Time Crunch

Prayer Request: That our priorities would be ordered according to God’s wisdom, rather than the wisdom of society.

Family Update:

So… this post was supposed to be published 8-30-17, but I never had a chance to take a picture and post the final draft until now! Though the information is a few weeks in the past, I still wanted to record this part of the journey and make a note of how busy the 2 weeks before the start of the school year can be. The last few weeks have been insane for me. I and those close to me have worked tirelessly to put together the final touches for some school year programs, and I have been finishing up scheduling and paperwork for my son’s preschool. None of this comes close to the work that our school district’s teachers have been putting in, these last few weeks. The renovations for the new Early Childhood Education building finished in time to allow the teachers to set up their classrooms and the administration areas in the smallest amount of time imaginable. Some of the scheduling for the kids ended up being a bit last minute because of this, but overall our teachers did an amazing job getting prepared for the students. We are so thankful for all the hard work and care the Saint Peter teachers have shown during this process, and are continuing to pray that they can get through the rest of the setup process as quickly and easily as possible!

Missions Update:

The majority of our paperwork and training is done for our trip, and we are beginning to think about what we need to pack for Japan. We are looking forward to about 22 HOURS OF TRAVEL, so books, sketching supplies, and dry shampoo will definitely be on the list of things to bring.

We had the privilege of sharing a little about Japan with our church a few Sundays ago and had the chance to pray with the members of our congregation for God to show us what He wants us to learn about His work within the Japanese population. Due to my current work schedule, this was the last Sunday service I could attend before the trip, and I am very grateful that Rett and the team at our church were able to arrange for all this with only two days’ notice!

We also finally printed some things with information about the journey we are beginning towards supporting missions in Japan. Now our church has a flyer at the front desk, and we have cards with the website address on them, so we don’t have to sloppily write it on scraps of paper anymore, yay!

So far this whole experience is wonderful, humbling, and awkward. We are so excited to be more involved with Christ’s work in Japan! And we are eager to share everything with those close to us. At the same time: this can all feel much like self-promotion, and for me, it is very awkward to walk the line between quietly keeping everything to ourselves and forcing everyone in our lives to know every detail of this journey. I am pretty sure this is a very normal experience the first time a person shares part of their life with people outside of their inner circle of friends, but please feel free to let me know if we’re going too far in one direction or the other. 😉