This is one of a series of emails I sent while preparing and living overseas in Japan, from April 2008 to April 2009. They are mostly for my own benefit, but also for anyone who may care to read them. Enjoy 🙂

Happy Mother’s Day!!!!

I have a bunch of mothers and a couple mothers-to-be on my update list, so I want to wish you all a Happy Mother’s Day!

Today was a really great day on the Japan side!  We had combined service at Kawanaka so there were a ton of people.  I was pretty nervous because I was asked to play my violin this morning, and I hadn’t practiced with the others yet…only with the pianist, and then doing my own practicing until this morning.  I was nervous, but everything went really well and everyone seemed to enjoy it in the praise team.  It’ll probably be a monthly kind of thing…but I’ll have to wait and see what Pastor Tony thinks.  It was fun though.  Samantha gave her testimony in Japanese too.  It was her final exam for her Japanese class, which doubled as a distance learning class for her degree she’s working on with Liberty University.  She did really well, and I sat next to Megumi, the Japanese teacher, (whose name means “grace” by the way) and she only made a few notes on her piece of paper and not a whole slew…so Samantha was encouraged by the piece of info. 

I had asked for you to pray for the owners of the restaurant I’ve been building a relationship with, Yoshio-san and Satsuki-san.  I wasn’t sure if they would come to the service this morning, and it got to 10am and I still didn’t see them.  Suddenly, Samantha got my attention and nodded over to the middle seats and they there were!!  I went and sat with them, and Yoko, Brian’s wife, sat next to me and helped with showing them where to read in the Bible as we came to passages.  It was so neat.  They came just to hear me play violin, and I am so excited to know what kind of a friendship has been forming with us.  I really pray that they heard the Gospel and were amazed by the love in that church.  A lot of people went up to greet them, and Satsuki also received a gift along with the other mothers in the church.  She was really pleased with that.  Please pray for continued interest and for our new relationship to grow and for more opportunities to share in a non-confrontational way.

We also had another visitor at church.  Mark, an exchange student from Australia, is studying Japanese at the university near the train station between the church and the Center.  I got to chat with him some, and Eri and I coerced him to get some obento (prepared lunch) with us.  It looks like he really likes our church and is going to come back next week and throughout his time here (he’ll be heading back to Australia to continue his studies in Japanese medicine) until January.  Deborah, he’s from Brisbane, which I was pretty sure was where you had worked when you were Down Under.  I’m so glad to have another English-speaking gaijin (foreigner) with us.

This week, I am getting a new class Tuesday mornings, and I lost my once a month Saturday class.  I’m kind of relieved about the Saturday class, though, as the curriculum was completely different than the regular one.  The Tuesday morning class is of older women and the setting is more like an “English Club” than a class.  We’re all preparing for another International Cafe!  Please pray in preparation for that, the we will have many returning visitors like Mika and Hiroka, but also new ones.  I’m going to take a couple flyers down to Green Mall to give one to the man from Nigeria we met a couple weeks ago, and also the restaurant employee, Tetsu, who helped us find bulgogi.  Pray that I can get there on a day the Ghetto store is opened, and also that I can find Tetsu, as I don’t know his work schedule or where he lives, but only remember where he works.  🙂  I know God will work it out! 

I think that’s just about it.  It sounds like I’m far from worrying about this, but one thing I asked for pray for in the Ladies’ Prayer Meeting this afternoon was that I would not cross the line from contentedness to stagnation.  I pray that God would continue to give me the energy needed to make contact and build these relationships with Japanese people.  I have a whole year, yeah, but only a year…and I don’t want to waste any time. 

If you don’t recognize any names, places, events mentioned in here, then please check up with my blog at:  http://xanga.com/pkcricket. (I’m sorry, it’s kind of hard to navigate and find things on my Xanga blog, which is why I moved over to WordPress.  If you go to the calendar and get to the complete list of entries, you should be able to narrow down your search by getting to the May 2008 entries.  Hopefully that helps you.)

