Photo credit: Yuki W.; Written by: Laura R.

Hello all!

First, I wanted to let you know we are doing well. While there are cases of corona virus near us, we have been fine and healthy. There’s a lot of rhetoric about the virus on social media, but let’s all continue caring for one another and believing the best in each other.

Ok, back to the week’s deets.

Tuesday, March 10th

We had our weekly Sunrise team meeting. Mainly we lesson planned for our online classes this week, and for the upcoming day-camps we’re putting on during spring break. Assuming they aren’t cancelled, we have three day-camps planned: American culture camp, spring camp, and microscope camp.

Wednesday, March 11th

In the afternoon I met with Peter (from the Sunrise team) and Mr. Fuji (who runs a nonprofit). Through his nonprofit, Mr. Fuji provides business, family, and life coaching services. His nonprofit’s website hasn’t been updated in 10 years, and he wants to give it a new look. We met so he could share his vision for his nonprofit and the website in order that I can update it.

This was one of my favorite days so far! I loved it for two reasons:

1. Our meeting was entirely in Japanese, besides when I would talk (I know.. I know.. I should be using my Japanese 🤦🏼‍♀️). Not saying I understood 100% of everything, but I understood a lot more than I thought I would.

2. When someone has a vision they are passionate about, I love hearing their dream and collaborating together to make it happen. Along with this, I also enjoy websites and branding. To me, websites are just creative enough that it feels like art, but also functional enough to be a medium for business.

Thursday, March 12th

Online classes in the morning. In the afternoon we went to lunch with the Andoh’s, friends of Peter and Wendi who pastor a church in the area.

We enjoyed getting to know them and hearing their stories as Japanese pastors. They also brought us to their church to show us around. They’re a sweet, dedicated couple who are completely self-supported, yet give their all to the church and community.

Friday, March 13th

Kobe day! When I was on the World Race, my team was here for a month working with a preschool. Mark and I got to meet with some of the moms and their kids at a park. It was a fun day of playing games, catching up, and seeing how much the kids had grown!

Afterwards we met with Vallory. She went on the World Race back in 2013 and has been living/working in Kobe now for a few years. We completely forgot to take a picture (😔), but we did eat the most delicious burgers together while we chatted away.

Saturday, March 14th

Peter and Wendi’s friends, the Kohl’s, came over to meet us. They’ve been in Kobe for 15 years now and run a business development firm in Japan. Along with this, the have a nonprofit that assists families with children who have special needs. They’re a funny, laid-back couple, and we loved hearing about their vision for being here through their business.

After talking, we all (we all= The Kohl’s and their son, Peter and Wendi and their three kids, Andy, Mark, and me) went to eat okonomiyaki- a Japanese grilled savory pancake/omelette. Afterwards we went back to the education center building to have a nerf war 😅.

Sunday, March 15th

Simple day. I worked on the website for a chunk of time, and then in the evening we went to Peter and Wendi’s house church.

Monday, March 16th

Rest day. 😌It was on and off snowing this day.

Andy, Mark, and I made crepes in the morning, spaghetti at night, and watched Rainmaker. Mark loves lawyer movies, so he knew all the answers as it was happening (“That’s leading the witness!”). I was thankful for it because I was confused most of the time. 🤷‍♀️

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Thank you for reading this far 😂. We love you all and are so thankful for all of your intentionality and encouragement.

With love,

Laura & Mark

Written by: Laura R.

Monday, March 2nd

Travel day to Sanda!

Sanda is where we will be this whole month working with Sunrise Ministries and their education center. It was a fairly easy travel day, just taking the trains to the end of their service. Andy, who is a part of Sunrise, picked us up from the train station and brought us straight to tonkatsu. (Tonkatsu is fried pork/chicken with rice. Often served at a diner-like restaurant, but Japanese). Yum!

We got a tour of the Flip Education Center building, which we’re staying at on the third floor. This is an after-school English program that’s held by Sunrise. We’ll tell you more about it in a later blog. 😊

Pretty much the rest of the day we chilled, hung out with Andy, and played Life (one of our favorite board games 🙃).

