Week Two Review

(Top: "Happy Smile Xmas!" Couldn't resist capturing this rather unique season's greeting at a huge shopping mall in Hiroshima.)

(Bottom: In the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Sara Juhee's sitting in her own seat too! She's been a little trooper during our travels.)

God's been really blessing our time here with divine appointments and the beginning of life-long friendships. So much has happened, it's hard to process and to summarize but I'll try...

Tue, Nov 4 - Met a friend of Peter's sister-in-law and had a delicious Korean meal. After the meal at her restaurant she took us to the store next door and helped us buy some essentials so I could cook for us better, especially for Sara Juhee. She gave us lots of helpful information on education of little ones in Japan too.

Wed, Nov 5 - Rest and preparation for the following few days.

Thu, Nov 6 - Travel to Hikone, just north of Kyoto to meet a family who have been serving in Japan as missionaries with WEC for over 10 years (I think closer to 20).

Fri, Nov 7 - Travel to various locations in Kobe to look into English school franchise opportunities and then off to Sanda to meet a family who have been serving in Japan as missionaries for 20 years with Asian Access.

Sat, Nov 8 - Travel to Hiroshima by shinkansen!!! to meet a family who arrived in Dec 2007 as missionaries with Pioneers, the missions agency we'll probably be coming to Japan with.

Sun, Nov 9 - Time out to rest and family worship at home. Needed time to process, reflect, discuss, and most importantly, pray thru the many things we'd seen and heard during the previous 3 days.

We were able to use our 4-day pass for only 2 days but we still ended up saving - yay! :) We've been trying to write down the things that we've learned from all of these amazing people that God has connected us to and allowed us to meet during our 4 weeks here. We've been challenged a lot by the things we've heard and learned as there were some things we were so sure about that we've had to question. Am I making sense? For example, we were very keen to have "bible study" groups David Watson style, using the CPM Discovery Bible method, but we're learning that it's probably not the best fit for this particular culture group and in this urban setting. But we still need to look more deeply into this 'cause we know that there's at least one Korean church trying this and the Korean learning style is the same as the Japanese (both rote).

God's opening more doors for us and haven't closed any yet... There seem to be many many things that we can do here. But which one? And where? Osaka? Kobe? Hiroshima???