Coming Up

Our church plant is coming up on an exciting milestone.  We have been worshipping together in our current location for 6 years!  We have had a wonderful time learning and growing together.  I am thankful to God for His work in my life, in the life of His church, in the lives of the people who attend our little gathering.

On Sunday we will have a business meeting.  I know business meetings are generally not exciting events for most people.  However, it is exciting for us!  Members and regular attenders of Komyo Christian Church want to be involved in the life of the church, want to use their gifts to encourage one another, want to seek God and His direction for His church.  Exciting stuff!!!

Today I was looking through some old pictures and found a picture of our 'staff' from 2010.  On New Year's Day we took another picture.  Some of us have changed more than others!  (Yuri Nakano had not yet joined us in 2010 and she is on home assignment right now.  She was not purposely left out of these photos!!)

Merry Unexpected Christmas!

Christmas day is almost over here in Japan.  It has been a great day!  A completely unexpected day.  Actually, a completely unexpected week!

Sunday was an unexpected when I received a message that my coworker was not feeling well.  By 1PM it was obvious that he was not going to be able to make it to church that afternoon.  Thankfully, we had already planned the themes for advent Sundays, so planning a message in a couple of hours was not quite as difficult.  Everyone at church was understanding and helpful.  We had a good time studying about joy in the story of Jesus' birth.

Monday morning dawned with a snow squall and another not quite as unexpected message.  Influenza had taken down two more of the members of my coworkers' family, putting the count at 3.  I continued with my day off as usual which included tea time with a friend.  God prepared both of our hearts and she offered as I asked her to play piano for our Christmas Eve service at church!

With that unexpected challenge cleared, I was ready to begin preparing for the service on Tuesday.  I spent the day at church, reading, preparing, checking out the programs from the last couple of years, and enjoying delving into the Christmas story again.  My friend came to get the music and help me check the Japanese on the power point.  We had another good time of fellowship.


Unexpectedly, I had just enough cookies left at home to take to my morning exercise friends at the park on Christmas eve morning.  It was fun to see their faces and hear the "Merry Christmas" responses.


Our Christmas eve service was beautiful and full of joy.  I am so grateful for our church, the lovely people, and the wonderful celebration of our Savior's birth.

Following the service, my piano-playing friend came over and spent the night.  We enjoyed fellowship late into the night and basically all day today.  What a blessing to have a friend with whom I can spend a day sitting at the table, chatting, snacking, laughing, crying, and sharing words of wisdom.  An unexpected Christmas was just what I needed!


(Although, I missed hanging out with the Ewing family and look forward to our belated celebration!)

Just in Case...

The big reveal!

Well, my thanksgiving blogs got set aside because of some international travel.  In case you haven't heard, I am enjoying my mom's birthday and American Thanksgiving with my family this year!

My sister and I have had a fun time planning this surprise for months!  I am not sure if my parents were more surprised that I showed up or that my sister kept a secret for that long!  

We have been having a fun time talking and laughing, eating and cooking together.  We are also enjoying the anticipation of a gaggle of relatives showing up tomorrow to join in the festivities.

A few have already arrived...

Dinner time

Parks

I love the park just up the road from me.  I has lovely tree-lined walking paths, a water fountain, and lots of friendly people.  I often run through the park on my morning runs, however, during the summer I run exclusively in the park so that I can drink water without having to carry it.

Over the summer this year I discovered there is a group of people who do radio exercises every morning at 6:30.  I have joined them and really enjoy it.  Many of the participants walk the paths before the exercises start.  Although, now that it is getting cooler and the sun doesn't rise so early, many are waiting until after exercises to walk.  That is when I have started running, too, actually!

I love running past people and greeting them.  Now that I have joined the exercise time, people know I can speak Japanese and have lived here for quite some time.  I think that gives them more of a willingness to greet me.

One of the men who has lived in the area the longest said that the park used to be a pond and a plum tree orchard.  There is a pond in the park now, but it is in a different location!  I am not sure how they moved the pond, but they did.  There are ducks that winter in the pond and a pheasant who makes his presence known every once in a while.

