December BBQ

So this Wednesday my classmates, teachers and I had a BBQ along a river! James had been planning this since the beginning of the semester so he was pretty excited. He is from California, so he didn't think December was a crazy time to have an outdoor BBQ like all us Midwesterner's did. It was a a little chilly, but really fun.

We ate slowly as things got made from about 3-5. We had hamburgers, steak, salmon, grilled eggplant, grilled lettuce with olive oil and pepper, fried mochi, baked potatoes, miso soup, onigiri (rice balls), senbae (crackers), apples, nikon (like mandarin orange) and more! It took a little while for Eric to get the charcoal going.

Soo...I've been in a squatter toilet, and a porta-potty toilet, but never before now a squatter porta-potty toilet!

It was a really fun relaxing time for our two language classes and two sense's after our classes were out. They taught us about the Japanese food, and we taught them about the American food. Miyazawa Sense kept asking me how you make a hamburger. After that I stopped by tokyo tower on my way home!


And, today Lindsey and I opened up Christmas presents from each other and my family since we are leaving for Nigata tomorrow morning. It was a lot of fun. We put the presents under the cute little tree my parents mailed me!
I didn't open my presents labeled "Stocking" yet, I will bring them so I can open something on Christmas day. Hmm, I wonder what it is?

Have a blessed Christmas everyone!

Christmas Break

I have now completed my first "semester" of Japanese! For our last day of language class on Friday we had a Speech Day. Everyone in our class prepared speeches and presented them memorized to the audience. It was a lot of fun. Here I am by my speech title sign. It says my name on the right side, and song of joy on the left side.

In my speech I talked about my family, what I like to do, Minnesota and I read my confirmation verse in Japanese at the end! People were very impressed and interested in our speeches. I attended a church on Sunday, and the pastor there had been at our speech day wanted me to give my speech again for their congregation! The people who came will know a lot more about Minnesota now because so many of the people in our class are from MN and talked about it in their speeches. Here is everyone who came and was involved. After our speeches I played guitar with another missionary so we could sing some Christmas songs and then we enjoyed some treats.

Here is everyone in our class, plus two boys who are in a more advanced class since they had previously studied Japanese. We have soo much fun together! We are really looking forward to our last day of class in March when we will have a Skit day. The skits are bound to be hilarious.

People here in Japan ask me if I get lonely and homesick. But, I haven't at all. It's so easy to stay in communication now with the internet. And, I get to see wonderful friends every day! They are such a blessing.

This will be my first Christmas away from home which will be strange, but it is sure to still be a joyous time. I actually won't be home here in Kawasaki for it either. I will be in more Northern Japan, in Nigata, where there are currently three other missionaries serving there staying with two different families. I am so excited to see what a Japanese home is like and really put my Japanese to practice! It is colder there so I might even get to see some snow!

Here are some of the other things I've been up to recently:

Friday = Speech Day and Candlelight service at ELCA Hongo Church
Saturday = singing and playing guitar for Candlelight service at LCMS Center Church
Sunday = Ikegami Church, tea shopping with my prayer partner Becky, and a Christmas party at Eric and Christie's house (ELCA mission pastor in our language class)
Monday = Handel's Messiah at Suntory Hall in Roppongi!!
Tuesday (today) = Christmas light ceremony in Takenotsuka with Cassie's junior high english class
Wednesday = BBQ with my classmates and Sense in Hatogaya
Thursday = possibly seeing an art exhibit in Ginza with Buddhist and Christian artists
Friday = going to Nigata on Shinkansen the Bullet Train!

So, don't worry everyone, I am being kept plenty busy and having fun this holiday season. Blessings!

First Sunday in Advent

I love Advent! Today was the first Sunday of Advent, and the first candle was lit. I love light and talking about it in regard to faith (thus my blog name and verse dealing with light). I love evening Advent services where in the still peaceful darkness we focus on the light which shines and the hope of our blessed savior soon to be born. I spent a lot of time today putting up Christmas lights and wanted to share the reason why with you.

Today I went to church at Suginami. After church they always eat a curry lunch together! I wouldn't mind getting to eat curry after every church service! After that Jenae (the VYM missionary there) and I helped Linda, a VYM missionary of long ago who still lives in Japan and teachers, decorate her house for Christmas. It is a tradition for the orientation missionaries to help Linda decorate each year. I hung lights all around her house and on the tree. I also put up garland and a lot of ornaments. She has a whole cabinent full of nativity scenes, nick-nacks all over her shelves, and things hanging all over on her walls. Outside she has a lot of snowflake and colored lights and banners as well. A young member of the church in Suginami who played the organ this Sunday named Aki was also helping so it was really fun to get to know her better. She is studying music and currently writing a 100 page paper!

