Made in March

March is about endings and beginnings for us, as well as for a lot of Japan. It seems a fitting parallel to the season of Lent. Interwoven in this season are my readings about contemplative spirituality. Words like silence, stillness, solitude feel laughably far fetched in this season of life with small children. But we’re trying. “To step into the life that is truly life, we’re invited to practice for our death.” (Huertz, 168) Pray with us as we honor Jesus’ path to the cross, and the humiliation of his death, and anticipate resurrection. “God has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” (M. Luther, found in Lloyd-Jones). 

Luna's preschool girls

Last month we talked about the series of goodbyes: changing schools, daily friends moving on to new patterns. But we also anticipate new beginnings: new school, new classes, and new friends in the neighborhood. 

Renovation project finished

It’s hanami or “Flower picnic” season here, when everyone stops to take a moment to pause for a picnic under the nearest cherry blossom tree. My phone buzzed non-stop last Friday night with groups trying to meet up and coordinate picnics at our local park. I bowed out because of some house construction we scheduled during Ryan’s spring break. By the time I made it to our park in the afternoon, I realized that - with the common denominator of our kids - three of the picnicking groups had introduced themselves, and set up their blankets together in one big party. I wish you knew Nami and Momoka and their crazy girls, Waka, Yumi, Shino and their sweet crew that we’ve known for years, and the Hirayama boys (four of them!), who didn’t know each other before this week, so you could appreciate the beauty of seeing them all sit under the snowing petals, and tearing around the park on each other’s riding toys and bikes. Such lovely chaos. This coming week Ryan is back at work and the kids and I have another week of spring break. Please pray for us as we love and engage these friends. Picnic blanket evangelism. 

Although Ryan wasn’t able to go on the trip because of a schedule conflict with Luna’s preschool graduation, the senior class went to Thailand again this year. Through your generosity, we are able to in turn support one of the local young women, Neung. We’ve been supporting her since secondary school, and she is now two years away from graduating from her college level teaching program. We’re so grateful for the ongoing relationship to this corner of northern Thailand. This year’s trip was smooth and encouraging, and teachers came home impressed by the maturity of this class. We’re so grateful to be able to steward these humans as they finish their time at CAJ and prepare to move out into all corners of the world. Please pray for Ryan as he goes back to teaching tomorrow. 

Back in October we began our relationship with the organization Resourcing Christian Education International. We’re grateful to have their ongoing encouragement and oversight. As you know, in January we began a process of clarifying and improving our finances. We’re happy to say that we’ve reached 33% of our support goal to get us to a healthy financial situation. We feel so blessed by every one of you who are praying for and with us, and we know this is God’s economy and we’re merely vessels channeling his work and resources. Please join us in praying for our financial health as we work towards our goal. 

Masters Finished!!!

February Finale

Making it through to the end of February always feels like grounds for celebration. You too? This month was whirl, kicked off by our new newsletter. We are encouraged, galvanized, carrying the eyes, hearts and ears of so many beloved friends into our daily lives. Thank you for believing in God's hand in us. I feel your prayers in so many of my difficult and beautiful moments throughout the day. You are present with us. 

Met a Japanese Paralympic basketball player at our new school!

CAJ is well into the second semester. I have the privilege of sitting on the board at CAJ for this season, which affords a more granular look at the school and its vision and future. As we introduced ourselves around the room and welcomed a few new members, the years and layers of experience represented reminded me of just how unique of a place this school is. Most board members have multiple hats at the school (parent, alumni, former staff, former administrator), and care deeply about their role in serving the school. We prayed for the current head, as she guides through unique challenges. Please join us in praying for CAJ: most western Christians expect the spiritual formation of their children to be a team effort between home, school and church. For most students, CAJ fulfills all three of those roles. Many students who choose CAJ do not come from Christian homes, and even those who are from Christian homes aren't part of a youth ministry at a church. Their primary experience with Christianity is in their CAJ English, math, history and Bible classes with their CAJ teachers. It's a weighty task. Please pray with us! 

This is a full month for our Japanese school life as well! The Japanese school year ends in March and the new academic year begins in April, with new schools, new teachers, new friends. It's a big change. Our second is graduating from preschool/kindergarten (a three year program in Japan) and will join her older brother in Elementary school, in first grade. We asked for prayer mid-month: for various reasons, we had enrolled our oldest in the local Japanese school across the street from CAJ, which is across town from our home. This year, we took another look at the school we're actually districted for and, after much thought and prayer, we've decided to switch to our closer neighborhood school. We're sad to say goodbye to friends we've made at the other school, but feel good about our choice. Specifically: our new school is a lower economic bracket, there are very few foreigners and no Christians that we know of. Please pray with us that God will use us to reach our community through the connections we build in our new school. So, here we go! April 8 is the start of school for the older two. Number three continues in her second year of preschool, which she LOVES. She's all caps these days. 