A couple of mornings ago the clouds turned pink as the sun was rising and the full moon was setting. It was really beautiful, and impossible to capture with a camera.  But, I wrote this haiku as I was walking home...

early morning sun
full moon swallowed by pink clouds
jogging in the park

Come visit and I will take you to meet my new friends at the park!

Every Year

Every year when I do my month of Thanksgiving Anointed Gospel Choir makes the list.  Since they have become part of my family (See this post for last month's comment on AGC), I guess that merits a spot!

This evening we had a karaoke party.  Around half of the members were able to attend.  We had a great time singing and eating together with lots of laughter!

Music is definitely a great mood changer!  I wasn't in a bad mood before I went, but I feel even more uplifted after our time together.  I was exhausted from a long day, however, feel refreshed after singing with these friends.

I am thankful for AGC and the way our lives have intersected.  I am looking forward to more fun times together!

My background

Today I am thankful for the opportunity I had to grow up in South Dakota.  The small town I grew up in was a great place to grow up!  When we were in elementary school, we rode our bikes to school, to our friends' houses, even downtown.  And, in the summer, we rode them to the swimming pool!  When it was too snowy to ride bikes we walked or our parents drove us.  It never took longer than 7 minutes to get to a friend's house, except the ones who lived out in the country.  When we went to those friends' houses, there was always adventure to be had, in the barn or the shelter belt or the grain wagon.

When I was growing up there were 4 elementary schools in town.  We had the great advantage of very small class sizes!  (Now there is one elementary school and the other schools have been completely re-vamped.  My school is now a church.  Another school is an apartment building.  And the other one is an art studio.  The fourth school is the Catholic school which is still in use!)

My friends and I started babysitting when we were in junior high school- what were those moms thinking?!  I guess since it is such a small town, they figured they or a neighbor could get there to help very quickly.  And, neighbors were always willing to help.

There are two lakes just outside of town where I learned to swim in the seaweed and skip rocks.  Our family spent hours walking or biking around the lake, picnicking, playing whiffle ball, and throwing rocks into the lake.  We even camped a couple of times.  Those were not the best experiences.  Suffice it to say, our family, tents and thunderstorms seem to make it into the same sentence when describing those experiences.

Because our school was small, we all had to participate in as many activities as we could manage so there would be enough people for each team.  I had the privilege to participate in band, basketball, track, declam, and tennis at school.  We were also involved in piano lessons, 4-H, church, and just about anything else we could find to do.

Growing up in a small town gave me the opportunity to have a huge variety of experiences in a low pressure environment which helped me make wise decisions once I left.  I didn't leave because I hated living there; I left because God had other plans for me.  Just because I left definitely does not mean that I am ungrateful or was unhappy!

Thank you, Lord, for Madison, South Dakota!

Beauty of Nature

I know I go on about nature and post pictures of nature often.  I do because it is one of the main ways I connect with God.  When I am in nature, surrounded by nature, I feel closer to God, like He is walking with me.  I enjoy chatting with God as we walk, run, or sit together in His beautiful creation.

Here are a few pictures I took while wandering around Horizon Village in Chiang Mai.  (I highly recommend Horizon if you are going to Chiang Mai!)

Sunset over the canal

Sunset over the pond

Arch over a different pond

Looking up into a palm tree

Trees in front of our seminar building-
obviously not completely natural!  They grow naturally,
just formed by humans.

Some pretty red flowers

Ballerina

Fish gathering for food

Sunset another night

Lotus flower in the pond by our breakfast location

Growing in the trees

Camels having a fest

Sunrise from our balcony

New Experiences

Sometimes I get excited about new experiences.  Sometimes I do not.  yet, almost always, I look back on the experiences with fondness, glad that I tried.

Melissa and I took an overnight flight to a country neither of us had ever visited or, actually, even had the desire to visit.  Yet, here we are in Thailand.

We are here to study, fellowship, worship, make new friends, and even have some fun.  (It is still summer here, so today after we arrived, we enjoyed one of the pools!  Fun!)

