The right oven (from Facebook)

One of the challenges of having been exposed to American ovens and enjoying baking but living in a country where even the bigger home “ovens” (like the one we have at home) are smaller than regular-sized American ovens, is the constant desire for an American-sized oven.

One of the things I want to do a lot at our Free School is baking. It can be a great group activity and one in which one can immediately see, taste, and smell (maybe even hear, too?) the result of one’s hard labor.

We’ve debated a few different options… Buy two of the type we have at home? But that would take up a lot of counter space and would require us to increase the breaker’s amperage to above the level of an average household which would increase our electricity bill. A lot of the bigger ovens are gas operated. The property being built now is an all-electric house. We could have gas for just the oven, but it’d be complicated and also has an effect on the safety (?) level of the property. We even thought about getting an actual American oven through a friend who regularly goes to one of the American bases in Japan, but if anything ever happened to it… Maintenance and after-sales service would be an issue. We’ve looked at buying a new electric oven (about $400-$500), changing our whole kitchen to one of the new style kitchens that include an actual oven ($too many 000’s), and yesterday we finally went to a big warehouse that has new and old ovens. I don’t think we found one that is right for us, but it was a good learning experience.

Big shout out to Rocky who made us aware of such stores and is better at finding things than anyone I know who has 20-20 vision, and Rieko who found the store that we went to.

Big warehouse with lots of old and new items, mostly for commercial use. Lots of big pieces of equipment, but inside of most of them actually fit in less than the “big” oven we have at home :( So many ovens of various sizes and shapes, but none that were right for us

After our probably, unfortunately, unsuccessful trip, we went to one of the Korean shops close by. We don’t have one close to us, so it was a rare opportunity for us. We also tried the Korean restaurant upstairs for the first time. It was so nice to see things like jajangmyun and Korean-style fried chicken on their menu! We tried a few different things and it wasn’t bad, but wasn’t great either.

I even tried the plastic glove thing they do in K-dramas (and wasn’t a thing when we lived in Seoul) for a bit but then gave up. So much easier just eating with my bare hands!

Jajangmyun! It tasted more like 짜파게티, what we usually eat at home, than 짜장면ㅜㅜ It tasted ok, just didn’t taste like real Korean jajangmyun. The noodles weren’t the usual jajangmyun noodles either. Or maybe they weren’t boiled properly? Anyway, something just wasn’t quite right... :( 김밥 & 진짜 오래만에 마셔 본 밀키스ㅋㅋ 마늘 통닭과 내가 엄청 좋아하는 통닭집 무!!! 마늘 통닭, 겉은 바삭하고 속은 쥬시해서 좋았음! 맛도 나쁘지 않았음. 양념통닭과 무. 이 통닭도 굽긴 잘 구웠는데 뭔가 좀 부족한 느낌… 양념통닭과 떡볶이 사이의 맛? 드라마에서 이렇게들 먹길래 나도 처음으로 해 봤다ㅋㅋ 한번 경험한 것으로 충분!ㅋ 원래 먹던 대로 그냥 손으로 먹을란다ㅋㅋ

Can’t wait for international travel to become normal again!

Please pray for us to be able to find the right oven for the right price! Our search continues…

Kids obentos (from Facebook)

Last night, around 9:10? 9:15?pm, Sungjae finally sat down to eat his dinner after soccer practice & showering. He asked if he could watch A Week Away MV’s while eating dinner and I said,

“No, we need to talk. We need to have a serious conversation.”

He looked at me and said with a slight smile (I was trying to look super serious, but I guess I was smiling slightly or something cuz he could tell I wasn’t mad/upset),

“Why? I haven’t done anything bad… recently…”

“Are you sure? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“I don’t think so… I haven’t done anything… What do we need to talk about?” he asked, still with one hand on the iPad and one hand holding a spoon

“Something really serious…”

His eyes met mine and we were both smiling. After a slight pause just to keep him in suspense a little longer, I asked,

.

.

.

