Facebook Update

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!

Facebook Update

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!

Facebook Update

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!

 

Facebook Update

Big Project Update

First, a few photos are from last Friday morning when I received a phone call asking if we could come to make a final decision on the ceiling of the chapel room. It’s still kind of hard to see how it’s going to end up when it’s all done so it’s been hard to decide, but Peter thought of a compromise between their two suggestions and we’ve decided to go with that.

The next few photos are from Saturday afternoon when I peeked in for just a few minutes. There were so many more wires and tubes everywhere and a new floor plan too.

Facebook Update

 Big Project Update

Hope you’re all enjoying the sound of frogs croaking in fields close to you too

Saturday morning, we went to the new property to review where all of the electrical outlets, lights & light switches, and AC units & outlets would be located. I thought it would be a quick 30-minute walk through the house, confirming everything would be as we’d planned while we were discussing this very thing during one of our many 2+ hour long meetings. Wrong! I should have known by now that these meetings always take much longer than I think they will This one took nearly two hours too

It’s definitely different when you’re walking through the house and seeing where things are going to be in relation to the actual doors and windows, etc. It was still hard to determine whether the location of the outlet was in the best location in some of the rooms as we don’t know what will be going where, but we were able to determine that some things needed to be moved

There are a few things we need to decide on soon like the oven(!!!) so they know whether the outlet needs to be a 110V or 220V one

Still have some other big decisions that need to be made soon with regards to the property too! Like whether or not we’re going to have a cross on the outside and its size if we do get one. The biggest problem is actually WHERE we’re going to get one

Less than two months left now for us to raise the remaining amount. Like He’s done so far, we know He will provide the rest (and maybe more, too)

Facebook Update

COVID brought about a lot of changes in our lives, one of which was the start of our Saturday evening English services at home. It’s usually our family + 1~3 others.

I recently asked Juhee and her friend who comes most weeks to start taking notes of Peter Oh’s sermons for us to discuss during my pre-Grade 1 Eiken English class with them. I decided to ask Sungjae to start taking notes too to help Sungjae to try to stay awake and to help improve his English too. Today, I asked Jiyeon to write something too! She can write in Japanese, but not really in English yet, so I just had her copy a title from the passage Peter preached on today and then had her draw something related to what she wrote. She did a great job!

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!