Tokyo

Fuji-san chilling in the sunset

After our journey to Darwin we spent four days in Tokyo to visit the campus there and prepare a couple things for them. I think I will always be like this unless the Lord changes my heart, but I can't handle cities....there are too many people for me. I love to visit mainland but Okinawa is home!

Darwin, Australia pt. 5

Darwin's water is just like Okinawa....no surf!

While in Darwin we were blessed to visit two churches. On Sunday morning we visited C3 church, it was a very welcoming family with a focus of serving....as in they wanted to raise up servants and all. After service they happened to have a lunch for the body so we stayed around talked with people, after lunch we ate another lunch with a brother there that wanted to hang out some more with us. I was unable to get a picture of him, but his name is Jonno, cool brother with a heart to teach. Sunday night we stopped by INchurch, this church was a much smaller body but just as welcoming. INchurch has a heart for missions and missions support. Worship and Word was good, we even had an opportunity to chat with the pastor at McDonald's (Mackers in Aussie speak).

All-in-all this was a good trip, we were able to scope out the land, able to see what it would be if we were to have a Bible College there (looked into expenses and what not). Thanks for being in prayer with us!

Darwin, Australia pt. 4

 

These waters look very suspicious....we were hesitant to go into them even....once we saw a good group of people in our hearts were put to ease. Really though look at the water, it looks great on the surface but who knows what may be swimming down inside!

I was kind of bummed....we never once saw a croc nor a kangaroo (even though we ate part of one)

Darwin, Australia pt. 3

dead termite mounds

Termite mound

this thing was huge!

We ventured out of the city several times to experience the 'Outback' in one of the national parks. There were several national parks around Darwin but we were only able to visit one, Lichfield National Park. The pictures above are termite mounds....I didn't see any termites on them, they must have been inside.

At Lichfield there were several waterfalls, some we could swim at and others we couldn't, this one here was swimmable. It was beautiful, there were two roaring falls going off into one pool. This was my first time in YEARS to swim in freshwater, it felt kind of weird cause I am SO used to my eyes burning and my sinuses emptying out. Anyways, the water was very cool and because of the falls it was difficult to swim to the falls themselves, but man was it fun.

Zach giving us the swan dive....haha, kidding.

Then we made our way to some rock 'step' pools, this was nice because there were several pools connected to each other each with different depths, this one here was rather deep. As you see we were able to jump off the edges which were relatively high.

Green went as far as my eyes could see

yeah!! off roaring in our RENTAL car.....hahaha

I saw these things all the time, the green butt ants! 

We decided to take our rental car out on the dirt roads so we could shave a whole hour and a half off of our travel back to the hostel for dinner. We were going about 40 km and still swerving around in the loose dirt, hahaha praise the Lord we didn't get stuck anywhere. 

Darwin, Australia pt. 2

A staple while we were there

An incredible clear day with amazingly cool water

We hit the jackpot with fruit in Aussie land!

While we were in Aussie land eating out at restaurants was definitely out of the question. So we did what ANY local would do, go to the grocery store! Going to a grocer in Darwin was kind of nostalgic because they are so much like the ones in America, completely different than Japan. The isles were big and tall compared to the short and small Japanese isles, the kicker for me I think was that all the food there was just like america....minus the kangaroo steaks you can buy (which by the way were very interesting to eat)!!

We were told by our Australian intern that we need expect people to be mean and rude to us while we were there....it was completely different then what he said it was like. The people were extremely nice and warm towards us, we were just blown away at this and kind of keeping an eye out for the 'rudeness' to present itself to us....but it never really happened.

Something real interesting about Darwin we found out from a pastor that we met with, he said that per capita Darwin is the drunkest city in the WORLD. Once he shared that, EVERYTHING made sense! From that point forward I would notice that many people would walk streets with huge cases of beer, may it to be used with a small group of friends / family or a party....there was this incident where one of our guys had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning (around 1-3am) and kinda butt heads with our neighbors at the hostel we were staying at. I guess they were being insanely loud (I was dead asleep, so I didn't hear a thing....both nights)

Darwin, Australia pt. 1

Us waiting at Manila Intl. Airport

Finally made it Darwin

The adventure started off good! Tommy, Rob and I took off from Okinawa to Tokyo and met Zach there. When we were checking in with our airlines they told us that we needed a special visa to enter into Australia, and they said we only have five minutes to get...so we look at each other and just book it down the huge international terminal. We get the visas and ran back to our check in counter...we get our tickets and the lady said we had to run to our plane because they were waiting for us....so we take off running, again. Anyways we make it to the plane with 15 minutes to spare, making it through security and immigration with no problems (though we had to talk our way into going through 'flight crew only' area at immigration). 

