The Smith Family

Sunday was a busy day for us. The Smith family put on an hour-long concert at a local coffee shop at 2:00 p.m. The GRIT team joined us to sing one number, and Amanda R. played a piano solo. The GRIT team will also give a concert at this same location in a couple weeks. Afterward, the team had a chance to mingle with the 15 or so people in attendance, most of whom spoke no English. I was pleased at the efforts made in spite of that!

Chloe sang an original song for the first time

After tearing down sound equipment and instruments, we hurried to our Sunday evening Bible study in downtown Kumamoto City. We studied through the first chapter of James, then enjoyed a meal with each other. One of our faithful attenders and helpers in the ministry made a birthday cake for Amanda G. who had a birthday recently.

Today (Tuesday), the team drove 2 hours away to do some general groundskeeping at a camp. The team will return to this camp to lead games during a children’s event in the next week or so.

It’s been a busy start to our GRIT program! We appreciate your prayers. This year’s GRIT team is the youngest we’ve ever had (average age is 19). For most of them, this is the first real trip they’ve ever taken, the first time for a lot of different things. But we pray that they will take back home with them a new desire to serve God more fully than ever before.

As I write this, Norman is most likely on his way back from the Fukuoka airport with four college-agers with severe jet lag! It won’t be getting better for them in the next few days.

They will arrive at our home around 10:30 p.m. (Japan time) after traveling for about 24 hours. Then we get to leave the house at 7:30 a.m. to travel to an ABWE field council meeting 2 1/2 hours away. Following fellowship time over a meal with our co-workers, our family and our “new” family members will drive about an hour to the ABWE camp, where we’ll stay four nights. There are many cleaning projects to do there in preparation for camping season this year. The major project will be tearing up rotten boards of the deck around the fire pit, and possibly replacing them with stained, new boards. In and amongst all of the activity, Norman will be leading the young people in daily discipleship and leadership sessions, encouraging them to make strides in their relationship with the Savior and reach out to others in like manner.

Our children are excited about traveling to camp. They have fond memories of the place, especially building tunnel forts with futons in the huge second floor room! I reminded them that they could help clean, too, but Melodie assured me they’d be happy to stay out of the way playing upstairs!

Please keep us all in your prayers as GRIT begins for another year. The dates of God’s Recruits In Training this year are May 19-June 29. We hope to bring God’s Name glory in all that we do.

Cameron and Melodie in front of our bamboo forest

April means the arrival of many new bamboo babies poking through the earth around our yard and house. Because bamboo is rather invasive and can send roots beneath the house which could send a new tree right through the floor, ridding ourselves of these “takenoko” (literally, bamboo child) is necessary.

Our youngest two children have taken it upon themselves to be the bamboo scouts of the family. Scouring the hillside and yard almost daily, they continue to find new shoots and take matters into their own hands. Cameron has become rather adept at knocking over bamboo! Just one of the perks of being a missionary kid in Asia!

Here’s a biggie!

Different varieties of bamboo

In just a few short weeks, this summer’s GRIT program will begin! (GRIT stands for God’s Recruits In Training and is designed to help young people grow spiritually, be discipled further, and learn to disciple others.) This year will look a little different from other years since a couple participants are arriving midway through the program or toward the end. Also, there will be five females and only one male!

As always, housing is our main concern in preparation for them. Our neighbor has kindly offered us the use of her unused “Grandparents’ House” right across the street which will work perfectly for the girls. We will put the guy up in our house. In addition to housing, we are currently putting together the printed materials that we are using, finalizing the 6-week-long schedule, and ironing out the tiny details. Please keep us in your prayers as we attempt to undertake this important part of ministry. Pray for the students coming as well, that they will be open to God’s work in their lives. We pray that some of them will return as missionaries here in Japan in the future as well.

We continue to hold Bible studies, discipleship studies one-on-one, homeschool, continue to work on our yard and remodeling projects all the while we prepare for GRIT! Life is getting busier! We hope to keep the main thing the main thing, however. We don’t want to replace the important by the urgent.

Thank you for your interest and prayers. We appreciate you!

Our family plus a friend of ours held a concert at a tearoom in Kikuyo Town on March 22. The purpose behind the concert was to enable us (as well as other Christian friends) to be able to continue relationships with our unbelieving friends and acquaintances, as well as allow them opportunities to hear gospel truths in song. God blessed by sending us a full house!

The concert lasted around two hours, and we tried to have a variety of music styles and combinations to keep things interesting. Our children, Cameron (9) and Chloe (12) started the evening off with about 15 minutes of bluegrass style of music which they sang and played on their ukelele and guitar, respectively. Then Norman and his friend Blake sang old popular songs as solos or duets using a keyboard. Piano music by Susan in a Disney theme followed, with solos by Blake and Chloe. We ended up with our whole family playing various instruments and singing several kinds of music, including “Amazing Grace” in Japanese, “This Train” in English, and “This World is not my Home” in English. We printed out some words they could follow along with and take home with them afterward.

One of the highlights for those in the audience seemed to be the fact of seeing an entire family sharing the same interest. The “cute” kids were a plus, too! Even Melodie participated by playing percussion instruments.

