Christmas Party in Iruma

We had a great party with some of the kids in the neighborhood. The Takahashis from upstairs came down and the Nishimuras came and the others kids Washiya, Yuuki, Sakura, Hino, Mao, Momoka, Akane, Ryuta, and the Bolinger 3. It was a blast as we played pin the nose on Rudolph, guess the name on your back, we sang songs and told the Christmas story. We then had a fun white elephant gift exchange with cupcakes and candy to top it all off. The kids didn't want to go home... really, I had to tell them to go home. But I was nice I think. Anyway, what a blessing. Pray for all these and others too who wanted to come. God is good and we were blessed to be here and serve the Lord.

Carver Crazy Creations

We had so wonderful guests this weekend the Carvers from Fountain Valley. Mark and Kimie with Josh and Chris came to Iruma to visit us. We first walked around Harajuki near Shinjuku and then we came and stayed the night in Iruma then we went to visit our other friends in Yokohama. The Arendses came to Japan for a visit. Roger and Sumako came with Shane and Luke and we went to Sumako's Brother-In-Laws Church. It is the Lord's church but her sister Naomi and Naomi's Husband started Grace Bible Fellowship in Yokohama. They have a great church and a blessing of very warm believers. I like the location too they are on the 2nd floor above a Denny's restaurant and they are just two blocks away from China Town. We had a great time of fellowship and feasting. God is good to bring friends to come and visit. It is such an honor. Our hears are warmed and ready for the new year. God bless you Carvers and Arendses. Have a great time on the rest of your vacations days.

Apple Christmas

Thank you Uncle Takemichi. Mihoko's Uncle sent us a box of the world famous Fuji Apple. It was fun. At the same time Mihoko's Mom sent a package with dresses for the girls and a Christmas shirt for Nathan. We love you Grandma and Uncle Hori. Merry Christmas and Happy New year.

Eigo Club

We had our first Eigo Club English class and it was a blast. We had 5 kids show up two of which didn't want stay but after we got rockin they stayed. The kids were so excited about My kids helped teach the class. We built a little puppet theater and after a quick demonstration the kids took over and were just having way too much fun. I got these cool critter pens from a 99 cent store and they were perfect for the show. Even very young kids got into the act and tried so hard to remember the script. "Hello what's your name?" "My name is _______." It was simple but very effective. I am open to any idea's anyone out there may have? We are having a second round of sample classes which we are told maybe 10 to 15 kids will show. Pray that we'd be a blessing to the kids but also to the parents.

CC Kokobunji

Hey we got to visit Calvary Chapel Kokobunji last week and it was a blast. They have a great strong and friendly fellowship. We were so blessed with Pastor Chizuo Sakurai's message in Mark. It is an encouragement for me to see the fruit of the Lord working in his life. I knew Chizuo back in School of Ministry in 1993 and even before that we met at CCCM when he was attending the School of Ministry and Fuller Seminary. So to see a mature fellowship of believers is just testimony of God honoring his word and His faithfulness to bless. Keep it up Chizuo God is great.

After Church the Sakurai's treated us to lunch at "This is the Burger" restaurant is was good stuff. Pray for the Sakurai's and all the things the Lord is leading them in. God bless you guys.

From those of you at Okinawa look who I found pounding away on a cajon drum in the worship team. It's Yumi! She is so much fun. Hey drop her a line to encourage her and keep praying for her. She enjoying the fellowship at CC Kokobunji but she does long to be back on the Island of "the far rope" there in Okinawa. God bless

Convience Store Airports how about Churches?

I found an article on the Japan Times the other day about Airport woes. Tokyo has two major airports and Osaka has three. There is another airport north of Tokyo in Ibaraki by a few hours but it is in the middle of nowhere. There is no train service nor is there public transportation and it is 30 min from the capital Mita. In Ibaraki prefecture they have spent 268 million on an airport which no one will use. Read the article. This smacks familiar of the Kansai fiasco with Osaka building an international airport which wasn't the problem but they did it right next to the Itami airport which already had routes and service but not international. They could have gone to another farther away location. Then two years ago Kobe builds an airport just a few miles away. So from the sixth floor of the Kansai airport you can see all three airports. Ibaraki is just a few hours away from Narita and Haneda. So I was thinking is Japan taking the 7-11 convenience store mentality to the max here and trying it out with airports? In the US is seems the church can get into this mentality as well. The airports are now struggling financially to stay afloat and more thins out the customer base. Do we do this with ministries and churches?