End of the year goodbyes. We've got about two more weeks with the graduating class at preschool and with the elementary school classmates. Please pray as we look for ways to continue the relationships we cherish and look for healthy ways to say bye for now to those we will hold more loosely. Especially with the preschool moms, several of these women have been part of our open houses for three or four years, and have visited many bible studies and even church. They are very open, and we pray for ongoing opportunities to connect even though we won't see them on a daily basis. 

Finally FINISHED!!

And personally, this letter is coming out late because I was very sick earlier this week, which is pretty rare for us, thankfully. Nothing too serious, but a high fever made it impossible to do anything except sleep. So Ryan solo parented for the better part of the week! We're grateful for a supportive community and a somewhat flexible work environment. And I'm so thankful to be back on my feet and energetic! Despite ending the month sick, we've had some amazing conversations, self realization and had begun to feel some incredible new growth and balance in our personal lives, our spiritual formation, our marriage and our relationships. It's an exciting time. We feel God is doing incredible things here, and we're pleased to be vessels.  Please pray for protection for our health as we enter the spring. 


Thank you for being with us; we truly could not be here without you! We would be honored to pray for you! Please let us know how you are, and how we could pray for you and your families. Prayer is the most we can do, because it engages the power of God. 

January - changes ahead!

I’ll be honest - our first draft goal for 2019 was “slow down, say no.” We ended 2018 worn thin. Gotta do less, we thought. Take better care of ourselves. Shrink in a little. And then the pastor preached on Matthew 5; “blessed are the poor in spirit; You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world” Eugene Peterson’s commentary says: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. . . . Here’s another way to put it. . . . Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By open up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father.” And as if that wasn’t enough, as I read the text of Matthew 5 on my phone in church, a text popped up on my screen from a single mom I met in rehab and hosted at my house shortly after. After that first visit, she told me by text that she is often too emotionally overwhelmed to get out of the house--her son, like ours, has significant limb differences. This time she texted, “let’s get together again soon!” Ok, ok. So. Seems like life isn’t going to slow down; we need deeper wells, bigger pools of wisdom and courage.

Here’s our new goal: (drum roll...) deepen our pools of prayer and wisdom. Rather than shrinking our life down to what we naïvely assume we can control, we allow that we weren’t in control of anything anyway (eye roll... I know..), and God is stretching us for his own glory. But bigger trees need bigger roots; a very deep taproot. As our life and ministry expand, we yearn for our cloud of witnesses and advisors to also expand.

With this growth in mind, we’re announcing some changes; we’re excited and nervous!

When we started this monthly newsletter, we had one small child, we could barely order at a restaurant in Japanese, and we both taught full time at Christian Academy. We wanted to reach out and stay connected, so we started sending this newsletter to . . . basically anyone we thought would like to stay connected. I know . . . we probably should have asked you first! Sorry about that.

Now, seven years later, our family has doubled in size and - largely thanks to our various local school communities - our horizons and vocabularies have opened to embrace not only CAJ classrooms, but also our neighborhood, our local churches, our parks, our hospitals, our city office and our city as a whole. In addition to teaching 100 or so CAJ students, we now also have friends and connections at every intersection in town. I can’t go to the grocery store, post office, flower shop, dentist, or park without meeting someone who knows us. Although I’m proud to say my Japanese level is the worst in my family (no way can I out-chat my daughter’s four year old preschool buddies or do my son’s second grade homework), as a family we can navigate our lives in Japanese: hospital, rehab, grocery, church, school, PTA, library, homework, pets. While the neighborhood watches. Life in a fishbowl, anyone?

So, here’s the vision: there’s this gorgeous tapestry of grace all over this green globe. The threads are silky thin, iron strong, the pattern so beautiful takes your breath away. Through this tapestry, I am privileged to serve a young woman in Thailand who is finishing her teaching degree and hoping to return to her own little village to serve her community. I get to dry my dishes with a towel made by a woman in Kenya and wear gorgeous earrings handmade by a woman in northern Japan. I don’t know these women, but because I know Rosie, who connected me with the young student, and I know Ikuyo, who brought the towel from Kenya to my church in Tokyo, and I know Sue who started the art therapy organization in Ishinomaki Japan, I get to be a tiny sliver of these women’s lives. And my life is ever so much richer because of I’m woven into this tapestry.

