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 ><>

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!

Thanks for your prayers, I definitely felt calm and collected when I shared my testimony last night.  It was my first experience with International Café and it was really great.  We had about 20 people there.  Two of my students came to hear me speak, both from my Tuesday night ladies class – Tomoko and Mika.  Mika, who is 21, brought her friend Hiroka, and we had a great time getting to know each other through our limited vocabulary of each others’ language.  Mika is going to miss our class this next week, and then we have holidays for the two weeks following that (two weeks of Tuesday class…the holidays are the 29th, and the Golden Week which is May 3rd – 6th).  We were both so sad that we wouldn’t see each other for a whole three weeks, so I asked if they’d want to do something over Golden Week, since I don’t have any plans.  They were so excited!  We’re going to go on May 3rd to Karato, to see a ceremony that’s performed.  It’s particular to Shimonoseki, and is Buddhist in origin.  The ceremony starts out on the street and then goes up into a particular shrine…which I can’t go into…so we’ll just watch it from the streets, and then go to the aquarium and maybe to the summit of Hinoyama!  It’s the highest point in the area, besides the Keiko Tower, and I’m so excited to get to go up.  There’s a car that transports you to the top, so no climbing (sad…oh well), and then we’ll check out the view.  I hope it’s a really nice day. 

Mika and her friend Hiroka went to high school in the area called Baiko.  There’s also a college, and Hiroka goes to college there as well.  Baiko is a Christian school, so they teach the Bible and they pray there.  It has a really good reputation, so whenever you mention the school everyone gets a look of astonishment on their face.  So, Baiko is Christian mostly just in origin and practice, but they don’t teach any of the supernatural events in the Bible…so none of Jesus’ miracles and whatnot…maybe not even the resurrection.  So, I don’t know how much you can call it a “Christian” school.  But regardless, Mika has a pretty good knowledge of Bible stories, but I know she’s not a believer.  She’s so friendly, though, and has a unique spirit – a personality that’s not very Japanese…meaning she’s very outgoing and expressive.  Her friend is too.  They are so sweet and I’m looking forward to building a relationship with them.

The rest of Int’l Café was great too.  We had good food and lots of great conversation.  I had several people come up to me, Christians and non-believers alike, saying that they got a lot out of my “life-story.”  I’ve never thought that my testimony spoke much, since I was saved at a young age, and never really experienced doubts in my faith, or fell into anything like drugs or alcohol.  But, the things that the Japanese struggle with, at least the ones I’ve met, is the idea of fitting into a mold of an ideal person, and my biggest problems and difficulties in life have been along those lines – Trying to live up to peoples’ standards instead of focusing on who God wants me to be.  Through the whole thing, it was so neat to feel the veils that the Japanese people put over their face so often to be lifted up.  By the grace of God, many of them heard it and were touched.  I’m so grateful for that.  I hope that it raised some questions in their minds and can lead to really good conversations in the future.  The Japanese are very hard to reach…they’re very stand-off-ish, but they don’t let on that they are.  They will tell you, “Sometime I’ll come to church with you.”  But really they mean, I probably won’t ever, but I don’t want to disappoint you, so I’ll just say maybe.  It makes it very difficult to gauge someone’s receptibility to it. 

Thanks again for the prayers and I hope that you all have a wonderful Sunday and week to come.  Later!!

In Him,
Sarah ><>
aka. – Sarah-san
aka. – Sarah-sensai  🙂

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 🙂

I was going to wait until Saturday to send out an email, but I was so proud of myself with this last post on my blog that I thought you all might like to see what my day was like today.  I think that some of you still have not ventured over to my blog to read my daily (semi-) posts, but I think you should!  Here is the post from today…enjoy!

Here is my attempt at photodocumenting:

Today, I spent four hours working on one lesson plan.  It was crazy.  I found out later that the one student in that class wasn’t going to be there today…sooooooo, I’m just all the more prepared for next week!  Anywho, Thursdays, I have to travel to Kawanaka for my classes.  I hopped onto the

and was sitting there pleasantly when suddenly one of these

decided it wanted to go for a trip as well.  Quickly deducing the travesty of not only taking a bird on the train – without a ticket – but how would that bird find its way back to its home, I grabbed my

and started waving it at the bird trying to frighten it back onto the platform.  Unfortunately, it had been raining all day…thus my need for an umbrella…and I began flicking

around my vicinity, and onto a lady sitting quietly, even dozing off, completely unaware of the fiasco brewing about her.  She glanced up quickly, fast enough to see the pigeon hop back onto the platform and so forgave me of my antic. 

Finally, I was at the church and about to start my class with the junior high kids.  They are a blast and good sports.  In fact, they’re such good sports that I coerced them to pose for a picture.  This was the result:

Pretty well worth the crazy train ride, eh??  O-H!

Thanks!!

In Him,

Sarah ><>