Also, I have just a few more pictures up.  Sakura, Samantha and I took a walk up to Oinoyama this evening to see the sunset view from the mountain.  Check it out!:

Links to photos have expired and have been removed.

Enjoy!

In Him,
Sarah ><>

This is one of a series of emails I sent while preparing and living overseas in Japan, from April 2008 to April 2009.  They are mostly for my own benefit, but also for anyone who may care to read them.  Enjoy 🙂

Hey everyone!

Well, I wanted to thank you all for your prayers for the outing on Saturday with Mika and Hiroka.  We had so much fun!  The day was very full, we took off around 9:45a and didn’t get back to the Center until 9ish-p.  First, Mika came and we went over to Green Mall (the Korean street) and watched the parade start off.  It was very short, but really neat, we went over to the train station to wait for Hiroka, she missed the first train, so had to catch a later one. 

We then went to Sea Mall to see the Hokkaido Island Exhibition.  They had all these stands of Hokkaido foods and products.  You could get samples of them and then buy some if you liked it.  The samples were pretty good, even the fishy stuff…but one thing that stood out were the chocolate-covered potato chips.  I guess you can only buy them in Hokkaido, so Mika and Hiroka were really excited about them.  I bought us a box and they each bought one and we took them back to the Center to store until we split up for the night.  Before that, though, we went to the arcade and had purikura taken, which is just photo-booth pictures and you add embellishments to them electronically.  I had done it in China too, but you couldn’t really add designs and captions to those, but the Japanese are really good at it.  We enjoyed making goofy faces and funny poses, and they got a kick out of it.  I loaded them on my Facebook too, so you can see some of them.

After that we walked to the Kaikyo Messe Tower and had lunch at an organic restaurant…not really my taste, and it was a buffet, but they didn’t have a lot of selection, or quantity.  The girls said I ate like a bird, though, because I didn’t get a whole three or four plates of food…those two are pretty tiny but they can eat!  Afterwards, we went back to the Center got Mika’s car and drove to the Aquarium where we saw the porpoises make bubble rings and watched the dolphin/seal show.  Then, we took the cable car up Hinoyama and then hiked back down.  The view was incredible, you could see to the other side of Shimonoseki from the summit.  It was great, I loved it.  After that, we were hungry for dinner and went to Mr. Donuts in Sea Mall and had Chinese food and coffee.  We chilled out at the Center for a little while before the girls decided to go home.  It was a great time.

I had asked you to pray for a friendship to grow between us and that our time would point to Christ.  I don’t know what prompted it, but at dinner, Mika asked me the difference between God and Jesus.  As I was explaining, I took the opportunity to share the Gospel message with her and Hiroka.  It’s difficult with those two because they went to Baiko high school and Hiroka is attending Baiko college.  Baiko teaches the Bible, and they even pray and sing worship songs, but they teach that the miracles and stories never really happened, and that Jesus was just a good teacher.  It’s a shame, but also a wonder that they even teach the Bible at all.  Regardless, as I shared some of the stories, the girls had already heard a lot of them.  It made it easier, in a way, but more difficult in another.  Pray for continued opportunities to share with them and that I would be able to spend more and more time with them. 

(At this point of the newsletter, I shared a difficulty happening on the team itself and asked for prayer.  Something that surprised me when I first went on the mission field (not this trip, but one much earlier) is that other missionaries are not perfect and have issues just like the rest of us.  If I feel inadequate on the mission field, then I’m sure others have sins and struggles as well.  I’m not including what the issue was, just that there was one in hopes that it may encourage anyone preparing for the mission field as well.  People are not perfect – only God is.  You must have grace and mercy for other believers, especially those in ministry and when you are far from home.) 

Well, here are the links to my pictures and a couple of videos for you as well:

Links to photos and videos have expired and been removed.

Have a great week guys! 

