We are the Deals- Shad, Sarah, Braden, and Brice. Our lives, like yours, are a journey. So far, this journey has led us to many exciting places, along with ups and downs, sickness and health, weakness and strength. Yet one thing remains true in every day: This is God’s story. This is the journey He’s planned for our family.
We met and married after our time in training with New Tribes Mission, and headed to the field of Asia Pacific with a one-year-old in tow a little over two years later. With a heart for reaching the unreached, we began studying language and culture in the world’s most populated island. God led us as a family to take more of a support role for the “front-liners,” serving to orientate new missionaries to the field and help them adjust to the demands of cross-cultural life.
Over the course of our nine years in Asia Pacific, we were blessed to be a part of orienting close to 150 new missionaries to our field, encouraging them and helping to equip them to stay and minister to the unreached around them.
In May of 2016, after several months of epilepsy complications for Shad, we returned to the US to take time to get the medical help he needed. In the months that followed, God opened up a door for our family to serve at the NTM Missionary Training Center in Missouri. With Shad’s medical needs still not resolved, we agreed to pursue this new ministry option. God worked in our hearts one day, one step at a time, and gradually gave us a peace that He wanted us to stay in the US.
We look forward to the opportunity to continue our “come alongside” ministry on this side of the globe, helping to equip the next generation of missionaries who will go out not only to Asia Pacific, but all over the world!
