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Newsletter Archive 2002 |
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June 2002 Prayer Support Letter Dear Friends and Family, God has blessed us with an incredible first 3 ½ years of marriage! After living in West Los Angeles for a year we moved to La Mirada, California and purchased our first home. Ivan is currently a Senior Business Systems Analyst for Trojan Battery Company and May is a Legal Analyst for ChevronTexaco. We have been serving as Directors in the CrossTrainers college ministry of Chinese Baptist Church of Orange County, and it’s been such a blessing to fellowship with, minister to, and be ministered to by caring and passionate students who love the Lord. Since summer of 2001, we have been led to pray about attending seminary, and we are finally certain of God’s calling to a new chapter of our lives. Ivan will be enrolling in a four-year Master of Theology (Th.M.) program at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) this fall, and we believe that DTS will provide the necessary education and experiences to equip him to teach God’s Word either at home or overseas. We will be living in a new on-campus apartment complex for married couples and families, so we look forward to a strong community of young families for fellowship and support. We are currently in the process of selling our house, packing our bags and looking for jobs in Dallas. Our expected move date is the beginning of August, and classes begin on August 26th. Our purpose in writing to you is two-fold. Firstly, we want to testify of God’s incredible goodness in our lives and secondly, we desire to gain your support in prayer as we embark on this exciting journey. We have personally been so blessed by the opportunities to support others in this way, and we know that God is glorified as His saints partner together to further His kingdom. As we transition to the “great unknowns” of Dallas, Texas, we seek your prayers in the following areas:
* Preparation to move – for the entire moving process and for the sale of our home
If you would like to make a commitment to partner with us in prayer, please contact us by e-mail at mayyong@yahoo.com as soon as possible. We request that you write your name, e-mail address, mailing address and phone number so that we can keep you posted with prayer requests and regular updates. Although we are not requesting monetary support at this time, some of you have mentioned a desire to partner with us financially. If you feel called to do so, please let us know as well. We are so grateful for each of you. You are special blessings to us, used by the Lord to encourage our hearts as we strive to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10). Although we are excited to begin this new phase of our lives, we are also sad to leave our hometown of Orange County and the wonderful family and friends we treasure. More than ever, we thank God for the internet and e-mail, for they will allow us all to stay in touch and be involved in each other’s lives despite the physical distance. Please let us know how we can be praying for you. May you find rest with us in the wonderful peace of God that can come only from knowing Jesus Christ intimately as Lord and Savior. Shalom.
For His glory,
July 2002 Dear beloved Friends and Family, Just two weeks to go! Our expected move date is August 7, 2002. Although we are confident of God’s will and provision, moving away will still be difficult as we say goodbye to all of you, our friends and family. Here are our current prayer items and updates:
* Praise God, we sold our home! Escrow is scheduled to close on August 5th. The Lord also provided buyers for some of our furniture and appliances. God’s provision has been amazing!
The Lord has been so gracious to us. Six months ago, we thought it highly improbable that God would provide 100 prayer supporters, but we still prayed for a support team of at least that size because God’s thoughts are different from ours. In the last month, an amazing thing happened – over 100 of you answered the call! We encourage you to pray hard, because God answers prayers and matures us in the process. It is God’s will and our answered prayer that you find yourself reading this update. We praise God for giving us such a great and powerful support team in you!
For His glory,
August 2002 Dear beloved Friends and Family, Howdy from Dallas, Texas! We’re excited to tell you of the amazing things that God has done in our lives during the last month. But first, we want to say how much we miss you all, and the blessings of your fellowship. It’s not the same being out here on our own. We pray that you all are doing well, and we would love to hear from each of you. Well, the trip over here went quite smoothly. Escrow closed on our house without a problem, and we had a tearful, yet blessed sendoff by many of you. Thank you for your support and encouragement! We had a moving company drive our belongings out here, and we drove one car ourselves across the vast Southwest. We stopped in the very western town of Tombstone, Arizona where the OK Corral lives on today. We visited White Sands and Roswell, New Mexico, and then spent a day at Carlsbad Caverns – an amazing place of natural wonder and beauty. We should have some pictures up on our website soon. =) After many hours of driving through West Texas, we finally arrived at Dallas Theological Seminary on Sunday, August 11th. We were warmly greeted by our apartment manager and some friends we had met back at CBCOC a few months back. We truly appreciated their warm hospitality and Texan welcome! God truly provided a wonderful place for us to live here on campus. Everything is brand new and we have the most wonderful neighbors – mostly young married couples and some with the sweetest young children. It truly is a blessing to live in such a familial environment. We’ve spent the first couple of weeks acclimating ourselves to the culture and the streets – Texas feels like a foreign country at times! The Lord graciously eased us into the weather change – it was in the mid nineties when we got here (gasp! – which is actually cool for this time of year) and now it’s warming up a little. But we’re getting used to it. We sure miss southern California... Ivan is really excited about school and studying God’s word. Orientation was great – we were both able to meet the DTS faculty and other 1st year students. There are students from all walks of life, all over the globe, so it’s truly exciting and inspiring. And praise the Lord for answered prayer – Ivan is working part time from home for his former employer, and May began a new job working for an estate planning attorney this week. The job market is still quite slow, but God provided a wonderful opportunity in His sovereign plan. God’s provision and grace never cease to amaze and delight us! We’re now ready to transition into a more routine schedule as Ivan goes to school and May starts working again. We’ve visited a few great churches so far, and there are still quite a few more to see, so please continue to pray that God would lead us to the church He has prepared for us, and that we’d be able to plant roots soon. Thank you so much for your prayers and support – we couldn’t have done it all without you!
