people to double what they promised, we were concerned. We even asked our volunteers not to eat at first until all the students went by. What we didn’t realize is that students felt uncomfortable eating with their hosts not eating too… still God took care of that. The trickle of students slowed down early in the evening and there was plenty of food left so we opened up the eating to volunteers. We counted up all the tickets and there were over 200 students there AND we had so much food afterward that we had to take lots of leftovers to Arlington Life Shelter. It seems like every time we have a big even we have Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 played out and every time He comes through… I can truly understand now why Jesus had to do the “feeding” illustration twice and they still didn’t get it.
Cool technology angle and another feeding the 5000 story… During the evening, I was concerned about the seemingly small number of students and I didn’t want our church people to be disappointed. The BSM international ministry intern and I took out our iPhones and logged into our Facebook App and we updated our profile, to remind people about the dinner and we even went into the chat application to see who was on line on Facebook… I noticed a couple of international students that said they were planning on coming and some that said they wouldn’t. I invited them and one couple from Iran ended up coming with several of their friends. It was cool… and still, as I shared before, we handed out over 200 tickets for food… Wow!
photographers and Benji & Don, two professional level photographers were available and took some great pictures. I will post these as soon as I get the pictures from them. I know the students will be blessed by seeing themselves and their friends online and the students next year will be blessed to see what to expect so they may want to come.
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