See ya later, 2011!

How do the months slip away so quickly?! Here we are, already in 2012!

Happy new year everyone! I hope that you got to spend your holidays with loved ones, eating delicious foods, celebrating and resting.

Here is what has been keeping me busy for the last couple of months:

Relief Work

I continue to serve as the treasurer of the national Church of Christ East Japan Disaster Relief Committee. Because of that role and because we all live in the same city, I am blessed to be able to continue to work closely with and support Joel and the three young Japanese people who were selected to organize and guide regular volunteer groups. As the work has changed over the past 9 months, my role has also grown and changed. It seems that I often end up taking care of the miscellaneous needs and whenever I can, offering support by taking over small tasks from teammates who are feeling overwhelmed. It makes my role hard to define, but basically I am still managing the money, communicating with international donors, organizing food for the volunteer teams and standing in the gaps. And God is doing amazing things through all the workers in this relief effort.

At the end of October/beginning of November we were blessed to host a team of counselors. Dr. Dottie Schulz, Dr. Becky Holton, Dr. David McAnulty and Jeff Holland visited Japan to do some trauma and secondary trauma counseling for those of us who were in Japan during the earthquake/tsunami last March and for those who have been working in the relief efforts since then. They were also able to hold a one day seminar to help equip some of the relief volunteers on how to walk with people through grief and trauma.

Since Dottie and Becky are also our good friends, we were eager to host them in our home. I think that Joel, Gaku, Hiro and I were all so encouraged to have them with us for several days. It was a crazy, busy couple of weeks, but it was such a blessing to have them with us. I was so moved by how obviously encouraged those who attended the seminar were. And, personally, it was wonderful to have in Becky a trusted friend to help me articulate the feelings that come with trauma and compassion fatigue and to reassure me that (with good support and self-care) it is just temporary.

At the end of December, Jan Willis (who was here visiting her son and daughter-in-law, Ben and Erica Berry) took a few hours to do some follow up counseling with us as a team. I felt encouraged to talk about how we are healing and slowly coming out of survival mode and into some kind of normal life again.

Fellowship, Fellowship, Fellowship

Considering the rough year that was 2011, and the tendency that immense amounts of tasks has of squeezing out time for relationships, I was so very thankful for the holiday season this year. So from a Thanksgiving potluck to post-new year's dinners with friends we packed in all kinds of time with sweet loved ones for the past 6 weeks or so. And I continue to be amazed at how the Spirit moves to heal and lift us up in the relationships we have with family and friends. What a blessed time we had of celebrating the birth of Jesus, and then celebrating the blessing of a new year!

Furlough

As many of you know, my sweet little sister is getting married in February. So, of course, I will be there, and I am also planning to do some reporting and fundraising as my support situation continues to be a little precarious. I will be in the States from January 18th to February 23rd. I will be traveling and visiting supporters from January 21st to February 8th. The rest of the time I will be with my family.

Please pray with me . . .

~for the continuing relief work. God please be with my dear friends in Ishinomaki; please heal their hearts and continue to restore their lives. Spirit give us strength and guidance as we walk with those who are grieving; help us to show your love and pass on your mercy and grace.

~for Mito church. Father, please raise up a new generation of church leaders in this place. I pray that you will give us disciples to send out all over Japan and Asia to grow your church and glorify your name. Father God, we also pray that you will continue to bring us closer to one another through our fellowship -- strengthen us, unify us and make us your light.

~for my work in Japan. God thank you for giving me a place here; I am so humbled to be chosen to work in this community at Mito Church and in the wider family of brothers and sisters in Japan. Please give me strength to fight for the opportunity to continue doing the work to which you have called me.

~for my sister and her fiance. God, place your hand on Megan and Taylor's relationship. I pray that they will have a strong marriage that brings glory to you. God, please be with them, guide them and protect them. Draw them closer to you and closer to one another. Spirit, rejoice with us next month as we celebrate their wedding and their commitment to love and cherish one another.

Autumn Renewal

Since last I updated, things have continued to be busy and difficult and full and blessed and good. So I am praising God!