Do you see it? Because you know us, you have a connection to the tapestry at work in this city. We invite you to partner with us, to weave your prayers and your resources into our neighborhood, our classroom, our students’ lives, our playgrounds, our kitchen table. Partner means being committed to praying for us, allowing us to keep in touch with you, and possibly supporting us financially.

This REALLY is the only recent picture of the six of us....

By partnering with us, as we partner with Christian Academy, you sit with a struggling missionary kid who wonders if his parents beliefs are worth committing to, and with the proud atheist kid who begins to wonder if there is something to this Christianity thing after all. You play a hand in the hundreds of churches, outreach programs, schools and programs run by missionary parents who entrust their kids to CAJ. You have a seat at our table when we invite in lonely and tired moms, looking for empathy and grace. You walk down the corridors of children’s disability hospitals and make eye contact and smile at every single beautiful human.

We believe God is tugging on more hearts to look toward this corner of Tokyo, to the work He is doing  here. As our partners, you have the opportunity to connect with our school and students, this city, and for those of us who live and work here.

We’ve been incredibly blessed by generous one time gifts, and we’re very grateful that Japan’s welfare system provides some support for our special needs son. We could not meet our immediate daily needs without these one time gifts and without city welfare. But God has called us to commit long-term to this work, so we’re also looking long term and seeking to engage hearts willing to invest in this place. Prayer follows financial investment. We are looking for more financial partners to join with us in our daily work. Specifically, we are looking for 20 more partners to support us at $100 per month.

We know - because we’ve met you and we’ve sat over coffee tables and living room couches - we know that you are the kind of person who cares about lonely, hurting people. If you lived in our neighborhood, yours would be the house with the light always on. You would have a seat at your table, a welcoming classroom, a spare moment in your day to check in with that kid who just looks extra fragile. The beauty of the kingdom of heaven is that each of us is entrusted to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our own tiny neighborhoods. And because we love and trust each other, we also get to be the hands and feet of Jesus in each other’s neighborhoods, with each other’s neighbors and lonely friends.

And finally: What does this mean about how we stay connected with you?

• Instead of this more general monthly newsletter, we will now be sending out a quarterly family newsletter that we mail out and post on social media.
• Partners will receive monthly or more updates, a more personalized version of what we've been doing here, plus face to face/screen to screen connections as often as we can!
• At the encouragement of various advisors and Christian Academy in Japan, we’re making a change to our sponsoring organization. Previously, we used Japan Christian Academy Association, an offset of Christian Academy, to process donations. From this year, we’re joining a new organization, Resourcing Christian Schools International. RCE Int’l is set up specifically to help international Christian school teachers ministering overseas, and offers an array of resources including counseling, financial and retirement planning, home assignment support, and international living that we have already found to be so helpful and beneficial.

Will you join us? If you would like to opt in to our partner community, please reply to this email or click on the link below. We know each of you is incredibly committed to your own communities and everyone feels stretched thin. Please know that your reply will not change our relationship and we love you no matter what!

I’m in! Tell me more.

I’m ok for now; see you on Facebook in a few months!

Please don’t contact this email address again, thanks.

Delicious December

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 

from our crowd to yours!

"Start from where you are, with what you have, as who you are in this moment." 

Noah Pashapa (visiting pastor at Kurume Bible Fellowship)

Where we are. 

What we have. 

Who we are in this moment. 

November News

Confession: we put Christmas decorations up already - there is a chance it happened before American Thanksgiving but I won't confirm that. Even our neighbor boys told me it was too early, but when they left to go home in the dark, they agreed that the lights were beautiful. Japan doesn't do daylight savings; as the days get darker earlier, it feels right to get out all the lights. 

CAJ update: thank you for your prayers for this incredible school. We're thankful for the conversations in and out of class that Ryan is able to have with students. Next weekend is a concert of Nine Lessons and Carols. This is a very popular community event! We pray that those who attend will be blessed by the scripture and incredible truths in the words of the carols. CAJ high school is also facing a change of leadership. Please join us on our knees for the next person to fill this very important position. Did you know CAJ has a facebook page? Take a look!

Community update: Christmas is a great outreach season! Every group we know of has some kind of Christmas party. We're grateful for the many kids and moms who will come to our English Christmas party. Our prayer is that they experience welcoming Grace and Joy despite circumstances. This is something every tired mom needs!! Events (with different groups) are December 3, 4, 15, 18. Thanks so much for thinking of us on these days! 

KBF update: As regular readers know, our local church has lost nearly every individual in a position of leadership in the past three years. Despite the fumbling void this created, we know that God is present and continues to love this family; new people continue to come and programs are full! This month, the congregation invited an interim children's ministry pastor and an interim teaching pastor and we are so grateful for the ministry of these two! Please pray for them as they lead this extremely diverse and lively family. 

