The past three Sundays our team has had the opportunity to present lessons and share with the San Fernando and South Bay churches. On June 30th and July 7th we took over the Kid Venture (Sunday school) time at San Fernando Valley Holiness Church. We led the kids in singing and movement to songs and participated in games and craft activities with them. It was good for us old folks to loosen up our joints a little before doing the songs with the kids in Chino, and it gave everyone an idea of the types of things that might work well with kids and things we may need to be better prepared for. Then on July 14th we presented the service at South Bay Japanese Christian Fellowship. It is the same service we will present to the Chino Christ Church our first Sunday there, July 28th. We actually presented the service twice - first for the Japanese-speaking service and then for the English-speaking service. Daniel was the chairman for the service; Kumi and Tsuguru gave testimonies with Louis translating for Tsuguru; Monica giving a prayer with Erica translating; Don gave the message with Fumi translating; Shizuka did a great job of leading our singing, with Nozomi Yang from last year's team accompanying us on piano; and Diane shepherded us through all of this. The services went well with the speakers sharing of how God has been faithful in caring and providing for them and their families, and the singing was wonderful. We had only a couple of opportunities to practice singing together and we have mostly practiced individually with recordings of the songs. But I thought our voices were strong and blended very well together - indicative of how God has blended the ten people on this team to be so much stronger than any of us can be as individuals. The strength of the voices together covers up my voice cracking, squeaking, and being off-key. Together, God can use us in spite of the differences in our talents and abilities to make a strong and powerful presentation. After the service we practiced the four songs we will sing at the second service in Chino, on August 4th, and then went out for a wonderful lunch (Japanese food, of course). It was a great way to complete the day's activities - sharing a meal together and enjoying the fellowship of one another. I'm sure that everyone will say that we are much more of a team - much more united in our hearts and our efforts than we were before Sunday.
The mission is coming upon us very quickly - we leave from LAX on Wednesday, July 24th. We depart @ 3:45PM on Singapore Air on flight SQ 0011. The team will meet at the Singapore Air counter at 12:30PM to check in at 12:45. We will hang out with friends and family at the 2nd floor food court at the Bradley terminal until we go through security at about 2:15PM.
We would greatly appreciate your prayers during these last few days before leaving for Japan. We ask for God to help us use our time wisely and efficiently to complete any last plans and preparations that have to be made; we want our hearts to focused upon serving our God and the people we will encounter in Japan; and we ask for a blessed partnership with Kawano-sensei (the pastor of Chino Christ Church), his wife Chihoyo-san, and the people of the Chino Christ Church in Japan.
God bless you all.
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