At the beginning of August, I traveled with several others from Japan to Thailand to attend the Asian Mission Forum. It was a much needed time of blessed rest and refreshing. I was able to learn from and be stretched by the classes, and I was filled and encouraged by the fellowship and times of worship. I think for most of us from Japan, it was a time of breaking down and being built up again for the work waiting for us to pick up again when we returned to Japan.

One of the best moments for me was being prayed over by a few friends from Singapore and Malaysia -- I was reminded that there are so many brothers and sisters all over the world that are loving and supporting us as we try to serve and obey the Holy Spirit in his work to heal Japan. It was so beautiful to connect with missionaries and other ministry workers from all over Asia -- God is definitely moving here!

Even though I felt refreshed and renewed by my experience at AMF, it was difficult to come back home. Just a few days after I got back I found myself heading back up to help in the relief work. And returning to Ishinomaki, after having a time of rest from the relief work, was almost as emotionally taxing as the first time that I went. The reality is that this recovery is a long work -- there have been vast improvements, but the scope of the devastation is staggering. So we cling to God and just keep doing what we can to help in the healing process.

There is still a lot of debris and damage, and there are lots of goods that are still needed. We are still distributing food and other goods; just last weekend we did a large distribution of heaters and other much needed supplies for winter. But the work is beginning to shift from physical labor to more trauma-care and other emotional support. We are growing closer to our friends there and seeing deeper ways in which we can support them as they try to build new lives and move forward.

One of the blessings I have experienced in service is being able to provide food for our volunteer teams. From the beginning, I felt that it was important to make sure that the volunteers that we sent had balanced, healthy meals to keep them strong enough to deal with the physical and emotional challenges of the relief work. It has been really wonderful to get to share meals with the people we partner with in the volunteer work and also to eat together with the people we have been able to serve. (Click here to see some of the recipes that I have been using . . .)

The Mito church family continues to be wonderfully supportive of the relief work -- several members have gone up to Ishinomaki to serve, many have helped by donating needed supplies and also by helping to organize and load those supplies onto the truck to be transported north. And through all of the craziness of the last 6 months, the church continues to do all their other "regular" ministries and activities.

English Bible Class continues to go well. I am so thankful for the teachers who sacrifice their time to help the students practice English. It is a blessing to see them building relationships with their students. We now have 7 classes, plus a kids' class -- that means 8 teachers, 2-3 helpers, 35 adult students and about 5 kids in the kids' class. Since about two thirds of the EBC students this year are women, I am hoping to start a monthly ladies' activity to create opportunities for the EBC students to them help connect with some of the ladies from Mito church.

Another great blessing that I have experienced recently is some opportunities for relationships with people in the community. I am thankful for the deepening friendships that I have with my language teachers. I attend a Japanese class once a week that is taught by volunteers, and they have asked me to spend some time with them after class helping them practice their English. This new dynamic in our interaction has already brought more opportunities to share my faith and to learn more about their lives.

I am also thankful for a few relationships in which God has blessed me greatly in the sweetness of those friends, but also challenged me in the ways that he is calling me to be a mentor and encourager. It is always surprising and beautiful and wonderful to be able to walk and grow alongside someone in our faith, especially with someone who has just begun to discover what life is like with Jesus.

October 9-10 was the Annual Mito Church Retreat. This year we focused on rest and renewal, and used Psalm 23 as a basis for our devotions. The next week, Joel, Atsushi and I attended the Ibaraki Area Ministry Workers' Retreat, which is a great time for fellowship and connecting with other ministers and missionaries in this area. Right now there is a team of four counselors from the States that have come to Japan to help us as we continue to heal and cope with the emotional effects of the March disaster, and equip us better for the emotional support we would like to be able to provide for those we meet in the relief work.

One more really wonderful blessing from this month was my birthday. I love my birthday! I love to make it a time of celebration and joy with my friends. And this year, my roomies outdid themselves in planning me a dinner and karaoke party with our friends! We went to one of my favorite restaurants for German food.

