New Sister!

Yesterday Joel, Debi and I drove down to Hitachi, Ibaraki (about 2 hours and 45 mins away) to see our friend Kaori get baptized. Kaori has been studying the Bible for a few years now. I got to know her last year when I went to Cambodia. She was in my international group and we both were from Japan, so we did lots of different things together during that mission trip. She is a very kind and gentle girl, and God has grown a beautiful faith in her heart.

Kaori has been thinking about getting baptized for about a year, but delayed her final decision in order to give her parents some time to get used to the idea and accept her decision. We were so happy that she decided to join the family that we took the afternoon and evening off and made the trip to surprise her. Praise God for bringing this daughter into his fold!


Please pray for Kaori and her commitment to live the rest of her life as a child of God and in the grace of Jesus.

Birthday Sunday

Each month, on the second Sunday, we have a lunch to celebrate all the birthdays in that month. We invite those people with birthdays to share about what they would like to do or how they would like to grow in the next year. Then we pray for them, and praise God for the blessing that they are to us.


We all eat lunch together after church every week; Debi, Joel and I take our turn on Birthday Sunday. I am in charge of the cake.

Returning home

When I returned to Japan after my first trip to America since I moved here I was surprised by how much I felt like I was returning home. As the plane descended above Tokyo my heart skipped a beat at the sight of the coast of Japan.

Then as I exited the immigration area there was a sign that I have seen many times that says "Welcome to Japan" -- but this time I noticed the sign in Japanese above it that says おかえりなさい, which basically means welcome home. And maybe it was just my excitement at not having completely forgotten all the Japanese that I learned this past year, but I really felt like that sign was for me too. Despite all the times that I still feel horribly out of place here and frustrated by my inability to understand the language and culture, Japan somehow feels a little like home. I believe that is a gift from God -- it is a reminder that he called me here to do his work.

秋 -- Aki, which means Autumn

芋煮会 -- Imonikai

In October I experienced my first imonikai. The very first one was my friend Shuichi's neighborhood imonikai.An imonikai is a gathering outside, usually near a river, at which the people prepare together and eat a soup called imoni. It has meat and vegetables in a miso (fermented soybean product) or soy sauce flavored broth. The miso flavored way is the "Miyagi prefecture way" and the soy sauce flavored soup is from Yamagata prefecture. I got to try both.

The neighborhood imonikai was on Saturday and our church had an imonikai on Sunday. In one weekend I had two great experiences of this tradition, which is so popular in this region of Japan.

Like Peter

Recently, I was reading Matthew and was particularly struck by the story of Jesus walking on water. The Holy Spirit opened my heart to see how I have been like Peter. And in that moment, I felt the full weight of my sin of not fully trusting in Jesus, but I was also filled with a sense of hope. When Peter stepped out of the boat, he fully trusted that Jesus would keep him afloat. However, from the outside of the comfortable boat, everything looked different and felt scarier; so Peter started to fear, forgot to trust and began to sink.

I stepped out of the boat into the mission field, because I felt Jesus calling me to bring his love to the lost. I knew and tried to constantly trust that the Holy Spirit would take care of all of my needs and fulfill his purpose in my life -- to glorify the Son and the Father. Yet, on more than one occassion over that past year I have doubted; I have felt like I was drowning. But my hope remains, because Jesus is always there to catch me, to faithfully keep his promises, to cover me in grace.

God is calling all of us to step out in faith and trust that he will not let us drown.

Spring in Sendai

Spring in Japan is beautiful!!! The cherry blossoms were in full bloom for a few weeks in April and now everything is green or blooming . . .