Everything is new, sounds, tastes, sights, people, language, customs.  It has been a fun and challenging day.  Ia m glad to get to have this new experience with my friend!

We are praying the week will draw us closer to God and each other as well as to our new friends.  We are also praying the study will give us new vision and direction for ministry.

God is already at work.  Thankful.

(I wrote this post on October 21st when Melissa and I arrived in Thailand.  I didn't realize that it hadn't posted, so I am posting it now, 10 days later!)

Here and There, Part 1

I have spent a bit of time over the past month in airplanes and fighting jet lag.  These travels have all included fun, work, times of refreshment, and times of study.

Every summer our missionaries in Japan gather for a time of study and refreshment.  This year we went to a beautiful beach location.

Enjoying the beach, sun, and ocean!

I enjoyed our times of worship and study as a mission family.  We studied Moses and his leadership.  We sang and praised.  It was refreshing!

Singing together

We also spent some time enjoying nature, the beach and mountains, two of my favorites!

Our hiking adventure took a muddy turn after about 300 meters.  We crossed a river several times so were able to rinse off as we went along.  The waterfall was pretty but not as grand as we were expecting.  Of course, the river was not at the end of the hike, so we went home muddy!

Really, the waterfall is just down the hill!

Time for water and a snack

The waterfall

Our muddy legs at the end of the hike.
They had been worse than this at times!

We made it!

Our last morning God woke me up early as I had asked so that I could see the sunrise over the ocean. Beautiful!

I am thankful for this annual time of worship, study, and refreshment!

Flowers, sunsets, and other random things

I want to try to stay in the habit of writing once a week or so.  However, the past two weeks have just disappeared.  By the time I sit down in front of my computer in the evening all I really want to do is turn it off and go to bed.  (Which is another discipline I need to work on!!)

So, I am just going to share a few photos of nature I have taken recently.  Spring is so lovely in Japan as the flowers start blooming and we are reminded that winter does not last forever.

The clouds lifting after the rain.
This is the view from my front veranda.

The sunset over the bay.
This is the view from my back veranda- although I can't quite
see the sun, so I had to go down the hall so I could see it!

Sunset from the train.
I am sure the people around me were wondering what I was doing.
I was waiting for this specific place, iPhone in hand.
The sun is just behind a pole in the center of the picture.

My friend Yuri, her name means lily.
We went to a lily garden last week.

So many wonderful colors!

Field of yellow

Working on the selfie thing.

Enjoying mango ice cream

These roses came from a church member's garden.
She has a much greener thumb than I do!

A Word and A Song

 I love when we get to host ladies' lunches at our church.  Trying to break into conversations to start the testimony part of the program is always a challenge.  Even having the big blonde girl standing up front does not always get everyone's attention!

Today our friend, Kyoko, shared her testimony.  It was neat to hear how God put pieces of the puzzle together for her as she traveled through the ups and downs of life, leading her, ultimately, to Himself. So amazing how He does that!  She also sang a song for us, "You Raise Me Up."  She sang the first verse in English and then sang in Japanese.  I had never heard it in Japanese before and was really moved by the lyrics.



This afternoon was a blessed time of fellowship.  I loved hearing the chatter, watching the shared tears fall, and witnessing encouragement between friends.

Out East

I have three supporting churches in Michigan who worked together to make my trip out east wonderful.  I had fun at VBS, outings with friends, attending the ordination service of a friend, and even spending time with a childhood friend and her family.

To those who live in the middle of America,  Michigan is out east.  I loved my drive out there through corn country.  I loved getting to share about Japan with hundreds of children, as well as hundreds of adults.  One of the three churches has been supporting me the longest and they have become like a second home church to me.  My trip "out east" was truly a blessing!

Taking Pastor Lyle for a ride!

Fun with Flat Coco!

Ice cream run after VBS

Another group of kids having fun with Flat Coco!

Jonna's ordination service

Lunch with friends!

Friends for over four decades!

Our mean pirate looks

Dinner with friends, an evening filled with laughter!

Learning about the Ford family