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Austin and Jeanne Thompson
#0611010
We are Jeanne and Austin Thompson, serving on the Bridges national leadership team in Austin, Texas.
Bridges International is a caring community of Christ-followers committed to serve, promote social connections, and engage in spiritual conversations with international students, so that students become leaders internationally.
Why international students?
One million. There are one million students and scholars from around the world traversing the halls of American universities every year. One million future leaders of the world are here. Now. They are at our doorsteps, and they are often lonely and isolated. Who will befriend them, invite them into an American home, and help them figure out life in the U.S.? Who will share the love and hope of Jesus with them?
Students from regions in the world with the least access to the gospel—China, India, the Middle East—are here now. Will you partner with us to welcome them, to share the love of Jesus with them, to help them grow in their faith, and to launch them out into the world as ambassadors for Christ?
Our story
After serving among university students in East Asia for nearly ten years, we were preparing for a routine home assignment back to the U.S. in the winter of 2019. A few days before departure, we were given the news, “Your visa this year will not be renewed.”
Just like that, we found ourselves back in America with no backup plan and no real sense of God’s next step for us. Fast forward one year to 2020, as we began to dream again about where the Lord might be stirring our family to go next, the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the planet and obliterated whatever future plans we were beginning to make. The gulf between us and the ministry we once had—between us and the dear friends and colleagues of ours in East Asia—felt even more unbridgeable.
God’s leading, one step at a time, brought us to Bridges to reach international students. During our years in East Asia, we lived as international students ourselves, learning language, experiencing culture, and building relationships. The script is now flipped as we find ourselves the hosts. How much, though, has God prepared us to empathize with the realities of living and studying abroad, outside one’s home culture and heart language?
Our roles now
Austin serves as a Director of People & Culture on the national leadership team of Bridges International, helping to set the direction of the ministry and leading leaders for the sake of the Great Commission.
Over 300 Bridges staff and interns serve on more than forty teams in strategic locations around North America, Europe, and Oceania. Austin leads a team dedicated to shaping the culture of Bridges by sending and developing missionaries, equipping lifelong followers of Jesus, caring for our people and teams.
While caring for the daily needs of our four kids (Molly, b. 2014; Luke, b. 2017; Nolen, b. 2020; and Ruby, b. 2023) and homeschooling our oldest two, Jeanne also serves with Bridges, welcoming international students into our home and engaging them with the love of Jesus.
Thank you! 谢谢！Danke schön! བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།།
Thank you for partnering with us as, together, we trust the Lord to put the gospel within arm's reach of every international student!
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