Hannah

Hannah, my little sister, with her five tier 'premium grade' soft serve

some of the 24+ shrimp Zach ate.....

kemchi kalbi beef....beyond good

mmmmm......

I'm not related to the Ruiz family but I consider them my family, each one of them. Hannah the second oldest is preparing to graduate High School, leave the island and attend CCBC Murrieta in California. She is my little sister whom I'll dearly miss....anyways....Tom, Joanna, the Wunderlichs', Zach, Cotton and myself took Hannah out to a high end Yakkinku (all you can eat meat joint) to celebrate the soon to be occasion. The fellowship was great, the food even better....watching Zach eat....not so great.

We'll see how monday goes Hannah!

A blessing from the Smiths'

Cotton and I think about the pressing things of life....when we're gonna eat

Thats right, Okinawan Super Man, Pop-eye, and Betty boo!

The food, lasagna, homemade goodness! 

Natsuki invited the group over to her apartment for some dinner and fellowship. We had such a fun time and were totally blessed by the food and company. Thank you so much Natsuki for the food!!

Caught!

Tamiko grabbed my phone and caught me red handed!

The crew getting ready for some water....Shell and Hannah look over joyed! ha!

I was caught sleeping! This never happens, but I tell you what....it was so worth it and it was such a beautiful day outside at the beach. I was even blessed with the opportunity to hang out with the Ginowan youth kids even though I'm not apart of the youth leadership there. Thanks for the invite guys it was a blast!

Devotions

This morning I was reading out of Nehemiah 4 and I came across verse 17-18 which says, "They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.For the builders, every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. And he that sounded the trumpet was by me." It made me think about how we as Christians should be equipped with both tools of work and our sword, the Word, so that we may be able to both do the work that the Lord has called us to do and defend ourselves and even others from the enemy. 

Then today when we had our group devotion Tommy shared out of James 1: 9-20 on how temptation leads to sin (if we allow it to trip us up) which will then take us to death. This portion along with my personal devo has challenged me to make sure that I must at all times be on guard against both my flesh and the enemy. 

Congradulations!

John Piper, Anna Hebel, me (not a student), Josh Brevick

Congrats to the class of '11 it was a blessing to see you guys mature and grow closer to the Lord.

The semester....where did it go?

 This picture of Nelms pretty much describes how fast the school semester went, a total blur. So many things had happened, many blessings came our way and many sad events as well...the coolest part though was that God's hand was in everything leading and guiding each one of us so that we may become more like Him. Thank you Lord for such a interestingly gifted group of people.

Mother's day

Now, I know its late and everything but happy Mother's day mom! love ya! I was walking around heiwa-dori the other day when I came across these shirts. To make is short, they made me think of my mom and how she would have done just about anything to get these five shirts for the family. 

Broken

This knife has gone through a lot of things with me, many semesters, veggies and meats. I was blessed to have it and I know the Lord will bless me with an even better knife!

Today was also a very wet day due to the tropical storm that we had. 

Guess where I went!

Yep, if you thought Nago by the picture and video you are totally right! I tagged along with all of the pastors. It was my first time to enter into the aquarium since 2006! some things have changed inside, but the majority was the same....a blessing nonetheless.

Sick!!!.....

I had a sick day (turned to be a weekend). I was blessed by by German friend with some meds and was able o finish making the 1 & 2 chronicles final....study hard!

A huge thanks!

Tatsuhiko

Naoko

Hebel (Anna)

John

I don't have pictures of all of you guys, but thank you so much for willing to sacrifice your time of being able to hear the messages during the conference to help me out in the kitchen. Again, thank you all!!

A ton of pancake mix....

five boxes of pancake mix ended up being quite heavy....

We had pancakes for breakfast during the missions conference and man was it a ton of mix. Everyone was happy with all of the pancakes though, so Praise the Lord!

Hey! Look at that fu....

I'm not talking about any person or anything like that. This stuff is really called fu. How to describe it....it's curnchy if you eat it dry but if its put into some miso or something of that nature, it becomes soft and juicy. its fun thing to eat and we use it when we don't have any tofu.

Worship in Hard Times

The conference is now over, boy was it a great time to hear from the Lord and serve. It is always important to remember that no matter our circumstances, we must worship and thank the Lord for all things.

The Royal Wedding

I normally don't get all giddy and excited over things like this, BUT this was history! so I couldn't resist....and it was fun making comments about the hats with Hannah.

Little Treats!

I was blessed with some sweet treats the other week, some from the Hokkaido missions team. All of them were very tasty!

This was a great surprise! I love Ramen

one of my favorite treats from  Hokkaido

this piece of chocolate had my favorite fruit in it, cranberries! 

Let the conference begin!

Last night all of the pastors what will be teaching for the Worship conference arrived and all are set to get things going. Today is a school/prep day for all of the students and interns (pray for all of them as they will be doing great deal of ministry this week and fighting a stomach bug that is floating about). Cooking for such a large group will be fun; this year we are going to do something a tad different, we'll be using the normal Bible College people doing the cooking instead of me, I'll be there guiding them and making sure that things are done on time (I guess the Lord wanted me to take a break and raise others up!) pray for all of us cooks to keep our cool....as well as our fingers!

More pictures and news will come in the week!