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Usually every 3rd (sometimes 2nd) weekend of each month is pretty crazy for us. They’ve been getting busier since we started having services at home on Saturday evenings and I made dinner for the attendees. Earlier this year, I also started having to go to our building site too. Yesterday and today were no exceptions, but there were some special blessings.

Friday, for Moms&Kids, we only had two parent-child pairs come which was pretty unusual. It was pretty unusual too that I didn’t go out for udon after. However, this was PERFECT, because a new missionary couple moving from Okinawa came to hand out with us towards the end of Moms&Kids and we went out to have lunch together and get to know each other better. We also got to show them around our Promised Land and we were so thankful for their prayers and encouragement! They were really impressed with the new building and the work our carpenter was doing. They kept on complimenting him, his work, and how great everything is. He was smiling so much! He said he felt like he was suddenly working abroad

This morning for Kids English Bible School (9-10am), about half of our usual kids couldn’t come because they had school, but we had a few new kids come and still had 13 there total. After Peter’s praise and game times, Pastor Miyauchi read a children’s book on some of the happening after the resurrection of Jesus and gave a short and very to the point children’s message. He also spoke about the Bible saying that we should love God, ourselves, and our neighbors/others. We memorized our Bible verse for the day in Japanese (Hebrew 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever), the kids got their prizes, and then we sat down for prayer time. I asked them if they had any prayer requests. There were two that I thank God for. One was one of the girls asking that many receive salvation. I asked if there were any kids here who believed in Jesus. To my surprise, most of the girls raised their hands! I couldn’t believe it! I totally was not expecting that. So just to check, I asked, how many of you believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again after three days? The same girls rose their hands again! I was shocked! One boy said it’s so hard to believe… I said that I agree with him. It IS hard to believe and really takes faith.

I asked the group again if anyone has any other prayer requests and one of the girls said, for our sins. What?! Wow. So then I asked them what they think sin is. We had a great discussion about sin and also did a little review on this morning’s children’s message.

Please pray for these elementary school girls who rose their hands today and for all of the kids who are learning more and more about sin, their need for salvation through Jesus, God’s perfect and unchanging love for them, and the message of the Bible!

After KEBS is Kids’ English (10:30-11:30am) and most of the kids stay for both. We sang songs in English and danced, played an alphabet game, had our Japanese Bible time, I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar for story time, and we sang and danced some more! After saying bye to me by the door, one of the little boys said to his big sister, I don’t want to go home yet. I want to stay and memorize more Bible verses so I can get more erasers Oh, what a blessing it is to be here and to be able to share with kids how much God loves them!

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Free School Update

Went on our first Free School business trip today! Us two + our currently one and only staff Nao Akamatsu met around 7:55am this morning to drive about 30 minutes to one of the older and more well-known Free Schools in a neighboring city. We were there from 8:30am observing their classes and then from about 11am till a bit past 1pm, we sat and had a long chat with the founder. It was supposed to be just for 30 minutes, but we had a lot of questions for him and he was constantly interrupted by the students too We learned so much today!

On our way back, we dropped by a stop on the side of the major road that had a fresh produce stand as well as a small old restaurant. Peter and I both had their tempura meal. The veg and fresh were all so fresh and delicious!

So thankful for people like the founder of today’s Free School being willing to spend so much time with us to answer our many questions! So thankful for Nao arranging the appointment and taking notes

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Big Project Update

Today, the windowsills were put together and installed. They’re white cuz Peter won

Tomorrow, the wall panels are going up! They were all stacked inside the house today. They’re going to start upstairs and then work their way down.

It’s going to look so different tomorrow! No more being able to walk through “walls” and no more wood structure being visible

The contractor for the old house texted me a few photos of the roof today. As they were replacing the rusted and in some places broken gutters and replacing the dried cracked steel plates with new ones around the house, they found corrosion on some parts of the copper sheets (?) in the valley (?) in between the roof tiles and there were some holes too So now we’re going to have to pay to repair those too But I’m so glad we found this out now and not after we have a leak!

