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!