2010 in Japan, Having Fun in Nippon

To all of our dear family and friends!

新年快樂！恭喜發財！Happy New Year!!! あけましておめでとうございます.

We’ve been thinking of all the great things that happened in 2009 and are so grateful to KNOW YOU!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s celebration.  We welcomed the New Year in with the winter’s first snow flurries here in Hamamatsu, Japan!  The climate in this area of Japan is too mild for snow to stick but it was fun to see the flurries and feel all wintery.  😉

How have you guys been???  We love hearing from you on Facebook and getting your emails/snail-mail cards.  Hope this letter finds you “genki” (healthy and happy!)

We’re nearing our 2 month mark here and have been blessed with a lot of new activities and fun experiences.  I think the last time we wrote, it was before Thanksgiving!  So here’s the shortened overview of our life in Japan since then…we’ll write more details  in our blog and include pictures.

Near the end of November, our friends Matt and Elaine White from Shanghai, came for a week-long visit and we had a blast with them.  Got to do some touristy things (like mikan picking … that is, mandarin oranges that were so yummy straight off the tree!) that we would otherwise have not done on our own AND had some good times of prayer and worship with them.  In the early part of December, we celebrated Noah’s first b’day and T’s 38^th.  Noah had his first bite of ice cream and T had a temakisushi party…wrap your own rice-roll…?   😉   Then, the Christmas season was upon us and we started preparing for parties and a special church service.  T played/sang in a trio and I (E) danced a sign dance with a group of women.  Noah just played cute.

In Japan, Christmas isn’t recognized as a holiday so it felt a little different for us…we REALLY wanted to smell the scent of pine but couldn’t find a single real tree in the city!  We’ll never forget our Christmas in Japan though…we got to visit a local jail with a church friend and although the guard wouldn’t let us sing a Christmas carol, we could “say” the words and he let us pray.

T finally had the chance to update the Ascribe Data website…its first update in about 4 years!

Tomorrow, the three of us will fly out to Taiwan to visit our friends in Taipei.  We’ll stay 10 days and spend our time meeting with Steven and Joyce Hsiao who will be starting a new church in the city.  Please pray that God will lead us and give us wisdom about joining their team and taking our next step in this “missionary journey”.   We’re so happy to be here in Japan and excited about what God will do in 2010!

Thank you for praying for us and being party of our extended “ohana” (family).  We love and miss you all!

“Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu”  for you who understand Japanese…

God bless you and your family with all the richness of His love and grace!

愛你們, Love,
TEN in 2010!

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