“Sungjae, what do you want in your obento tomorrow?”

Sungjae’s response:

But joking aside, his grade has had practically all of their field trips and events canceled, postponed, or minimized during the past two years. Some even got rained out. I’m so thankful they had great weather for this final field trip, the one they get to be the big 6th graders walking to the park at the beach while holding the hands of the little 1st graders Didn’t get a photo of him this morning cuz he shot out the door and went with the friends that came to pick him up while I was still helping Jiyeon get ready. Jiyeon’s field trip with the 6th graders was rained out last year so they ended up eating their obentos at school, but she still had fun with the two 6th grade girls she became friends with And of course, she had a great time today, her first field trip as a 2nd grader! Thank You, God!

Sungjae’s obento. He doesn’t eat any veg, but he does eat baby corn (it’s wrapped in ham) and edamame! Do you see his マスク焼け mask burn?

Top left: Jiyeon’s obento. She finished most of it during the picnic (she’s a slow eater) and finished the rest after school. Right: Jiyeon's breakfast. Bottom left: Her bag this morning. Almost the same as when Juhee and Sungjae were in the 1st grade apart from the 健康チェック表 health check form they need to fill out every morning and get checked. Jiyeon's ready to go and she's off!

일본 후쿠오카 소식지

너무너무 오래만에 한국어로된 소식지를 보냈습니다. 오랜 시간 동안 보내지 않았다는 점, 늘 마음에 걸리고 부담이 되었었는데 드디어 내보내서 정말 너무나도 기쁩니다 홀가분하기 까지 합니다!^^ 읽으시고 많은 기도 부탁드립니다.

일본 후쿠오카에서 반길 수 있는 날을 기대해봅니다. 꼭 오세요!^^ 

Structure raising ceremony and more (from Facebook)

Praise God this week is over!!!

Oh, um I meant, what an amazing week this has been! ;)

Last Saturday (April 16th)

One week ago today, we only had the cement foundations down on the Ministry Center, now we have the whole structure up including windows and the front door! Monday was a really big day known as 上棟式 or 棟上げ日. Usually, there’s just one carpenter working on the property, but on this particular day, a big group of carpenters are called in to put up the structure of the building in one day. The wood beams are delivered starting from the day before and the day of and they come all pre-numbered and pre-cut. It was amazing to watch… It was like they were putting pieces of a puzzle together except they already knew exactly which piece was going where. And just like that, in just one day, there was a building there where there wasn’t one before!

The 上棟式 is actually a religious ceremony where prayer is given to a god and sake is thrown (can’t think of a better word) NSEW. We asked during one of our meetings with our construction company rep which god they pray to (god of the earth/dirt or maybe the god of the trees?) and the meaning of the NSEW sake ritual and he didn’t know the answer to either. He said he thinks the prayer is to the earth/land god, but he wasn’t sure. We’re thankful they said yes to our request to not do the ritual and for Peter to say a prayer instead to our God. I said, our God is the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and all creation, so we’ve got all bases covered.

Monday, April 18th, around 8am after Peter’s prayer asking the God of heaven and earth and all creation for safety and protection over the workers

After the 7:45a.m. start, we had to serve tea to the 12 carpenters (isn’t that just awesome?!) at 10am for their morning break, and then packed lunches for their lunch break around noon. I wanted the whole day to be a special memorable one for the workers, so instead of going down the easy route and ordering obento boxes, I ordered kimbap, a couple of other things, made a few things, bought a few things, and then me and my amazing helpers put everything together the morning of. We got the 17 obentos ready just in time! Together with the drinks, we took everything to them, one of our wonderful Christian sisters said a prayer before the meal, and then the 15 workers sat inside the property they’d just erected to eat their obentos I went back and forth all afternoon, and then around 5:30pm, I thanked them for their hard work and prayed in thanksgiving for God’s protection over them that day and for the building to become a place of healing for those that come

Ordered kimbap and two types of Korean pancakes (김치전, 해물파전) 10 days in advance. So thankful for Kikumi-san going to pick up the order for me on a crazy busy morning!

