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.

Living Water

Isaiah 43:19
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.

This past week we had our fall VYM Retreat. For the first part of the week we stay in Tokyo and have business meetings at the Lutheran Language Institute where I have my Japanese classes. These were to talk about what the missionaries have been doing, process issues, listen to presentations about witness in Japan and even one from Oxford about teaching english. Then this weekend we traveled to Chikura in Chiba prefecture which was five minutes walk from the ocean! The theme for our retreat was streams in the desert, so it was very fitting that we were by water.


It was so great to see the ocean. The waves were pretty powerful and the water was really warm. I jumped in the ocean and body surfed on a few waves! The retreat center we stayed at had a few bikes we shared and could ride along a the beach. It was a great weekend where we got to relax and get away from busy city life.


We also played ultimate frisbee, ate great food and even roasted smores at a campfire. We spent a lot of time in worship and prayer as a group which was very spiritually uplifting, especially since we are usually worshipping in Japanese.


Weren't these clouds amazing?!