In Him,
Sarah ><>

This is one of a series of emails I sent while preparing and living overseas in Japan, from April 2008 to April 2009.  They are mostly for my own benefit, but also for anyone who may care to read them.  Enjoy 🙂

Well, it’s been a week since I’ve sent out an update by email, so I thought I better get one out to you all.  Yes, I’m still alive and loving it out here.  I haven’t had any culture shock, although the reality of what a year means, and halfway around the world, sunk in this week more than any other since I’ve been here.  It brought pretty much a day of heartache, but I have the peace of God that He knows what He’s doing and why I had to be separated from you all for the next year. 

After International Cafe, I have felt much more at ease with my teammates and with my Japanese.  I’m actually starting to remember the names and faces I thought I never could!  Ha.  🙂  I feel more comfortable in my classes and with lesson planning, so things all around are just going great.  I haven’t explored any new restaurants yet, but Samantha and I are planning an excursion this afternoon for lunch and a haircut (for her…I’m not that brave yet!).  There’s a whole in the wall restaurant just a block down from the Center called Brasserie Quixote…a strange mix of language in Japan, but I have always loved the story of Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, so it’s been my desire to go for some time now.  I’ll post the results in my blog.  🙂 

On other notes, Pastor Tony is on a month-ish long retreat through the US, speaking at Liberty University and a couple of churches, and then going to his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in…Montana, I believe.  Please pray for him and his son Titus and the handful of Japanese church members who are with them.  On another pastor note, PT, I was able to bring up your sermons on the computer in the main office!  No worries, I will still be able to learn about the Beatitudes!  Heh.  It was great to hear something from home, I really enjoyed listening to the past few weeks, it made me feel like I was almost back at *FBC. 

Yesterday, I had both my best class and my worst class. The best class, my Super Kids 1 class, is made up of 4 1st grade boys and 1 girl.  They are so great!  I just want to eat them up whenever they’re in class.  Yesterday, I was trying to get them to understand “Stop!”  I made a motion with my hands, moving down and out from my body at my sides.  Without even blinking, Hayato made the same motion and yelled out, “SAFE!”  From then on…whenever they finished something…be it the stack of cards to learn numbers, or the cards to learn colors, or even coloring the crayons on the pages…they all yelled out “SAFE!”  It was the most amazing thing I had seen in a while.  My other class…my Super Kids 2 (aka Super Demons), finally caught on to the whole potato chip rewards system. As promised, they only received one potato chip each this week…and they were so distraught over it, the played Rock Paper Scissors to decide who ate their chip first.  With the goal of a whole bag of chips for next week, they were absolutely perfect.  Playing Hangman with them was another story…we’ll have to work on that concept. 

Yesterday I looked up Shimonoseki on Wikipedia and was sad to see that they only list about 10 notable sites for the region.  There is so much more to do around here than just go to the Wharf, the Aquarium, the Kaiko Messe Tower, Castletown and the Akama Shrine.  Me being the easily amused person I am can think of dozens of great things for the city.  I was sad.  It would be like saying the joys of Cincinnati are restricted to Newport, the Great American Ballpark, the Zoo, and the Museum of Natural History. 

On my way to church today for my Saturday morning class…I passed an elderly woman with blue hair.  Like she had taken a blue marker and run it all through her hair.  I’m learning so much here!  🙂  Keep me in your prayers, this ministry, and the leadership here.  There are some amazing people here and I’m so glad that I get to work with them for the next year.  Also, you could start praying now for God to raise up English teachers for the Center. After July, I’ll be the only one truly on staff…and then someone else should be coming later on, but it’ll be tight.  Pray about it, maybe God is asking YOU to come out here.  (It should be a single lady…as long as I’m living at the Center…but after I’m gone, it can be two single guys.) Regardless…if you ask, they are sure to be willing to work with you.  I appreciate your prayers and your emails.  They are a joy in my week.  God bless ya!

In Him,
Sarah ><>