Kristy and Demps Dempsey

Westside members and former missionaries, Demps and Kristy Dempsey, share their incredible 22-year journey in Brazil. Demps and Kristy, childhood friends turned life partners, reflect on their missionary work, the challenges of learning a new language, and the transformative moments that deepened their faith. From hilarious linguistic mishaps—like preaching about "spiritual potatoes" instead of "spiritual battles"—to seeing entire families come to Christ, the Dempseys weave a rich tapestry of God’s work in their lives.

This episode explores how their missionary experience shaped not only their ministry but also their personal growth and family life. Kristy, now a children's author and content director, speaks on how her time in Brazil influenced her storytelling, while Demps reflects on how they’ve carried Brazilian culture—its communal nature and joy—back to the States. Whether you’re interested in missions, family, or finding beauty in life’s twists and turns, Demps and Kristy’s story is a heartwarming reminder that God works through us, even in the most unexpected ways.

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Transcript:

Walter Henegar:

I'm Walter Henegar, and I'm here in the world headquarters of the Westside Podcast studio with my wife, Anne.

Anne Henegar: Hello.

Walter Henegar: And our friends, Kristy Dempsey.

Kristy Dempsey:

Hi.

Walter Henegar:

And Demps Dempsey.

Demps Dempsey:

Hello.

Walter Henegar:

Okay, I'm going to tell people who you are, but the first question we really need to dive into is when you all first started visiting Westside, you mentioned that this podcast was actually helpful to make you want to come back. Kristy, can you tell us about why?

Kristy Dempsey:

We first started watching online before you were having services, and then as you started having services we gradually started coming back in, but it was really hard to connect with people, it was still in the early days of back to church in the pandemic. And so I found the Westside Stories Podcast and started listening and I could hear who people were and I was like, maybe this is a church I want to be a part of.

Walter Henegar:

Does either of you remember a particular one or a particular story within one of those?

Kristy Dempsey:

The salsa dancing?

Walter Henegar:

Yes.

Kristy Dempsey:

And also just because it was just so joyful and honestly not overtly spiritual. It was just about community, about being together and doing fun things and enjoying each other's presence. And so that really appealed to me.

Walter Henegar:

Well, that's delightful to us to know that it had that effect, which is exactly why we're doing this. So okay. Who are you?

Demps Dempsey:

I grew up in South Carolina, Travelers Rest, South Carolina. Kristy and I actually have known each other since I was nine. She was eight. We grew up in the same small Southern Baptist church. We were in the same youth group growing up, and that's actually kind of part of our story of how we wound up going to Brazil because our pastor at the time was a ... He and his wife had been missionaries and he just preached missions from the pulpit so often. And so it was just kind of this thing that really kind of began to stir in us, I think even at a young age. Then I went off to Clemson and realized that I was not a Christian. So that kind of emerged and then wound up coming to Christ my last year at Clemson and then got involved with Campus Outreach because of Kristy. She had been involved with Campus Outreach at Furman.

Kristy Dempsey:

And then we reconnected and eventually decided, hey, I think we might be dating, and-

Anne Henegar:

It happens.

Demps Dempsey:

We kept getting asked. People kept saying, "Are you guys dating?"

Kristy Dempsey:

Like, okay, we are finally ready to admit it. We've been spending a lot of time together and we ended up getting married and we're on staff at West Georgia, University of West Georgia with Campus Outreach for several years.

Walter Henegar:

And what influenced that decision to move to Brazil?

Kristy Dempsey:

Campus Outreach was starting a location, starting a ministry in Brazil. They had a connection to a church there, a church that was very eager to start a college ministry. I think we would say at the time that we definitely felt a calling. We had grown up with an understanding that God wants us to take the gospel to the world, and I think kind of paired with our calling was kind of just a sense of adventure too. We went with the idea that we would be there three to five years.

Anne Henegar:

And how long were you there?

Demps Dempsey:

22.

Kristy Dempsey:

Yeah. 22 years.

Demps Dempsey:

22 years. Yeah. There were definitely moments along the way early on where it was kind of like, I'm not sure that this is really going to work out or what we want to do. But then I think once we kind of learned the language and settled in and started really building a life there, our oldest daughter was born six months before we went to Brazil. Our family was being formed there, so it kind of just felt like, okay, this is where God wants us.

Kristy Dempsey:

Those early days were humbling though. Learning the language, we did not learn the language until we got there. I had a base of Spanish that kind of transferred a little bit to Portuguese, and that was frustrating. I think that was one of the things that had Demps questioning his calling.

Demps Dempsey:

There are lots of funny stories about butchering the language, and honestly, that was ... I remember I was preaching one time in Portuguese and I was trying to say that we should focus on the cross and the way which it should have been [Portuguese 00:05:31]. And the way that I was saying it, I was saying, [Portuguese 00:05:36], which is the seal on the cross, like ar, ar, ar, ar. And so after I preached the sermon when I thought it's like, man, I really took him to the cross there and realized it's like they were just laughing the whole time.