And then, at karaoke, they gave me an excellent birthday present -- a brand new sewing machine!

Even in the midst of a very busy, extremely taxing, emotionally exhausting season in our lives in Japan, there is still so much joy in my life. I am so thankful to our Lord for the ways that he sustains and nourishes our hearts!

Please pray with me . . .

~for strength for our friends in Ishinomaki. There is still so much to be done, and winter is coming. And there are so many grieving and struggling with the stress of surviving and piecing back together their lives.

~that all of us involved in the relief work will have wisdom and strength as we try to meet the changing needs and bring glory to God in our words and actions. Please also pray for me as my role in the relief work is in a little bit of a transition.

~for Mito church. Please pray that our church community will continue to grow closer to God and closer to one another -- pray for unity.

~as I have just celebrated 4 years in Japan, that I will know God's will for my future (at least the immediate future) and that I will have courage enough to trust and obey him.

~for rest and renewal for Japan. The changing seasons -- the break from the oppressive heat of summer, the changing of the leaves, the preparations for snuggling in during the coming colder months and the first tastes of autumn foods have all brought a feeling of being refreshed. Please pray that this renewal is deep -- that it is full of God's beautiful, comforting, healing peace for the people of Japan.

Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God,

you who have done great things.

Who, O God, is like you?

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,

you will restore my life again;

from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.

Psalm 71:19-20

A New Normal

As you may be able to guess, there are tons of things that have happened since the last time I was able to send out a report to all of you, my dear friends and faithful supporters. So in the interest of keeping this report under control, I am going to give you the highlights with an option to follow a link to the more detailed account. So just click on the highlighted bits, if you would like to read the rest of the story . . .

On March 11th, there was a devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. Mito, the city in which I live, was without power and water for several days. There was minor damage to almost all the houses, businesses and roads and major damage to some older buildings and roadways. We also experienced gasoline shortages and minor food shortages in the first couple of weeks after the disaster. However, compared with Sendai and other cities to the north -- especially those hit hard by the tsunami, we received a rather low level of damage overall. I was also blessed to be able to let my family know of my safety by email within hours of the earthquake. And God was glorified as the members of Mito church pulled together to take care of one another. We were able to get our church family stabilized, and then shift our focus to reaching out into the community of Mito and over the past three months we have been able to join with the nationwide Churches of Christ in reaching out to the north -- to the cities that were severely damaged by the tsunami.

On the 29th of May, I was finally able to share my testimony at Mito church -- I had been asked to share in January, but ended up in the hospital due to my scooter accident; I was on the schedule again in March, but in the days after the earthquake and tsunami it seemed like my testimony was not the message the church needed at the time. So at the end of May, I was back on the schedule again. And the message that God gave me to share about my experience of meeting him and giving my life to him was the same as it had been in January, but somehow the timing of sharing it seemed much better.

Joel, Gaku and I got a new housemate -- Hiro moved in at the end of April. So now there are three boys living on the second floor of my house, and I continue to be amazed at the blessings that God has given me by allowing me to live in community with three men who are really kind to, patient with and appreciative of me. The Holy Spirit continues to make our home a place where we can serve him and praise him and bring others into his presence and his love.

There is so much that I want to share about the relief work that is going on, so I hardly know where to start. Three of us went up to Sendai in mid-April to seek God's guidance about where to help. Then the Churches of Christ in Japan established a nationwide committee to decide how to manage all the financial support that has been pouring in from all over the world. Starting with a 10-day trip at the beginning of April, we have begun sending teams of volunteers to work (mostly in a town north of Sendai, called Ishinomaki). From the beginning of June, we have sent volunteers nearly every week. And God is doing amazing work as we partner with the Be One and Asian Access groups to serve the people of the Tohoku region. (And that is the very, very short version -- for the long version click here and also here.)

I have been given a fairly active role in the relief work, but had to step back a little in the last month in order to concentrate on one of my main responsibilities at Mito church. We decided to start the English Bible Class ministry in June this year (since starting in September last year seemed very late), so I stayed in Mito for a few weeks to focus on preparing the text, organizing the teachers and running student registration for EBC. This year we have 7 teachers and a little over 30 students (plus about 5 kids in the EBC kids' class). We have had two classes so far, and everyone seems to be enjoying getting to know one another and practicing English conversation.