For His glory,
September 2002 Dear beloved Friends and Family, Hello! We hope that this greeting finds “y’all” well and rejoicing in the Lord. We can’t believe how quickly the month has gone by – and that we’ll be back in Southern California for the weekend! We’re flying back for the wedding of Rex Morishita and Belinda Soo. We’re excited for them and we’re excited to see many of you once again! Well, some reflections on Dallas… the weather is definitely cooling down. We even had a few thunder and lightning storms that roared into the city and right back out in just a matter of hours. The last few days we walked outside in the morning and felt like we were in California again. We even thought we felt an ocean breeze (it must have been a dream). =) Other matters of life… Around here, you definitely know that football season has started because everyone’s talking about ‘dem Cowboys. We still have not personally witnessed any real cowboys walking around (no, not even a cowboy hat or boots), but we’ve encountered many a southern drawl. Dallas is definitely not as diverse as L.A., but we do have a nice little Chinatown strip mall where we can buy groceries and feel like we’re in an Asian community. Ivan has truly immersed himself into his studies, very diligently devouring books and deepening his faith and love for God in the process. Learning Greek hasn’t been too difficult yet – he’s already translating verses in the Bible! May has been able to get involved in a ministry for seminary student wives, with a weekly small group made up of women excited to learn and grow alongside their husbands. As a couple, we are also involved in a small group with five other couples who are all very different but with a singular passion in our devotion to the Lord. The seminary environment is such a blessing – there’s no shortage of godly men and women to fellowship with. Ivan has also found a mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock, who is a research professor of New Testament here, and a well-known theologian (that is, if you happen to frequent theologian circles). Looking for a new church has been an adventurous experience for us. Without the social/fellowship aspect of church that we had grown so accustomed to, we don’t really have an expectation each Sunday, except that we come to worship God alone. In that sense, it’s been really wonderful. On the other hand, we do desire to be involved in the life of a church, and so not having a home church here in Dallas makes Sunday mornings a bit lonely. We are learning a lot in the process though, and being new visitors again reminds us of how important it is to be welcoming to others, and to show Christ’s love to strangers. If you can continue to pray for our search for a church and Ivan’s seminary studies, we would really appreciate it. Please also pray that we would continue to grow closer to the Lord as life gets busier and more hectic. There’s so much knowledge and wisdom to be gained here, but without a deeper love for the Lord, it will only be in vain. We so desire to live intimately with our precious Lord, and exalt His holy name. O, magnify the Lord with us, and let us exalt His name together! (Psalm 34:3)
For His glory,
October/November 2002 Dear beloved Friends and Family, What a busy couple of months it has been! Ivan will be finished with his first semester at DTS in less than one month – we can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! Just last month we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. We give all of the praise and glory to God for blessing us with a strong marriage and a relationship in which we continue to encourage one another and spur one another on. The Lord continues to faithfully teach us so much about His provision and grace, not only in our marriage, but also in our relationship with others. Just being in the on-campus apartment complex has allowed for such a strong community to develop. It’s so convenient to fellowship with friends just down the hall. =) So many wonderful things have happened since our last update, but we just thought that we would highlight a few. We were so blessed to be able to be back in California six weeks ago to be a part of Rex and Bee Morishita’s wedding and visit family and friends again. Of course, the weekend was too short, but we enjoyed every moment. We had the privilege of attending a free, live Jamie Oliver show here in Dallas (for those of you who don’t watch the Food Channel, Jamie Oliver is a young British chef with a flair for entertainment and inventive cooking). That was an exciting experience for us – almost like a little bit of Hollywood here in Big “D”. Just a couple of weeks ago, Dad and Jeremy came to visit us in Dallas and that was a great time of refreshing for us. There’s something special about spending time with family in your new environment. It was fun having them share a bit of the seminary experience with us. They even attended a Bible study methods class taught by Dr. Howard Hendricks, who is affectionately known as “The Prof.” He and his wife, Jeanne, came to the apartment building this month to do a “Meet the Prof” Q&A session for the benefit of us younger couples. What a precious time of learning from a godly man and woman! As the end of the semester quickly approaches, we would appreciate your prayers for Ivan to finish strong. He has a couple of big papers due, as well as final exams to take. Over the winter break, Ivan will be taking a Christian Counseling course, as well as helping his Greek instructor (who is a Ph.D. student) revise a paper for publishing. It’s exciting to see God’s provision of great opportunities to enhance his seminary studies. For the spring semester, we are planning to take an Old Testament History class together on Monday nights. May is especially excited to be able to audit a class here. Please pray that the class won’t be too full in order to accommodate the spouses who want to audit. Please also pray for God’s provision in terms of health care and insurance. The cost of our COBRA coverage is rather overwhelming and we’re looking into alternatives, although none of them are inexpensive. We want to be patient and wise as we make health care decisions, and pray that God would keep us healthy as we enter the winter season. And our last prayer request is that airfare would decrease so that we could go home to California for Christmas. We would love to see you all again, but also know that we need to be wise stewards of God’s money. Although we have not yet made a decision on a specific church, we spent the last couple of months attending Watermark Community Church on Sunday mornings (we’ve also spent some Friday and Saturday nights visiting other churches). We recently attended a five hour “Discovery Class” learning about Watermark’s vision and heart for ministry, and just today, we had lunch with a couple who lead the follow-up ministry. We are encouraged by the leaders’ sincerity and passion, and how they impact the congregation through their commitment to the Word of God and to people. If you would like to see Watermark’s website and listen to recent sermons, go to www.WatermarkCommunity.org. We appreciate your continued prayer that God reveal His chosen church for us. Thank you again, for your faithful prayers and support of what God is doing in us here in Dallas. We feel that we are constantly reaping the benefits of His immeasurable grace. May He also fill you with an eternal joy and complete satisfaction in Him.
Blessings and peace, |
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