Dear Friends, Sisters & Brothers – It’s Tuesday morning,
the beginning of our last full day in Japan – it’s hard to believe, the time
has gone by so quickly. It’s 6AM
and both Louis and I are wide awake so we just got up out of bed and turned on
the lights. We don’t have to meet
the others until 8:30AM for breakfast yet our bodies won’t allow us the luxury
of sleeping in late when we have the opportunity.
It has been such a blessing to serve on this mission. Before coming over here I was concerned that my lack of
Japanese language skills would cause me to miss out on a lot of conversations
and make me an outsider to much of what occurred here. Seven of our team members are bilingual
– allowing us to interact so much more with the people of Chino than I have
witnessed with the first two missions I served on. And of the three of us who are not bilingual, Diane knows a
great deal of Japanese and is able to communicate if not converse at all times. And Monica has learned more and more
Japanese each year and makes a great effort to use the language she has
learned. She is fearless in
speaking and learns quickly from the corrections given to her. I appreciate all the team members for
interpreting and translating for me when I have asked them. Their patience with me made my
experience this year so much more blessed than I think any of them may know –
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
In past missions I knew most of the team members before we began
preparations since we were all from the San Fernando church. This year there were six members of the
Chino team from South Bay Japanese Christian Fellowship – and the only one I
knew from before was Tsuguru. So
again, I was concerned that I might again be the outsider to all these people
who knew each other from before.
But I have been overwhelmed by their friendship, generosity, and
especially their love. My heart is
so deeply touched by them all as my eyes began to water right now. I should not be surprised, but this
team was very close to one another and much of the credit goes to the South Bay
people – but of course great thanks go to our loving God. I was always confident that the
activities would go well, everyone put in so much time and effort into the
preparations and we had so much prayer support as with all of our previous
missions. And I knew that the team
members would do a great job – the team members whom God called to be on this
mission were wonderful people, carefully chosen by God for their skills and
talents that would blend to serve the people of Chino, to serve their fellow
team members, and to serve God with excellence. But I have been most impressed by the depth of God’s love in
each of the team members. It has
been clearly evident as they have interacted with the children who attended EEC
along with their parents, and it has been so well expressed in their
interactions with the people of the Chino church. When we return home, it will pain me to no longer be in the
daily presence of these wonderful team members – these dear brothers and sisters
will always be embedded within my heart.
And
I want to thank all of you for your financial and prayer support. Without that support, none of this is
possible. I’ve heard other people
say that when they serve on missions, that they take all of their supporters
with them as they serve. All of
our brothers and sisters in Christ help mold us into the people we are. Your friendship, grace, and especially
your love has been used by God to make us better people than we could ever hope
to be by our own efforts alone. I
could keep writing for hours and hours, but I think I’ll take a break for
now. Again, thank you so, so much
for your love and support. God
bless you all.
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