And I imagine that some of you have been wondering about my spleen, so here is a quick update: Of course it took quite a while to get my strength back up after being basically immobile for a few weeks in January, but God protected me and faithfully healed me. Now, especially since I started riding my bike to work a few times a week, my body is strong again and there is no pain or other murmurings from my spleen. I will go in this week for my last CT scan, just to make sure that it is continuing to heal properly (apparently the absorption of the 'dead' part of my spleen could take 6 months or more) before I go to Thailand in a few weeks. So thank you so much for all your prayers and support. I have been so blessed and encouraged by everyone's concern and love.

At the end of this month I will be traveling to Thailand to attend the 50th anniversary of the Asian Mission Forum. Atsushi, the minister of Mito church, will be one of the keynote speakers. Joel, Debi and several other friends and workers from Japan and other parts of Asia will be attending as well. I am very much looking forward to this time of equipping and refreshing in the midst of more hard work than I have ever had the opportunity to do at any other time in my whole life.

Please pray with me . . .

~a praise to God for all of the good things he has done this year. We have been showered with blessings and have been so blessed to see God doing amazing work in Japan. He is so good and so faithful. Praise God for being the bringer of light and hope and joy.

~for all the people whose lives have been changed by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. Please pray especially for those who have lost their family members and other loved ones. Please pray for the children who have lost their parents. Please pray for the families that have lost their homes -- for those living with friends and relatives, for those living in emergency shelters. Please pray for those who are working so hard to clean the muck off of their lives and start again. Please pray that God will lead us to those who need someone to help them, so that they will know that they don't have to face this difficult time alone.

~that God will protect his workers in Japan from the spiritual attacks of the devil. We are all working so hard and some are getting tired and weak, both physically and spiritually. Please pray that we will continue to find strength and protection in the Holy Spirit, because this is a time when we can so easily become vulnerable to temptation and evil.

~for Mito church. God is being glorified in the way that the Mito church family is coming together to support and send workers out. Please pray with me that God will continue to unify and strengthen this little part of his church as we grow and serve.

~Please pray that I will depend on God for his guidance as I try to balance my responsibilities to Mito church and my new responsibilities in the relief work. I need his strength, his wisdom and his love and patience for myself and for others.

Finally! The moment you've all been waiting for . . .

I know it may have seemed like I dropped off the face of the earth, but please forgive me for being lax in my communication and know that I am truly thankful for your continuing support, prayers and love.

I will try my best to give you the highlights of the past three months or so without getting long-winded. Bear with me.

Since last I blogged:

Christmas and all it's delicious, busy, decorated, fellowship-filled, cinnamon-scented glory descends on Mito church with more vigor than I had imagined. I had just returned from furlough on the first of December, and so, tumbled head-over-heels in catching up on things missed and preparing for all the special events in December.

Like the English Bible Class Christmas Party

Then amid all the other regular and special church activities, we had 9 people in our home for Christmas. And it was a blessed time to enjoy friends, gifts and good food.

We started 2011 with a sunrise worship at 6 am on January 1st. And I was off and running again with bible studies, cell group, Sunday school classes, Japanese lessons, meetings, etc. until the evening of the 14th, when all of that came to a screeching halt. On my way from working at the church to having dinner with friends, I had a relatively minor traffic accident on my scooter. That night I had surgery (by catheter, so no scar -- yay!) to stop some internal bleeding and put a 'patch' my damaged spleen, but, by God's grace and protection, the only other injury that I had was a bruise and scrape on my knee. And that was only the beginning of the blessings and grace that our Heavenly Father poured over me in a situation that could have easily been much, much worse.

So I spent almost two weeks in the hospital recovering from my injury, learning all kinds of new things about the Japanese healthcare system, and seeing more deeply that the Mito church community is full of love and generosity. I also received the blessing and comfort of so many prayers on my behalf from all over the world, as well as a generous gift from my sponsoring church that was so helpful in covering medical and other expenses that come with a traffic accident.

