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! 🙂