HERE IS THE ARTICLE:

Friday, Dec. 5, 2008

Airport with no customers ready to open
Ibaraki touts facility as tool for long-term growth, critics say it's just another in long line of construction boondoggles

By CHRIS COOPER and BRADLEY K. MARTIN
Bloomberg

The $268 million Ibaraki Airport is on schedule to open for business in March 2010. The hard part will be persuading an airline to fly there.

Just in case: A guard patrols the entrance to the Air Self-Defense Force's Hyakuri Air Base in Omitama, Ibaraki Prefecture, in October. Work is under way to convert part of the base for civilian use as Ibaraki Airport. BLOOMBERG PHOTO

The government and Ibaraki Prefecture, home to 3 million people, are paying for the airport, which will be part of the Air Self-Defense Force's Hyakuri Air Base in Omitama, won't have train services and is a half-hour drive from Ibaraki's capital, Mito.

Japan Airlines Corp. and All Nippon Airways Co., which operate 90 percent of flights in the country, don't plan to use it.

As the global credit crunch drives Japan into its first recession since 2001, the country is building roads and airports that have helped make it the world's most indebted major economy. Critics say many of the projects have little economic value beyond the building industry.

"The government is squeezing health-care and other social programs and then spending billions and trillions of yen on useless construction projects," said Stephen Church, an economist at securities researcher JapanInvest in Tokyo. "Ibaraki is just a small example of that."

Japan has borrowed money every year since 1965 to finance its budget, saddling each household with the equivalent of ¥17 million in debt. The spending has pushed the government's debt to the highest among the Group of Seven economies — 170 percent of annual gross domestic product last year, compared with 63 percent in the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Ibaraki's airfield will open just as Japan's biggest international airport, Narita, an hour's drive to the south, completes an expansion. Tokyo's Haneda airport, the world's fourth-busiest, is set to open a new runway the same year.

"We're not planning any flights from Ibaraki Airport," JAL President Haruka Nishimatsu said Tuesday. "It's out of the question."

His company and ANA have cut unprofitable regional routes and slashed profit forecasts this year as higher jet-fuel prices and a global economic slowdown led to fewer passengers.

JAL recorded its biggest decline in international passengers in five years in September, while ANA flew fewer people overseas for a seventh straight month.

"We don't think of the airport as a 'Field of Dreams,' " Ibaraki Gov. Masaru Hashimoto said in an interview, referring to the movie starring Kevin Costner about an Iowa farmer who builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield.

The film's theme, "Build it and they will come," mirrors the governor's argument that investors won't appear unless infrastructure is in place. "We want the airport to add to the long-term economic growth of the region," he said.

Ibaraki isn't the first Japanese airport to have to battle for planes. Kansai International Airport opened in 1994 in southern Osaka Prefecture as an alternative to Itami airport to the north. While international flights operate from Kansai, domestic flights still use Itami. Another airport, in neighboring Kobe, opened two years ago.

"The problem with Osaka is obvious from the sixth floor of the hotel at Kansai airport," said Mark Schwab, vice president for the Pacific region at UAL Corp.'s United Airlines. "With the naked eye, I can see three airports."

United has slashed its service from Kansai to one daily flight to San Francisco, from five international flights.

Other projects haven't produced promised benefits. JapanInvest's Church pointed out that a ¥253 billion reclamation project that closed off part of Isahaya Bay in Nagasaki Prefecture with a 6.4-km seawall, completed in 1997, is a "complete white elephant."

The project was designed to create farmland even as the number of farmers in Japan fell and local fishermen opposed it.

"There's no coordination in terms of demand for projects," said Akane Enatsu, who analyzes Japanese regional government spending at Nikko Citigroup Ltd. in Tokyo. "Japanese infrastructure projects have too optimistic projections and then can't satisfy them."