Anne Henegar:

You took the seal to the cross is what you did.

Kristy Dempsey:

He also had a long, really challenging address one time about the [Portuguese 00:06:00] which is the spiritual potato instead of the spiritual battle.

Demps Dempsey:

Yeah, I kept saying [Portuguese 00:06:06]. Yeah.

Kristy Dempsey:

So I mean, we had those language things, but it took me two years before I left a deeper emotional conversation and did not feel exhausted. I remember that first time that we left, I don't know if it was church and I'd had a deeper conversation in Portuguese and I left energized instead of exhausted, and that was encouraging. That was when I knew that maybe I could stick around in Brazil for a while.

Anne Henegar:

And wouldn't you say that that's another reason probably why you wanted to stay longer was also there's just a learning curve. So three to five years you're just getting started, you're just getting acclimated. Not to mention build the rapport with the neighbors and the community that you need to have.

Demps Dempsey:

Yeah, I mean I think it's like anything else that's ultimately very rewarding. It's very difficult, whether it's marriage, or raising kids, or anytime we step out of our comfort zone like that. Honestly, I feel like in our time there, God did more in us than He did through us. I remember early on, probably at the three-year mark or so, we had gone off for a date and I was really struggling, partly because I had built really a lot of expectations around that we would be there three to five and then we would go start another ministry in Brazil, and that was clearly not going to happen.

I think I was really trying to figure out who I was at the time. And so I remember we were at dinner one night and I was like, "I think I'm just going to quit and go to film school." And I was really thinking about being a director, a movie director. And she was like, "Well, we can do that if that's what you want to do." But I think it really brought me to a breaking point with God and where I remember just getting to a very clear moment where it was like, okay, God, what do you want from me? And it really was this moment that just kind of opened up this whole new realm for us together, even with the ministry there. And then I think God really began to bear fruit through that.

Walter Henegar:

And when you think about that fruit that God began to bear, can you think of particular people, particular times? What sort of things were happening?

Demps Dempsey:

When we moved down there, we thought it's the largest Catholic nation in the world. How different can it be? And I think what we found was that it was much more secular and skeptical than we ever had imagined, especially on the college campus. I remember I was having a conversation with a guy that wound up coming to Christ later, but just at one point I just asked him, I said, "Have you ever experienced anything in your life that you would say just goes beyond the natural realm?" Had no idea how he would respond. And then he wound up telling me a story about one time when he had been sick as a child and he had felt this supernatural presence, and just a very small conversation, but it was like another step towards God revealing Himself.

Towards the end of his coming to Christ, I remember we were having a bible study and he came up to me after the study and he said, "I need to know when it's going to happen." I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "When am I going to come to Christ? When is it going to happen?" And I remember thinking, the old Demps would've said, "Right now, man." But I could clearly tell that he really didn't understand the gospel, that he wasn't ready. And I said, "Zay." I said, "I don't really know." I said, "I know you're walking the right path. And before all my children were born, there were signs that they were going to be born, and I can see those kinds of things happening in you."

Kristy Dempsey:

Zay Flavio ended up marrying Claudia who was a staff member who was on staff with Campus Outreach, and then she later ended up working with me at the American school in Belo Horizonte. And so seeing their marriage come together, seeing what God did to bring the two of them together, seeing that with so many other people. I mean, we sometimes sit and think about all the people who went from having either no church background or not understanding the gospel, to becoming Christians, to dating, to marrying, to forming these families, and then actually in a sort of reverse discipling going back and taking the gospel to their parents and all these families that have been changed.

Demps Dempsey:

That was one of the coolest things I think we witnessed is what we kind of began to refer to as this kind of reverse discipleship process. And so we had a guy that for two years was talking to him about the gospel and he eventually came to Christ. His name was Alon. In a lot of these processes, you're meeting the family, you're spending time around them. Well, he went back and basically over the course of a few months, and Kristy was leading a bible study that his sister Alini was in. So Alini became a Christian mostly because of the influence of Alon. And then over the course of three or four years, honestly, his parents began to ask about the gospel and participate in bible studies and that kind of thing. Eventually, Alini wound up leading a couple of girls that were in her class to Christ and was discipling them. Well, one of those girls went back home and started sharing with her family. The whole family wound up coming to Christ and joining the church.

Kristy Dempsey:

I just remember thinking of all the times that we would have conversations and conversations and conversations with people, and then we would eventually kind of invite to an actual investigative study, kind of come along with us to investigate, let's meet every week. Let's investigate who Jesus really was. I learned through the years not just with people coming to Christ, but just with anything that I was longing for, just trusting that God would provide. That He would provide on His timeline, that I didn't need to be anxious about it, that I could trust that the work was being done.

Demps Dempsey:

One of the things that I feel like that God has done for us as a family is just our value of diversity. When you live abroad, the world just becomes a much, much bigger place. There are always times I think missionaries think, is this helping our kids? There's the whole third culture kid thing, and-

Anne Henegar:

Will you define what the third culture is for those that may not know what that is?

