Admin 'Appenings

My sister got engaged! Angela (in the floral dress) got engaged to David (blue polo) and my older sister and her family flew in to surprise her at the engagement party. Peek our denim dress code, or at least half of us got the memo. :-) Here is (most of) our staff team for the 2024-2025 school year (plus a couple babies)! What a blessing it was to spend time with them. Please be praying for our team as we join in with what God is doing on our campuses! (If you would like to pray for our campuses individually, we are at: UTD, UNT, TWU, NCTC, TWU-Dallas, Dallas College Richland Campus, SMU, UTA, TCC - NE, TCU, Collin College - Plano, McKinney, Frisco, and Wylie). We had a cultural-wear appreciation day at church this past month! Really, I just wanted to see other people wear cool clothes and have an excuse to do so, so I texted a bunch of people to wear clothes from their own culture or a culture that they appreciated. Obligatory picture of Steph! It is her birthday on September 3rd! Wha

  If you haven't met baby William yet, he is pretty great! He is not too fussy (at least, when I've seen him) and is wholly comfortable with strangers. Here he is, peacefully sleeping, swaddled in the blanket that I use when I sleep on the couch. [Oops, I realize that some of you may not know that this is my brother's child.] I got to play Mysterium with some friends who basically made fun of me the entire night, telling me that I'm the worst at this game. 😒 I'm looking for new friends. Steph, her sister, and I went on a quick trip to Milwaukee to visit her aunt and uncle and grandma (whom I had never met yet). Her grandma was unable to travel to our wedding for various reasons, one of which was a little something called COVID (maybe you've heard of it?). And so we decided to make the trip up to her instead so that I could meet her. While we were there, we visited the 'Domes,' which, if you've been to Seattle, are like Bezos' balls, but worse, I

  I got to spend some time with this group of guys in Colorado. It was so beautiful and I enjoyed getting to take some time off after the big SICM trip. It was also a sweet time to get to know these guys more in depth and experience their servant-heartedness while we were all taking care of each other: making meals, cleaning, and trying to include everyone in the fun.  From left to right: Stian (green hat, former UTD campus pastor, Collin campus pastor), Mick (blue hoodie, UTD alum, Collin campus pastor apprentice), ME, Kevin (tall guy, Collin campus pastor), Steven (glasses, Denton campus pastor), Brandon (old guy, UTD campus pastor), Jared (chain necklace, UTD alum), and Jonathan (Broncos jersey, UTD alum). I love seeing the stars—it's so rare to see them in the city. Obviously my phone does not do it justice by any stretch, but you could see stars stretching across the entire night sky in Colorado. When I look up and see the vastness of stars, it reminds me of how small we are a

It has been 9 years since I graduated from UW and 12 years since I left Vancouver, where I grew up. This year, after a couple of years of thinking about it, Steph and I were able to explore Seattle and Vancouver together—both places that are a big part of my story. We were able to visit the church I attended growing up where a surprising number of aunties recognized me despite a big appearance change. One even commented on how I used to be so quiet and avoidant of people (hopefully you have noticed that is not the case anymore)! I was also able to meet up with some friends that I haven't seen in years (some, it has been since graduating college). This December, we are planning on visiting Cameroon with her family, where Steph grew up, for a New Testament dedication ceremony. A handful of New Testament translations that Steph's parents have worked on for the past 20 years are finally in print and available to the people of Cameroon in their heart language . Praise God for the ab

 

One of my friends recently gave me her drum set for Guitar Hero, which may not be exciting to you, but I was definitely hyped. If you've ever seen Whiplash, I downloaded Caravan (the song they play at the very end), and tried it out... and it is nigh impossible. (S/O to Steph's cow cubby.) I asked Johnny, who is one of the best drummers I know, to try it out and he was also struggling, so I felt better about myself. I took this picture to show the paint store what paint I needed each time I went back for another gallon. It has been on my to-do list for a while to paint the patio cover that the previous owner had built. Let me tell you... I never want to paint again. I borrowed a paint sprayer from a friend and even then, it was one of the most tedious things ever. It took me about 2 weeks to finally get the whole thing painted! If you enjoy painting or are skilled at it, wow. Color me impressed (haha, get it?). The same time I started painting my patio, a large sinkhole opened