Yesterday we had 5 people come to the property to finish the cleaning job they couldn’t finish in May because the water pipes hadn’t been connected It’s all finally really clean inside the house now! One thing I noticed when I went in though was that there was something that looked like residue of a big white puddle. There were sprinkles of it over the low table and chairs close by too. They wiped all of the white stuff off the floor and wiped the table and chairs too

 

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Big Project Update

Last Friday, we had to go to the property because the on-site manager wanted to check something with us. The floor plan for the loft already had a wall to the right of the stairwell, but the carpenter and on-site manager had different ideas as to how high they thought the wall should be. So us two + the on-site manager climbed up the ladders to the little loft and sat there crouched in the dark discussing the best option for that one wall

Jiyeon really wanted to go see the progress, so I picked her up from school by car (which you’re not supposed to do) and drove straight to the property. Almost all of the exterior and the flooring is now done! The carpenter said we got really nice floor boards Unfortunately only about 1/3 of the property will have the nicer floor boards, but at least it’s in 1/3 of the property, right? I also told him today that is possible, we would like to use some of the leftover floorboards to fix the floor of the corridor in the old house and he smiled and said he understood. It’s so nice to have a good relationship with your head carpenter

While Jiyeon and I were there, our carpenter said, ”Oh, btw, your older brother dropped by the other day to look around” I was like, um, I don’t have an older brother and I don’t have any family members in Japan. The junior carpenter burst out laughing. Head carpenter said, “What? Really? Maybe he’s your husband’s?” I said, “No, he doesn’t have any family members here in Japan either” He said, “But he said he’s family and we even stood outside chatting and smoking together. He’s from Saga and Korean-Japanese. He looked about 70, so I guess that would make him too old to be your older brother.” We all had a good laugh

We have NO IDEA who this mystery man is. If you know, please let us know

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Today was our 2nd monthly Korean outreach and we had over 20 come today too. We reviewed some things from last time and learned a lot of new things! The kids song for today’s lesson was 곰 세 마리가 Despite having spent most of my life outside Korea I’ve probably sung this song complete with motions thousands of times. Even our kids know this song and the motions too because I’ve sung it with them so often since they were little. It was so fun teaching it to everyone there today!

Also posting Jiyeon’s sermon notes from tonight and last Saturday I tell her what she needs to write and explain the words and story to her. I help her write everything correctly and then she draws while I finish dinner prep in the kitchen while listening to the sermon. She did such a great job tonight and last week. Really hoping she’ll continue doing this!

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Free School Update

We had our first meeting yesterday! Kikumi -san who is on our BoD and Nao, our one and only staff member, came to our house to discuss the topics we want to cover with the staff when we go to visit and learn from a few different free schools during the next few weeks. We also talked about how we’re going to do some things at our school too.

Exciting beginnings! Still a lot to pray about, research, discuss, decide, create, buy, put together, etc, but it’s great to have made an actual start! It’s not just an idea on paper anymore - eek and yay!

Next month, we’ll be having a bigger meeting with all of the friends who have offered to volunteer too. I’m sure not everyone will be able to make it, but it’ll be exciting to have most everyone together and to share more about the vision and specifics of the school.

Heart feels like it’s going to burst when I think about how amazing and exciting this is! So humbling too, to think that God would use us for something so big and so awesome!

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Big Project Update

I WALKED to the property today! Big round of applause please! I walked slowly, taking photos of things that I hadn’t noticed before because I’m always rushing here and there in our car Even then, it only took me 15 minutes to get there

So… our ユニットバス “unit bath” is in! It took two workers a total of 4-5 hours to finish our bath/shower area. Apparently it’s a pretty standard size but it seems so small! We wanted a small one because it’s hardly ever going to be used and the only reason why we have one at all is because it was a stipulation for our loan, but I didn’t think it’d be this small! The ones in the showroom didn’t seem this small… Anyway, it’ll be fun seeing our guest’s reactions when they look inside The bathtub is the old type - small and deep. I hope guests don’t start feeling claustrophobic while showering

We also now kind of have a ceiling in almost all of the rooms! I don’t know what it’s called… It’s like the ceiling panel you put up before the actual ceiling panels… Our flooring has also arrived and is stacked inside the house. Yay! A few other things were delivered while I was there too. Trucks were going in and out all morning. So thankful that things are going smoothly now Praying that things will continue to go well!