Once we arrived to Darwin (5am) we ended up needing to wait around the terminal until the car rental counter opened. We now have the car and we take off, knowing only the general direction of the city (no GPS in car). Circling around the area some and eventually making our way to the coast we stop and look at the sunrise. Beautiful. 

Down under

This past week I have been in Darwin, Australia seeing what God is doing here and seeing what the people are like. We ran across many things of which I will post at a later date, but just so you all know we have had a blessed time here. Thanks for all the prayers!

 

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Cape Haedo

Now I can say I've been tip to tip on this island.

We were blessed with the oportunity to go to Cape Haedo which is the Northern-most tip of Okinawa, it was my first up here, man was it beautiful. God's creation, Amazing.

Kid's art....

While everyone was going through the Peace Meusem tour I was able to experience my first art exhibit of the war dipicted by kids asking their grandparents what they went through. I only took a couple pictures (I wasn't supposed to take any), but if you look at the ones I have posted you can see and understand what the grandparents went through.

caving

this was the only picture that I was allowed to take....none in the cave....

This was my first time to actually spend over an hour in a dark cave with hard hat and flashlight. It was incredible. We were able to see what it was like for the Japanese people living in the caves during WWII. Incredible.

SoS

Here is the team at Peace Memorial Park, they were able to see some WWII history 

Here everyone got dressed up in their yukattas (girls) and jimbes (guys) for a matsuri (city festival)....there were sweet shows, expensive food and incredible fireworks!

The SoS kids getting ready to take off to Tokyo for the second half of SoS

Everyone at the famous Pineapple park!

SoS was a great time, and the kids were good. God gave me the opportunity to lead all of them this summer and even allowed me to go through the book of 2nd Timothy with them. God did a good thing with them and us (the leaders).

The parentals

ahahah, we were able to take purikura together with the Diaz, t'was a fun day!

Mom scored a sweet bingata from one of my english students (these things can get very expensive....this was an expensive one)

Okinawa welcomed my dad the best way it knows how.....a crash with some coral on their first full day on island.....

Well, mom and dad finally made to my side of the world and from what I saw and heard they had an incredible time with not only me, but also a great time in missions 101.

been absent for a while....sorry.

here is a tranquil picture of the East China Sea to ease you anxiety 

Man has it been an incredibly busy and blessed summer. many things happened. stay tuned for more posts

June

I have been working on making my own pasta (the above is store bought)

A Okinawa treat, taco rice....everything you expect IN a taco BUT  on RICE!....weird I know, but its good.

Pastor Rick saying a couple things at the CCO Anniversary 

some dude chilling on his roof...he looks like he was asleep (couldn't look to long, I was driving)

the Magnusson's getting ready to check in their luggage

June was a very busy month and thus a reason why I have not been able to post anything to the blog.

At the beginning of the month Tommy and the family went state side for the month. This of course gave me a grip of things to take care of while they were gone (every moment was a blessing).

I was able to teach English at two preschools that Joanna usually teaches at, this was very scary for me at first since I really don't like teaching English and entertaining kids at the same time, BUT, the Lord gave me joy each day that I needed to teach!

Some people left the island and others came back to the island. The Lord called Joe and Samantha Magnusson back to the states, they were a huge blessing to the church body and the bible college kids. The Lord brought back two people to us, Keegan Davis and Yuko Nakatsu. Keegan will be going to language school while he is out here with us and Yuko will be coming along side us to help with the Bible College and English classes that we are offering to the general public.

Then Calvary Chapel Okinawa (CCO) had their 10 year anniversary, it was a blessing to be part of some of the work that the Lord has done with the body over there.

Solar eclipse

you can kind of see it

Yesterday morning on our way to the gym it was darker than normal (it wasn't because of cloud coverage), odd right. Tommy looked up and saw that the eclipse was going on. All of us were like, "woooooahhh..." (or maybe that was just me...). We were blessed to be able to look at it without the special glasses due to the cloud coverage (still dangerous, I know). Either way it was cool to see.

Graduation

The spring semester of CCBC Japan is no over! It was a great semester with great students, the Lord is going to do a great thing with all of the students. Above we have our three graduates; Aya, Yuko, and Chala. Lord do a great work with these incredible sisters!