I was unable to work for about a month, so now that I am back to working full-time, I am playing catch-up again. I feel so blessed by the people here, who picked up my responsibilities while I was healing and did so much to take care of me.

Now I am looking forward into a couple of months that promise to be very full and I have faith that God will continue to bless Mito church as we go through a season of transition at the end of the fiscal year.

In March we will be saying goodbye to some of our members who have decided to return to America after this school year of teaching English. And in April we will welcome a new batch of teachers.

We have also decided that we will begin this year's English Bible Class ministry again in June, so I have already begun thinking about and preparing for that.

Please pray with me . . .

~for safe travels and blessed service for the group that is going to serve in Siem Reap, Cambodia (this includes Joel, some members of Mito church and others from Japan, Singapore and other Asian countries). Please remember the kids in your prayers too. God is working in hearts of Christians in Japan and Singapore to raise money to send some of them to school and provide others with clothes, school supplies and other necessary items.

~that God is working in the hearts of the participants in our EBC ministry. We hope that they have been touched by their time studying the Bible, and that they will be drawn into our community and to our Lord, Jesus Christ.

~a blessing over the English teachers that are preparing to return to the States -- may they be comforted as they say goodbye to life in Japan and blessed as they readjust to life in America. Also, pray with me over the preparation of the new teachers coming (7 coming as vocational missionaries, 5 coming through Mito's sister city program with Anaheim California).

~a prayer of thanksgiving for my speedy recovery from my accident, and all the other blessings I have received along the way. And also please pray for me to continue to heal without incident. (The doctor says that my spleen should be completely done with the healing process in about 5 months.)

A Fine Fall Furlough

On December 1st I returned from my second furlough since I moved to Japan, just over three years ago. I spent most of October and all of November gathering about 12,000 frequent flyer miles, driving another 4,000 miles across 9 states,and seeing the sweet faces of my supporters (i.e. my family and friends). I am not sure how to report about this except to say that there were some really good parts -- like all the kind, generous people who invited me into their homes and let me spend a night or two or several on their couches, air mattress and guest beds -- and there were some difficult parts -- like my grandpa passing away the week before Thanksgiving. But overall I feel like God gave me many opportunities to share about the work that he is doing in Japan, and I pray that he will provide the support that I need through the chances that I had to share with people about the financial challenges of my work.

Here are some highlights from my travels:

An excellent afternoon with Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Jim before he passed away

Thank you, Jesus, for the sweet gift of that time together.

A very encouraging time with the Holtons

Bonus: a mini-tour of the city for my first time to Chicago

A little time with Saprina, my friend, supporter and former roommate

Some time to be silly with my little sister

And some really wonderful time to be with my Mama

There were, of course, many more good things that I forgot to take pictures of or that simple won't fit in the report. I am so thankful for my time to reconnect with my supporters. Thanks to everyone who listened to my stories of the Holy Spirit moving in Japan! And thank you to those of you who took time out of your busy lives to encourage me and refresh my spirit.

One of the other huge blessings that I have received since the last time I sent out an update was the establishment of an official relationship between me and the Mito Church of Christ just before I left in October. I moved to Mito as Joel's apprentice this year in the spring, and I have now been invited to stay and continue working as a member of the Mito church's staff with a commitment until March of 2012. However, I am hoping to stay for at least three years from now. Please pray that God will make that a possibility.

Please pray with me . . .

~a praise for the opportunity God has given me to continue to serve him in Japan.

~a praise for the safe travels that God gave me over the last two months.

~that God will continue to bless the English outreach ministry at Mito church, and that he will give me wisdom and guidance as I try to work towards growing the ministry and the ways that the foreign and Japanese church members can find a place to serve in this evangelistic outreach.

~that God will grant safe travels to Joel and the group that he has taken to do mission work in Cambodia this month -- and that God will move through them and their service.

~that the Holy Spirit will be working in all of the unique opportunities we have to reach out and share during the holiday season.