Christmas is the time Linda chooses to really focus on being a witness. New people every year will come by and get tours of her house and she gets to explain the meaning behind things. Taxi drivers, people jogging by, neighbors and more will stop by. She also has about three parties a week starting now before Christmas for various students, friends and guests! I guess some people have started coming to their church because of it so it's worth her outrageous electric bill she says haha. She had to get her house rewired specially so it would be able to handle all her lights, because Japanese houses cannot usually handle that much electric load! She really loves Christmas and literally lets her light shine! She spends hours and hours baking, decorating, playing Christmas music and cleaning. However, she does not do it to spread holiday cheer, she does it because she wants to spread the gospel message for everyone to hear. Pray that many would be led to the light this year.

Christmas Preparation

A voice of one calling:
"In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD [a] ;
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God. [b]
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken." - Isaiah 40:3-5
This week has involved a lot of Christmas decorating! Last night all the new orientation missionaries worked on decorating the lounge of the LLI (Lutheran Language Institute). Charity is very happy with the pretty tree! We listened to Christmas music while we decorated and enjoyed cookies and cocoa.

I also made some decorations for our house. I used origami paper and a patterns to make the wreath and bells. It was kind of fun to not have anything Christmas with me since it forced me to get creative! We do have some Christmas lights which I strung around our living room today.

There are lots of Christmas decorations all around Tokyo that are really pretty. When I went to Shibuya to see the world's busiest intersection the trees were all wrapped in lights.
It's funny to see the KFC's all have Colonel Sanders outside dressed as Santa. I don't know these two cute Japanese kids in my picture with me, but they were just hanging out by this tree and they seemed interested so I said "Ichi tatsu ichi wa?" which means one plus one is? and they say "ni!" which means two...and that's why everyone here has two fingers up in their pictures! I always thought it was for peace. Its what they do to get people to smile instead of saying cheese! But they will do that too, "Cheezu!".

Christmas is coming so quickly! It will be a really busy time with lots of parties and gatherings here among the VYM community for me. I'm really looking forward to spending some time in more northern Japan up in Nigata right before Christmas. Nigata is the other site there are VYM missionaries so we will get to visit the three that are there. However, we will be staying at Japanese homestays! This means that I will get to see what a traditional Japanese house life is like and see how well I can communicate with my little learned Japanese for four nights with two different families.
May you find time to prepare your heart for Christmas this season among the business of preparing food, decorations and gifts. God's Peace.

Thanksgiving!

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever. - Psalm 107:1

I know it was a week early, but we celebrated Thanksgiving with a big dinner on Friday. It was held at Tokyo Center Church, but members from various Lutheran Churches were all invited. It started off at 6:30 with some worship to give thanks to God through song. For those of you camp people who know the song Ha La La La I played that and guess what one of the verses was....bow to a friend! Isn't that great?

Then we went down to the room where we ate and as the food was getting put out we all went around to share what we were thankful for just like my family and other families do. In preparation for the meal I got to be one of the people to help do a lot of the cooking! I sliced lots of fruit and vegetables for stuffing, and made a sweet potato casserole.


For the meal we had bread, canned cranberry, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, some cold salads that japanese members brought, a fruit salad and of course turkey and pumpkin pie! There was nothing left over! People really had a great time.

After the meal the adults stayed in the room and played a game called Bunko. It is a really fun dice game that is a tradition for Amy, one of the missionaries, to play with her family at Thanksgiving. It forces you to move around and mingle with other people.


The kids went upstairs to decorate graham cracker gingerbread houses which they loved! The parents were so impressed too with their creative abilities. Kids in Japan usually don't get to exercise as much creativity as we are used to. Missionaries tell me that when they have their students color something they always want to know what color they are supposed to use where and have a hard time being told to use whatever they want. They are used to doing things in uniform with the group.


All in all it was a really fun and exciting event. We were planning on about 30 people coming and there were 50 people there!!! God is good and has given us so much to be thankful for.

New Friends!

I had soo much fun tonight! きょうよるはとてもたのしです。 Every Wednesday I try to get to the live Jazz concerts that are held at La Cittadella here in Kawasaki from 7-8pm.　まいしゅうすいおびかわさきへジャズのコンサトがいきます。7じから８じまで。 Tonight the band was really good! きょうコンサトはいいですね。I bought a CD, the most expensive CD I've bought in my life, but it is the start of my Japanese Jazz Collection which I'm pretty excited about!

