September Focus

Good morning! :)

And what a beautiful morning it is too! The kids have happily gone to school, Jiyeon is still sleeping (wish she'd slept more at night!), and I haven't had breakfast yet so am a bit hungry (don't want my cereal to go soggy if Jiyeon wakes up while I'm having breakfast so am working instead), but I'm pleased as punch :) that I get to write this month's Focus on the first day of the month. Yay! :D

We actually have a pretty busy month coming up so your prayers for us and the many people that we meet would be greatly appreciated. My devotional this morning was on Matthew 5:13 - You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Please pray that we'll be salty salt, salt that makes a difference in the lives of those we meet.

POPS and JOL (Joy of Learning, free English lessons for Japanese) meetings start this month at SCVJCC. I will be taking Jiyeon every other Tuesday morning to POPS and every other Friday morning to JOL. I already started connecting with some of the Japanese moms when I went a few times before their summer vacation period. I'm excited about meeting them again and deepening our relationship, as well as to meet new moms too! It's a great outreach that SCVJCC provides to the Japanese community, similar yet very different to the Smile Club program and the English classes we have at Hiroshima EV Free Church. It'll be a great way for me to keep up my Japanese, maybe even improve my Japanese, and learn some new ways to teach English to Japanese. I'm also grateful for the opportunity to be able to help one of our supporting churches while we're here, too.

School events for the kids start this month with our first PTA meeting happening tomorrow! I'm so excited!!! It's all going to be in English!!!!! :D I'm excited about meeting the kids' teachers, the staff, other parents, and getting to look around the school too - or does that happen on Back to School Night? I dunno. Can't remember from my own childhood. If I don't get to do all of that at the PTA meeting tomorrow, I'll only have to wait a couple of weeks for Back to School night on the 17th. I also have Sungjae's parent-teacher conference on the 8th and I'm sure I'll have one for Juhee too at some point this month. Can I just say... I'm so LOVING the fact that all of their school communication is IN ENGLISH!!!!! (Just in case you couldn't tell.) :D

OK... Time to calm down... :P

Here's our schedule so far for this month:
1st - POPS at Santa Clara Valley Japanese Christian Church
2nd - PTA Meeting
3rd - Berryessa Valley Church's Missions LifeGroup
6th - Peter preaching at both Pathway services, Jenny sharing at small group following the services; Dallas Korean Church reunion BBQ in Santa Cruz
10th - Pastor's Wife Fellowship reunion dinner
11th - LivingStones's Christian Church's families "large" group meeting (probably won't be able to attend because...)
12th - Peter preaching and Jenny interpreting at New Vision Church's Early Morning Prayer Meeting (6:30am!)
15th - POPS at SCVJCC
18th - Joy of Learning English classes for Japanese women at SCVJCC; hosting LSCC small group in the evening
19th-20th - Back down in LA to meet with Rev. Billy Kim, the Senior Pastor of one of our supporting churches in Korea, who will be speaking at Sarang Community Church. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with Sarang. We'll be driving down all day Saturday and then driving up straight after lunch on Sunday, arriving back home pretty late, so please pray for travel mercies and for our tired kids to be able to get to school on time and in good spirits on Monday morning.
26th - LSCC's Women's Ministry event (not sure if I'm just attending or speaking yet)
27th - Peter preaching at LSCC

Juhee will be starting keyboard and cartoon drawing lessons, and Sungjae will be starting soccer and gymnastics lessons this month + we're continuing with Juhee's Japanese studies and Sungjae's English studies after school, so weekday afternoons are going to become increasingly busier. I'm so grateful for community center and YMCA scholarships that allow our kids to take all these lessons and more for a fraction of the cost.

We're also looking forward to play dates at friends' houses and to having friends come and play at ours too. As Peter always used to say when he was leading youth ministry, you have to Play Together, to Pray Together. There's nothing like playing together and sharing a meal together to deepen relationships to initiate more heartfelt prayer for each other!

OK, time to go to POPS.

Thank you so much for your love and prayers. :)