My favorite part was hearing a comment from one of my English conversation ladies who said she got tears in her eyes when listening to a song about how we have no reason to worry because God holds our future.

I wish I could add a picture here, but we were so busy setting up the place, getting music in place, and calming nerves that we didn’t take one picture! Instead, I’ll just post a family picture that was taken about a year ago! 🙂

Our neighbors invited us to the annual “Burn Your New Year’s Decor” party! After cutting down a bunch of bamboo, they prop them up into a tepee of sorts, light it, and listen to it pop and burn. It sounded like gunshots echoing off the hills!

We were able to spend several hours with our extended neighbors, eating pork soup, rice balls, grilled chicken, and grilled shiitake mushrooms. Yum! We met many new people, and Norman was invited to take part in a relay race coming up in two weeks, also a part of our new community.

We are so thankful to be here in Japan! God has a plan, and we are honored and thrilled to be a small part of it. Thank you for your prayers!

This past week, all of us have had new experiences and have added to our skill sets! We’ve all tried our hand at painting with a roller, touching up around woodwork with a brush, realizing paint does not come off clothes, and finding joy in removing the tape after painting is finished! Norman and I (Susan) are in the middle of covering our kitchen floor with pseudo-boards. It’s a sticky, gluey mess which takes a long time to peel off one’s hands. Ouch! But we trust the finished product will be worth it.

Now, the living room and one bedroom are painted and ready to be carpeted. The girls’ room has a first coat of paint on it, soon to be added to with the appropriate chosen colors. In their case, it involves one color per wall, including pastel blue, green, pink, and purple. Should be colorful! And happy!

Our new goal is to be able to sleep in our new home Tuesday night (tomorrow!), Dec. 17, 2013. Admittedly, there will be only futons on the floor, and we have to bring our own breakfast since there is nothing in the kitchen but a half-finished floor! BUT, we will be in our new home! We plan to move slowly over the next month to bring things from our apartment and from storage into our new habitat.

One amazing blessing in all of this (and there are quite a few!) is that, when we first moved into the tiny apartment that has been home to us for about eight months, I prayed that God would allow us to leave it by the end of the year. (The main reason for my plea was partially due to the fact that there is no hot water to the sink, and washing dishes in frigid water in a non-central-heated home is quite cold. Pitiful of me, I know.) However, due to Norman’s back-breaking job of pushing ahead through the many projects, in spite of two weeks of a nasty cold trying to hold him back, we are now on the cusp of moving in before the end of the year. God is amazing! I am very thankful!

We will be sending out our new address soon, though we will still be forwarded mail sent to the old address for up to a year.

Thank you for praying us through this task. This house and property is a true blessing from the Lord. Psalm 103

Here’s an update on our canjo-making workshop held Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013. We were expecting a mix of adults and children, but it ended up being mostly 5th and 6th graders. The instrument making went pretty smoothly, though there was a bit of a time crunch to get them all done.

Our mini-concert went really well, in my opinion. Melodie maintained her nerve to play an electric canjo (are you amazed?!) for two songs. Her first one went without a hitch. She hit a snag on the second one, but after finding her place again, she finished the entire song. No tears either! 🙂 That’s always good.

We never know who we will meet at events like this or where this will lead in the future. God knows. We have a new opportunity this week to speak to a group of volunteers to which our contractor belongs. He said we could speak about our work here, our personal life experience, or anything we want. Sounds like an open door. Pray with me that I’ll know what I should say.

A note of praise: A friend we have been praying for recently attended our Bible study. He got to hear about Jesus’ miracles, the need for faith, and how faith takes away our fear. We were thrilled!

The two main things going on during this week (and the past couple) involve remodeling our new home and preparing for a music-type workshop.

Our house…before

Our home…later!

Our yard…before

Our yard …. later!

First, the house. Wednesdays mean work at the house. The kids and I attacked the gigantic pile of brush and tree limbs, cut them into smaller pieces, and burned them for several hours today. Tiring work! All that fresh air and exercise! 🙂 Norman was busy inside, screwing the new floor boards down in three rooms. I kept trying to tell him he had a screw loose, but…

This weekend, Norman will lead a workshop on making a simple, hand-made instrument. You’ve heard of a banjo? This is called a canjo, because it uses a can (think tin can) and one guitar string. It has frets and is played note by note up to an octave and a half instead of chords. It’s simple to play. Melodie (age 7) was able to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” after a couple tries. So Saturday, our whole family will help parents and children put together their very own canjos, make pizza in an outdoor oven, and sing a mini-concert, mostly of English children’s songs. To go along with this event, Norman has been utilizing all of our family to put together a simple CD of these songs so the new canjo-owners can play along with them at their leisure. Melodie surprised us by offering to sing the ABC song! Through this event, we hope to make new friends, get our faces out there, and be able to spread God’s message to our new friends in the future.

The illustrious canjo

We appreciate your prayers and comments to us. It’s nice to hear that someone reads this blog! And without God, nothing of eternal value will happen here in Japan. Keep praying, please!