Demps Dempsey:

Our daughter actually did a TED Talk when she was at Wofford about belonging that was kind of about that idea. And so you can find that on YouTube, but she could probably explain much better, but it's-

Walter Henegar:

And Her name, if we want to Google that?

Kristy Dempsey:

Meg Dempsey. It's called Belonging 101: A TED Talk at Wofford College. It's actually children who are growing up in a culture that's different than their parents' culture. Third culture can be really difficult because I think you can grow up with a sense that you're not either, that you have no identity. And so I think our kids definitely dealt with that, but I think they dealt with it less because they had a home in both places.

Demps Dempsey:

And I would say as we look back, I mean our kids' lives are so much bigger. I think each of them would say, "We got more than we gave up." There are more third culture people than ever because of immigration and those kinds of things. They're very real issues that you have to navigate when that's true of you.

Anne Henegar:

Maybe as believers, we're all third culture.

Kristy Dempsey:

Yeah, we're not home yet. Exactly.

Walter Henegar:

What's Brazilian now about you from living there for 22 years and then maybe another question to ask you would be like what's Brazilian about your kids?

Kristy Dempsey:

I mean, we love the food, our love for food, the [Portuguese 00:14:07] and all the foods that are typical Brazilian foods we miss.

Demps Dempsey:

I think the food and the communal nature goes together. Brazilians are just so communal. Neither one of us are super extroverted, so we really had to ... That was difficult at first. I mean, that's really reflected in the gospel. God is a community. You can see that because they do life together. Joy, lots and lots of joy. In the US, very rarely does everybody celebrate their birthday every year. In Brazil, every year you're having a party or everybody's going to have a party. It's like any reason to celebrate.

Walter Henegar:

How has that influence of Brazilian culture shaped the way you do what you're doing now back here?

Demps Dempsey:

Yeah. I still work for Campus Outreach. I am one of four international network directors. One of the things I tell all the team leaders and the teams is if I can just hand you 22 years of mistakes, I think it is rewarding to know what they're dealing with and it's like, okay, I see you.

Walter Henegar:

And I would guess you're approaching them with a different mentality. You're not, okay. I'm going to show up and make sure you get your work done as efficiently as possible, but you're lingering with who they are as people and what's really going on with them presently.

Demps Dempsey:

Yeah, absolutely. Then some of that is the Brazilian side of me now, but really connecting with them personally. It was really challenging. We moved back during the pandemic. We didn't really get to grieve our leaving. We were told by missions experts that for the amount of time that we lived abroad that it would take us about three years. And so I think we're still in that process, but I think part of that really exposed some deeper things for me, and so I started really having to do some deeper heart work and soul care. Even just that process is something that I take into my job now. Maybe the best thing that I can do to help them is help them really identify what God is doing there.

Walter Henegar:

It's noticing those little things when somebody says something really hard about their life and they laugh. "Did you notice that when you shared that horrible thing you laughed? Tell me more."

Demps Dempsey:

Right. Yeah.

Kristy Dempsey:

The first way that having lived in Brazil for 22 years affects my job is just the relationships with the people that I worked with, the way that I want to care about them and be cared for by them to really build a community. I started writing children's books when I was in Brazil. That eventually led to when we were coming back to America, being offered a job with a children's entertainment company. And so I am the Senior Director of Storytelling and Marketing Content. Marketing content, you always have to think about your audience. Who's your audience? What's your target audience? Who are you speaking to? Does your message resonate with that audience? And I think about audiences in a different way now. And so for creating content in English, do I need to think about our Spanish-speaking audiences and kind of make sure that this content can be translated and made for them as well?

Demps Dempsey:

I think another interesting thing about connected to what Kristy's doing now is that when she first started writing, we were in Brazil and it was kind of a new thing, kind of creative.

Kristy Dempsey:

I mean, for a while I was painting and then it was like stained-glass, and so this was just the latest and greatest thing in his mind.

Demps Dempsey:

But I think when it became, she was writing a lot and then I think it created some conflict for us initially because I was kind of like, "Wait, wait, wait. We are here to do this. This is our mission, and where does this writing thing come? How does that fit into what we're here to do?" As we've really worked through that, I think what we've understood now is that God has opened up whole new avenues for ministry for us. One of the ways I've been thinking about it is there's kind of the intentional calling and then unintentional calling, and just the places that God just kind of opens up that we never imagined.

Kristy Dempsey:

I think that there are opportunities in life that can become idols and can lead you down the wrong path, or they can become opportunities and God can use them to increase your longevity in ministry, and I think that is an example of one for us.

Anne Henegar:

Well, and I hear a symbiotic relationship between ministry and this calling too because one is clearly informing the other and vice versa, which is beautiful.

Walter Henegar:

Kristy and Demps, you've shared so much, so much food for thought. Thank you for coming in today.

Kristy Dempsey:

Thanks for having us.

Demps Dempsey:

Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you.

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