After the concert Lindsey and I headed to Starbucks to study for a language test we have tomorrow. あしたはテスト。スタブクスでにほんごべんきょうをします。We didn't end up studying our actual homework much though. However, we got to study in a way that was much more fun and applicable!!! We ended up conversing with two very fun and nice Japanese women for almost two hours!

It was so refreshing to talk with Japanese women our age, because in the church we don't often get to do that. It was also GREAT practice because they didn't know much English. When we go to the churches people often want to practice their English with us. Through our conversing we realized that our houses are very close! うちはちさいです。They are nurses at the hospital びょういんtwo minutes walk ２ふんぐらいあるいてfrom our house that we pass every day, and go to Karaoke カラオケabout a minute from our house. So, we exchanged email addresses and are looking forward to hanging out later! They were really excited to have someone who can help them learn more English, and I was so excited to finally make some Japanese friends! It feels great to have a breakthrough like that, and be able to communicate after feeling in the dark for so long. Pray that this relationship can continue to be such a blessing to both us as well as them, and that possibilites for witnessing may open up.

I also learned how to type in Hiragana and Katakana lately on my computer which was really exciting so I wanted to share some of that with you!

I also took some more pictures of our house that you might find interesting.

This is a Hibiscus plant that has been blooming beautifully!

The street where we live...the side of the street my bedroom window faces.

You are supposed to hang your futon (our bed mattress) every day, beat it, and lay it back out in the evening every day...but that usually doesn't happen in our busy schedule especially if it might rain. But today was a day off and the weather was beautiful, so here are our futon (our beds) hanging out.
Our front door.Our address sign or something like that.View from our front door up at the window of our study/laundry/workout room.
View outside to the hibiscus plant from our living room.

That's all for now. Much love! God Bless.

Finally Fall

Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. - James 5:7-8

When I left Minnesota the leaves on the trees were about to change colors. That was over a month ago, and the leaves are just starting to change here in Japan. But it was worth the wait! I often like to walk to the East Garden of the Imperial Palace to eat my lunch in between meetings and classes. It is about a ten minute walk from the Lutheran Language Institute. There are so many trails that you can explore and find benches or tables to sit and eat at. Many Japanese businessmen and women also like to come here to eat their lunch. In Japan lunch hour from 12-1 is very busy. In fact they even close off one of the streets to cars in Idabashi where the Language Institute is because of all the people walking to get lunch. People buy their lunches from various food stands, restraunts where they can get to go containers or the very popular コンビニ (conbini = short for convenience store). The convenience stores here have much more food selection and healthy options.

Every day I come to the park I usually see a different group of school kids who have gotten to take a picnic lunch fieldtrip. The kindergarten kids were very excited to run around, collect leaves, and throw them up in the air or at each other!

I hope to someday paint or draw here like this man and many others do. I also got to visit Ueno Park on Saturday to enjoy the fall leaves. It had been a bit of a rainy day, so everything has a damp gloss to it which I found very pretty.



There is a pretty big shrine at Ueno as well. This is one of 50 stone lanterns donated by various people. They are not used as a lantern to be a light like one would imagine, but rather only for special ceremonies or festivals to purify the area.This is an eternal flame to remind people to pursue peace, and is surrounded by hundreds of paper peace cranes. A man who lost his father in the Hiroshima bombing had gone back to his house and found that part of the bomb was still burning there. He kept it for quite some time as a symbol of his resentment, but later it became a symbol of peace for him. The joined that flame with a flame they started from two shingles at the other bomb site in Nagasaki to create this flame.

These are prayer cards that people can purchase, write their prayers or wishes on and hang here to be answered by the gods. Many are prayers about doing well on a test, finding a girlfriend/boyfriend or for family members who are ill.
There are three small ponds at Ueno park. It looks like in warmer weather you can rent boats to take out on them which would be fun.

Here in Japan it will not be just the changing of fall leaves that will test my patience, but ministry as well. It is difficult to articulate how the culture in Japan makes ministry very challenging, but an experience we had on Friday can maybe help you begin to understand. Lindsey and I were talking to a Japanese man and after we explained that we were here the next two and a half years to be missionaries (which is always a good opportunity) he had two responses. First he asked if we were Mormon, and then he basically said, "oh that's nice, but Japan is not a religous country". Basically the mindset is that it is ok for me to believe what I want, but Christianity is too foreign of a concept or practice for them to ever accept. Japanese may not believe or practice religion, despite their many temples and shrines, but they are still chosen by God as his dearly loved children, and I pray, and ask you to pray as well that one day more and more people here will come to know that.