In Ibaraki, local officials hope landing fees about 30 percent lower than those at Narita will lure low-cost carriers. Still, no airline has decided to use Ibaraki Airport, said Mitsuru Iso, a local government manager responsible for promoting the airport.

could it be Christmas time?

The kids are so excited for Christmas this year. Mihoko got a great bargan on a wooden Advent box calendar. The doors open to a deep box that can hold candy, money, scripture, or whatever we put in there. Each morning the kids wake to run into the front room to open that box for the day. It was Jane's turn and she was happy. We have a tree I got for $5.00 and I put up some lights around a window of our apartment. Thanks Dad for the lights. With the cold air mid to low 30's we are really feeling Christmas. In California, it only felt like Christmas when the decorations were up and the presents were under the tree. For me it was fudge and those chocolate covered cherries from Kmart/Walmart for a dollar.


We have just put up signs today announcing our new school opening. Pray that all goes well. I am a nervous wreck. You see a garage door is easy to work on and if there are problems you can call for technical support. In teaching ESL to young kids there is no hot line to call saying I have 3 five year olds unable to say, "My name is ______? How to you get them to stop saying Harow and say Hello? Have you seen the Youtube funny on the English lessons. There is a German ship hearing a distress call saying "Mayday, Mayday we are sinking and the ships German recruit says, Hello, What are you shinking about?" Too funny.

Green Lodge Hotel

Watch out which door you exit out of in this house. Man That looks like the Winchester house in California. A Door in the wall going to nowhere.



Anyway as we were leaving the school we were visiting we saw a beautiful tree and the girls liked the traffic poles with the decorative birds on them. But as we left there was this big castle looking building on a hill over looking the city. It was very intriguing to us. We found out that the hotel was property of Iruma and through mismanagement and bad people hanging out giving it a bad name the closed the 20 year old hotel 2 years ago. It was supposed to be torn down because it was made with Lead and Asbestos products. But the city budget has been slashed and they can't afford the 1 million Yen it would take to tear it down. It costs them about 4 thousand a year to keep the grounds and trash cleaned up.

I confess I sinned in coveting the place for a Bible College. It is 5 stories and has a full banquet room with a whole kitchen and I had better stop because I have no church yet and well I am dreaming out of the box. It sets me up for a stumble. God wants us to start small and if it is in his will then he makes it happen. With the way the world depression is going to hit lots of land is going to come available at bargain prices soon enough. We just need to worry about the day we are in and serve Jesus. He said sufficient is the evil of the day..." to get all messed up with the things of tomorrow. Pray for the Church in Iruma that will soon exist physically but God already sees it spiritually. He knows who is going to get saved and who will come to the church. He also knows if we will get a Green river hotel for a Bible college and church and retreat center and oh there I go again. Eyes on the prize of Jesus.

Mochi mochi pounding

Oh, man am I sore. Pounding mochi is not easy. They take a whole pot of rice and dump it into this log that is carved out like a bowl and then with wooden mallets they beat the tar out of the rice. The rice becomes a sticky taffy looking mess. Then they fry it up in these wood stoves and cook it and they smother it in soy sauce and wow it was good eating. The kids got in on the action too.

We were invited by a friend in our Danchi community to visit their sons Yochien. This is an honor and we were told the kids only could pound mochi. But when we got there the 150 kids didn't pound enough mochi and the teachers were very tired. So they dragged mochiman Dan to pulverize the mochi monster. Only mochiman Dan has had too much mochi and is very ill equipped with an improper fizzeeek.

We are looking into a school for Jane to go to in the spring. The Japanese school system is from April to May and the have various weeks off through out the year. So we are supposed to register now for then. It isn't looking good though because they are expensive. MCA I take back what I complained about in the tuition grumbling.

This School is one train station away in Bushi in an area known as Nakagami. It is far to walk and we felt it as this mountain was in the way between the train station and the school. All the parents drove....We don't drive yet (Praying). The closest school near us is still a 10 minute bike ride away. We have 3 High schools and 3 Jr Highs and 2 elementarys closer than any of the Iruma Yochiens. Hmmm, Pray for a Kouyoudai Christian Yochien to open up.