My army of three - Kikumi-san, Michelle, and Nao!

Colorful and nutritious

12 spicy and 5 not spicy karaage (Japanese fried chicken) packed lunches all ready to go!

The workers all gathered together and Kikumi-san prayed to the Creator of Heaven and Earth asking for their continued protection and safety, for blessing on all of the ministries and those that attend, and in thanksgiving for the food, and then the work continued...

It was a little cloudy at times and sunny at other times. The weather was perfect - no rain, but not too sunny either. Thank You, God!

Almost all of the wood panels and beams had our name stamped on them

View from half way up the stairs to the Shinto shrine next door

A very big and heavy bottle of probably very expensive congratulatory sake

Jiyeon went with me almost every day to check on progress <3

We also started renovation work on the old house so we have scaffolding up around both right now. If all goes well, the work on the old building is expected to take about a month.

Scaffolding going up around the old house

One of the things we're getting fixed around the old house are the uneven, broken tiles

Another one of the things they’re working on now is getting rid of the rust and the old, dried out, in some places moldy silicon around the house. It’s very slow and detailed work. So thankful for the workers working on making the old house more mold and weatherproof

This week was also the week all of our English classes were supposed to start back up, but two kids in Sungjae’s class got COVID on Monday so he had to stay home Tuesday & Wednesday. He wasn’t classified as “close contact”, but as a super duper precautionary measure, we canceled our classes for the duration he had to stay home. So that gave us a bit of breathing room to get some other urgent and important things done. Thank You, God!

Today was the day of our first ever monthly Korean class. I’d been asked by so many friends over the years if we teach Korean classes. For some reason, the past few months I was asked even more often than usual. The timing was kinda weird (or I guess I should say perfect, as God’s timing always is), because in our upcoming partnership with two Korean missionaries, they mentioned wanting to teach Korean classes. As a lead-up to those classes, it seemed like good timing to start monthly ones so we can start gathering people and gauging their interest and level of Korean.

Teaching class today brought back memories of my first Korean teaching job at New Vision Church’s Saturday Korean School. I taught the 2nd/3rd generation Korean-American kids who spoke English at home. So strange to think that that was 15 years ago! And now instead of teaching Korean in English, I’m teaching Korean in Japanese!

A one-minute long clip of BTS singing a traditional Korean kids’ song. I was going to do a different one, but one of the moms asked for this one. So after showing this clip, I showed them a video of one we could actually sing along to together, taught them the words, sang it together a few times slowly, and then with the video again. Now the song is stuck in my head! 울퉁불퉁 작은 몸매에~

Lots of other wonderful things happened this week too, like the kids’ first parent observation day at their Elementary school for a while because they were mostly canceled the last two years. I even got to go to the parent observation day of a little boy I adore who goes to a different public ES nearby. I loved getting to see him try out Japanese ES and seeing how loved and cared for he is. Seriously, if I could, I would move my kids to this school.

And then there was also the first ever JEMA Kyushu missionaries gathering that was so sweet and so encouraging (and too short)! Excited to see what God will do with the energy and synergy from that meeting.

The Easter egg hunts last Friday / Saturday were so much fun and of course, Easter service with our fellowship group last Saturday evening was wonderful too

We got to share with the 6 moms and 15 kids that came about Good Friday and Easter Sunday, that Easter is the completion of the Christmas story. Gave them Christmas candy canes and explained the meaning of the candy canes too! I totally think candy canes should become an Easter thing. So thankful we got 200 candy canes from Pathway after Christmas!

Almost all completely sealed and we have windows!!! Because of COVID, there’s a delay on windows and doors. Because our construction company is a major one here in Kyushu, they knew that we had to get our orders in early so had us go around showrooms, pick, and order them last year

Kinda hard to see, but we now have a front door! The house is now completely sealed!

So blessed to be here! So blessed to be serving a loving Father!