Last day

Today was our last full day in Japan. In the morning we had breakfast and the Luke and Ruth did some reading with dad while I colored pictures for a church lesson about Christmas. The kids went off to school and I did more coloring. We had lunch and then Mr. DeVerna, dad and I went to pass out tracts. We did a lot of walking and saw a lot of spiders and in the end we passed out 60 tracts. We got home and had a snack and for dinner we had miso soup and rice.

Camp and Iruma Church

Today Mr. Knox, Dad, and I all went to help work on the Izu's church in Iruma. Mr. Knox picked us up at around 8:30 and we drove to the camp. We helped put away some futons that had been cleaned, and took some others back to the van. We also swept the floor of the boys cabin and folded up the mats. Then we drove to Iruma. We got there and looked around. Mr. Knox and dad noticed one of the beams on the front of the church was rotten and we decided to replace the whole thing. We drove to a big store called D2 and looked for wood. We couldn't find any that was the same thickness/width/length so we ended up getting far less wide pieces that were the right thickness. Once we got back to the church, Mrs. Izu had prepared food so we ate that. Last week I had talked to her and told her that I like chicken and apple pie so the lunch had chicken and she baked us an apple pie! It was very delicious. When we were done we got back to work. There was sawing and nailing and climbing on the roof. Pastor Izu got back to the church while we were still working and he helped us. We also painted the beam, and made a post for a little fence and painted the fence. It started to rain a little bit before we were finished so most of the painting was actually done in the rain! When we were done we went to english class for lower elementary school kids. It was very similar to the other english class we helped with, and lots of fun. 

Undokai and Church

The past couple of days have been pretty exciting.  On Saturday, we experienced Undokai.  It was fantastic timing because something like this only occurs 1x/year.  Basically, the Japanese pre-school puts on an event where the kids demonstrate various skills like running, tug-of-war, shooting balls into baskets, shooting balls at something that looked like a piñata but was plastic and loosely held together with tape and when opened it unrolled a flag with a bunch of confetti.  The day went from about 9am until 3pm with an hour for lunch.  Luke ended up spending the first part of the morning with John Knox at a local school where John teaches english.  Luke met the principal and vice-principal and setup a color matching game in order to teach kids from the elementary school some english.  Back at Undokai, during lunch, everyone sat on their mats (no shoes) and quietly ate together while some soft music played.  It was all ages and it was a really neat picture of this community coming together.  Also, they would bring in all different family members to play games at various times so it was a real family event.  We met the principal, vice-principal (a professing Christian), and the charirman of the school who spoke english very well.  We are writing this at the end of Sunday and we got back from church about an hour ago.  Church started at 10:30 and about 30 members were there.  They have all been so inviting of us being there.  We sang some hymns (in Japanese), read Scripture (in Japanese), and then Dave gave his testimony (in english while John, the pastor, translated).  After that, the children were dismissed for a lesson which Dave went back to help while Luke stayed in the service.  It was the opposite strategy last week.  After service we shared a delicious meal together of chicken cutlets, beans, rice, squash and noodles.  Staying together was very enjoyable.  Luke woke up not feeling well so he did not share his testimony in the morning, but there was another service in the evening which he did along with Dave.  At the second service there were more worship songs to sing but this was a service where everyone was speaking english.  Sharing what Christ has been doing in and through us is a blessing and we are thankful to have that opportunity.  We have some more things to do this evening, but will leave you with some pictures today.  Enjoy, God bless you, and thank you for your prayers.  Luke and Dave

Tokyo and More

Here's what we have been up to the past several days:

1. Thanks for praying about the DeVerna's daughter.  She was released from the hospital and that was an answer to prayer.  Now she is crawling all over the place and has big smiles for everyone.  Also great to have Karen here as everyone missed her.

2. We took a trip to the Peony Walk mall a few days ago.  We were able to pick up some necessities, have some lunch (Dave had a boat load of bread and Luke has some delicious Sushi).  Later that night was prayer service at the church.  We actually walked all the way to the church on our own without getting lost!

3. Thursday was Tokyo and we were gone for 13 hours.  The train system is well orchestrated, but confusing.  Luke and I were happy to follow Daniel's lead and he didn't disappoint and we didn't lose him ;)  We ventured up 46 floors in the Tokyo Metro Govt Building and the views were great.  We saw a sign for purchasing 'Great Japan Stuff' in the souvenier shop but didn't purchase anything.  Next was the NS Building up 25 floors.  There was an amazing huge Seiko Watch that was about 4 floors in height and powered by water that we saw.  We ended up eating at Subway and Daniel ate a shrimp sub while look and I had something more normal ;)  We went to the Edo museum from there to understand a bit more of Japanese history and was not disappointed.  The travel home was long and the trains were packed, but we did make it.

4. Beautiful day today with the DeVerna family.  We really enjoy being with them. Tonight we went out to eat dinner at an udon place with the Knoxes and William and Lena(?). After eating we went to the church and played some ping pong which was really fun. 

Camp clean up

Today we finished cleaning up the camp. We took down a big tarp and brought the futon to the Knox's. Then, later in the day we helped out with English class for Ayumi, Cecilia, Marcos, and Maya. 

Camp prep day two

Yesterday Mr. Knox picked dad and I up and drove us to the camp. We did some final preparations with the sleeping arrangements and food, I didn't take any pictures but we finished pretty quickly. We also went to the Knox's church and got some grape soda from a vending machine. Then we headed back to the deverna's where we stayed for the rest of the day. For dinner we had some yakisoba which are noodles.

Our First Day

We had a very productive first day in Japan.  We still have bit of jet lag and were up in the middle of the night which really was like afternoon back home.  The combination of excitement about being here along with a long flight and bus trip to the DeVerna's house made our bodies feel weird.  We woke up yesterday morning a little after 6am, I think, and got acquainted with Daniel, Karen and their children Malachi, Luke, Ruth, and baby Hannah.  After a filling breakfast and a little play time, we were off to the grocery store to pickup some lunch.  We would need this as we were spending the day to prep for camp.  This is another location where about 30 kids will spend overnight Sunday and all day Monday as part of the DeVerna's church.  The pastor of the church is John Knox and we picked him up on our way.  Once we arrived at camp we mowed the lawn, weed whacked, cleaned, and built a level area to pitch a tent.  We didn't eat anything too unusual, but did enjoy a green tea kit kat or two, some pocket (kind of like a chocolate covered pretzel stick), and a persimmon (tasted like a canteloupe. Luke had a peanut butter sandwich and I had a salad.  The other interesting thing is that this is the season for spiders and not just small ones. I never saw spiders or webs as big as we almost ran into in my life.  So, we picked up some bamboo to clear the walking paths.  At the end of the day, we checked out a waterfall as a nice oasis.  The mountains were beautiful as well.  When we got back home, we pretty much were about to fall asleep.  We ended up calling it a night before 8pm.  We are ready for a new day.  As you are reading this, please pray for the DeVerna family as they have some illness and particularly little Hannah as she has been having a fever and not able to keep things down.  Please pray for our family while we are away. God bless you!

Toronto

A view of Lake Ontario 

Next stop.. Sakado

Here we are at the airport with bus tickets purchased. We went through customs, exchanged currency, picked up a beverage, and got in touch with our friends. We will be at the DeVerna's by 10pm local time which is 9am on the East Coast. So far so good. Thankful to God for answered prayer arriving safe!  We also saw our good friend Steve M. as he waited for his flight coming back to the U.S. What are the chances? God is good!

Arrived At Logan

We got to Logan at and checked our bags! Right now we're just chillin until about 9 when we'll go through security and wait for our flight.