July Update

Family Update

During the day in Okinawa it gets incredibly hot! However, during the evenings, after 5, the weather is reasonable, and our family loves to go to the ocean to swim and play in the sand. In Okinawa it is okay to have campfires on the beach and we had a hot dog roast and made s'mores. 
The girls are enjoying the break from school, but missing many of their friends that are out of town. Although we've been working during the day, we've enjoyed the more flexible schedule that summer brings and some extra time with our girls. 

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Summer School

This month we were busy with Summer school. As Principal, Megan continued to interview prospective students and register them while updating the Kindergarten classrooms. These classrooms haven’t been updated since the school was built! Andy assisted in the second grade class and took care of the technology needs of the school. New playground equipment is being installed and new science curriculum ​has been delivered and ready for the teachers in a few weeks.

Japanese Preschool

Even though it is summer school for OCSI, Andy still has the oppotunity to teach English and the Bible to the Japanese preschool, and recently Mia, Naomi, and Elilya have come and helped me. I love getting my girls involved in ministry as much as possible, and the older they get, the more they can be involved. ​

BBQ!

We had a nice BBQ party at our house this month. Serveral of our family friends and neighbors came. We bbqed hambergers, hot dogs, and some steaks.  After eating, all of the kids had a water balloon fight and ended up completely soaked. Then we played the Japanese version of a pinata, suika wari. In both games, the person whose turn it is is blindfolded and has a stick, then has to spin around 5 times. Then instead of hitting a pinata, they try to hit a watermelon on the ground. As soon as the watermelon is split or broken up, then everyone eats it!  

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Next Steps in Ministry

After having several people suggest to us to have a Bible study at our house, we have started praying about this opportunity or the possibility of adding a middle school ministry outreach through the school.  We have so much happening in our lives with raising our three girls and carrying a lot of responsibility at school, we don't want to overstretch ourselves. Please pray for wisdom as we want to make a as big of an impact on Japan as we can, yet not push ourselves to burnout.

Preaching
Andy continues to preach at the Higashi-ku church in Sapporo via video conferencing. I started a series on the book of Philippians. The congregation  remains very close to our hearts and we love to stay connected to them. It is so nice to have the technology to be able to remain in contact.  Here is the church website that I helped set up for them.  https://www.higashikuchurch.com/