Family update: We wrestle with what it means to raise our family in this setting on a daily basis. We see our kids becoming TCKs before our eyes, which is poignantly bittersweet. We know, even at their young ages, they experience the tug and pull of their hearts stretched all over the world. Recently, our four year old talks about bridges all the time: Jesus is a bridge, we are a bridge. Our six year old is processing how to be kind to classmates who don't understand why its mean to say "English speaking people can't play with us right now." Our baby is adjusting to his new leg. Every kid is different and this little guy is definitely on his own path! Right now his challenge is controlling his prosthetic knee and learning to balance upright on his one prosthetic foot and one foot with only one toe. Each heart stretches to meet the daily challenges; sometimes we wear thin with all the pulling.

October Grace

Pottery in the park

One of the biggest stressors in my life these days is the constant weight of being too much. Too loud, too messy, too disorganized, too tall, too foreign, too rude, too casual, too needy and - my goodness - too many children! I’ll readily admit, some of this is just in my head. (My counselor and I are working on it!) Doesn’t every parent feel this some days? 

Biking on the new leg!

But there’s a very real societal pressure (that some of you are all too familiar with - it’s not just Japan!) designed specifically to shame and guilt people into behaving in a way that makes life easier for everyone else. If everyone is quiet, clean, orderly, fun-sized, polite, self-sufficient and simple? Well, everything goes a lot smoother doesn’t it! 

Date lunch!

I find myself gasping for Grace. It’s so easy to buy into the myths behind this too muchness. So we must live Grace for each other. For Ryan, it’s a goal to make sure every kid who comes through the door of his classroom feels that she or he is an OK person, worth listening to and spending time with. Grace of humanity. 

I remember arriving at Minneapolis airport, having flown 13 hours solo with four kids; I apologized in a weepy way for the chaos of my exhausted kids, and the woman organizing the security line said, “it’s OK honey, I’ve got five myself.” Grace. How can I - in the way I smile at those standing in grocery lines with me, in the way I greet other moms picking up our kids from school, in the way I talk with sales clerks and neighbors - how can I make them feel like I felt in that moment? So incredibly understood, and enough; recharged to face another impossible moment. 

This week, the mothers of my younger daughter’s class got together for lunch. This is about 45 women, plus at least 30 younger siblings. The room was so loud I could not hear my baby’s annoying musical toys over the chatter. A sign in the ladies restroom gave me pause. Roughly translated: “kids are masters of messiness. We were the same way when we were young. Please leave it to us to clean up after you and enjoy a relaxing slow meal.” Grace. 

To Mama

Set in September

This week I sat across the table from a sweet friend; for those of you who have been with us for a while, she’s a familiar character. We reflected together on the past two years in our respective families. Two years ago, her estranged husband wouldn’t even call her by name. Two years ago, we were heading into an extremely challenging pregnancy and an even more difficult parenting assignment. As we laughed and cried, we realized: God does answer all prayers, but rarely in the way we expect. She prayed for a return to the happy past, before the fight, and instead got a new, braver, rawer relationship. We prayed for financial stability and instead got a child who brought us into a social welfare network. 

These days, we find ourselves reflecting on the past and looking ahead with gratitude: one year ago, our baby came home from the ICU. Today, he is chirping with excitement as he crawls to tip over the recycling bin. One year ago, our pastor suddenly quit with one week’s notice. Now, we are still in a pastoral search, but our worship is full, and we have a rotation of speakers, and our kids program regularly has upward of 40 kids in bilingual classes. Last year, Ryan decided once again to postpone his next masters class in order to take care of the urgent needs of our family. This month, he completed his program and is waiting for his diploma. 

Such reflection of course points us to gratitude. We are grateful for God’s ongoing provision for us, and for the concrete ways in which you, our cloud of witnesses, live as the hands and feet of Jesus in our daily lives. Thank you for walking with us. 

Coming up: 

- CAJ high school students leave for School Without Walls this week, spreading out all over Japan to practice transferring their classroom knowledge to hands on experiences. Please pray for safety and rich learning experiences. 

- Our church will go on a one day retreat in October. Please pray for fellowship and unity as we enjoy spending time as a body and get to know each other better. 

Because of some accounting issues during a change of leadership in our fund raising organization, we are in a very tight financial season. Please pray for wisdom and discretion in our daily finances as we steward our resources and plan for the future. 

- Because of our son’s disabilities, we’ve begun to meet other families with children with various disabilities, mostly in the hours we spend in hospital waiting rooms. We are very aware of the loneliness and social isolation that often comes with a disability, and we’re also so impressed to find friends who are living out their abilities and disabilities with joy. Please pray for us as we engage with this new community.