Month: June 2009

Hi friends and family, and anyone else who’s reading this blog,

David and I decided to take turns blogging so this week it’s my turn.

Thank you so much for all your prayers, support, and friendship! Like David said in last week’s post, we got married! We’ve been married for almost exactly a month now. We had a wedding in Tokyo, flew to Hawaii the next day, and came back to California as a married couple on the 9th of this month. (It was hectic!) We have a nice one-bedroom condo in Aliso Viejo in southern California. I love our place. David says it’s not too big but coming from Japan, this place is HUGE to me, at least for a newly-wed couple. I have to be careful not to get too used to all this space so I won’t start complaining how small the house is when we finally make it to Japan.  

We will be posting weekly, hopefully more frequently, on this blog to keep you guys posted on what’s going on with us. And here’s what’s going on right now.

We just sent out our first newsletter this afternoon. (Thanks JoAnna for licking the envelopes 🙂 We were also privileged to visit a friend of ours to talk about Japan and our plans this morning and had a very blessed time. It was such an encouragement because she called us and said she wanted to have us over and hear about Japan, instead of we called her and asked if we can meet with her, which is usually what happens. Praise the Lord for encouraging us as we just set out on our support-raising journey together.

Also, exciting news today, our marriage certificate came in mail!! I came to the States on a fiancee visa, and now I have to apply for a permanent resident card (or green card) so I can live in the States legally after my visa expires. And we were waiting for the marriage certificate to come in. Now we can start doing tons of paperwork again to get a green card, social security number, driver’s license, bank account, etc, and to file a Japanese marriage paper. I could do some of that without the marriage certificate, but I didn’t want to go through all the trouble again to change my name on everything so we decided to wait. I am not so excited about all the paperwork we have to do because getting the visa was a LOT of work and I feel like that should have done it, but I guess I’ll just have to get to work.

So that’s it for now. Come back again next week and see if I got the green card yet. Well, probably not, but we might have more exciting things to share with you so make sure you come back!

 

I know, it’s been way too long since I’ve made a blog post. But all that is about to change, because a lot has changed already. For instance, I’m married now. This is a wonderful thing, and even though I’ve only been married for about three weeks, I’m loving every second of it. Tomo has already become a great source of encouragement and motivation, and we’ve been talking a lot about how we’re going to get to Japan, and what our plans are going to look like. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let me fill you in a little on the details first.

On May 30th, 2009, Tomo and I were finally married, after spnding an excruciatin ten months of our engagemtn on different continents. The wedding took place in Tokyo, Japan, in the same church that I first went to help on a short term missions trip back in 2003. I had no idea at that time that I would even return to Japan, much less come back again and again and eventually return to marry Tomo in the very same church I had been privilidged to serve on so many occasions. It was an incredible experience.

 This has some major implications for me as a future missionary to Japan. SEND requires that in the case of a married couple, both husband and wife join SEND as missionaries, and Tomo is in the process of doing so right now. We will both be going back to Japan as a missionary couple, working and serving together to plant churches in Japan. I am very, very happy with this arrangement. Transitioning to a new culture can be a daunting experience, and I am grateful that God is not sending me to Japan alone. Furthermore Tomo, being Japanese, will be an enormous help in learning the culture and language, and I feel that together we will be far more effective than either of us could have been alone. She is also very excited that God has provided a way for her to dedicate all of her time towards serving and building up the church in Japan and reaching her people. One consequence of this arrangement is that we will now need to raise approximately double the support that I would have had to raise on my own. This means that currently we are at about 15% of the total needed for us to go to Japan. Even though there is more to be raised, I am more motivated than ever to complete the support raising process, as Tomo and I are both very anxious to return to Japan and take part in the work that God is doing there even now. We have set a new goal of being fully supported and heading to Japan by the end of next year, 2010. Tomo will be attending SEND’s candidate orientation program in December, and will officially be appointed at that time as a SEND missionary. It seems that God is also opening the door for us to be able to dedicate 20 hours a week towards support raising as part of a new ten month program SEND is using to get their missionaries up to full support. We hope to get about 50% of our support raised before then, and raise the second half while on that program.

That about cathces ou up to speed on where we’re at and where God is taking us. One thing we’ve decided we need to be doing more often is keeping all of you updated, so we’ll be updating this blog faithfully every Monday night. So check back to hear from either Tomo or I what God has been doing in our lives, and what progress we’ve made in getting to Japan!