Tuesday, March 3rd

This day was essentially an all-day team meeting with the Sunrise Ministries team here: Peter, Wendi, and Andy. After our meeting we hung out with Peter and Wendi’s family- losing in (I mean… playing) Mario Kart with their kids and eating Japanese Curry for dinner.

Unfortunately, The Flip Education Center isn’t holding any English classes for the month because of the corona virus. With Mark’s experience teaching English online to Chinese kids through VIP Kids, we’ve been helping them get some online classes rolling. Most of this meeting was getting to know each other and figuring out the platform we want to use to teach.

Wednesday, March 4th

This was a crash course day in the Flip Center’s education philosophy, methods, and curriculum. Most of our day was spent learning how they teach and putting together a lesson plan for online classes.

Thursday, March 5th

Practicing teaching our online classes to each other day.

With this being a new platform, and with us still learning their teaching methods, we decided to go through practice classes.

We got to break for some sushi with Peter and Wendi. It was a great time to hear more of their story and learn more about Sunrise Ministries. 😌

Friday, March 6th

Teaching day. 😊

We didn’t have a ton of classes, but Mark and I enjoyed the ones that we did. Classes went smoothly, and the students seemed to have fun. Peter and Wendi explained that technology in the house isn’t very common here, so the idea of online classes is new for a lot of their students.

Hopefully the online classes pick up this coming week!

After classes, Mark, Andy, and I went to eat ramen to celebrate Friday night. 🍜

Saturday, March 7th

Rest day.

We took this day pretty slow since we both had sore throats. Our greatest fear was we had brought Coronavirus here after traveling through Seattle. However, Mark and I are both feeling better now, so crisis adverted.👍🏻

In the morning I went to Andy’s Japanese tutor session to see how he learns with his language buddy. Both Mark and I have a high value for language learning and see it as a huge tool in ministry to connect with our Japanese friends. We both are continuing to study Japanese and grow.

Sunday, March 8th

Rest day 2.

At night we had some Japanese high schoolers from Andy’s Wednesday night English class over to watch a movie. It was a fun time to get to know them, especially with classes being cancelled.

Monday, March 9th

We met with Peter and Wendi in the late morning to talk about their vision for being here, and to plan out the week a bit.

The weather was so warm, in the afternoon I went exploring on a walk and found my new favorite walking spot

We finished up the afternoon helping Peter and his son, Toby, trim a tree. It was nice to collaborate together on a project other than teaching, and to get to know them both better.

Another week of online classes! We’ll keep you all posted. 😊

Thank you for following,

Laura & Mark

Written by: Laura R.

Friday, February 21

Spent the day playing tourist and brought Mark to Osaka Castle. We stopped at 7-11 and got a hot coffee to share, then walked around the park surrounding the castle.

Saturday, February 22

We met with Matt and Jen who are missionaries in Osaka with Encompass World Partners (thanks for introducing us, Allana 😊). We spent a good few hours talking about everything from their transition to Japan to the ministry they do to learning the language.

It was honestly so great to meet them and hear their stories. After talking with them, we had a lot to process and discuss about Japan. Specifically, how we want to move to Japan and what exactly we want to do (types of visas to get, if we should come as missionaries vs working, how long to study the language, etc).

Sunday, February 23

Oh happy day! We met with my high school host family for lunch!

Monday, February 24

Travel day! Left our Airbnb and lallygagged in Osaka with our packs until we could check into our next Airbnb in Kyoto. Literally, we just hung out at a train station’s mall— No interesting pictures to see here.

Tuesday, February 25

Slow morning. Which, really, is my favorite kind of morning. I’m thankful it was so restful, because our afternoon was not.

I wanted to go explore a nearby castle and the Imperial Palace, but I completely under estimated how close “nearby” was. 😅

Three miles of walking out to our destinations, and the castle was already closed for the day and the Imperial Palace was closed for the season. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Sometimes the day doesn’t go as you planned, and you end up walking miles feeling cold, tired, and hangry. You win some, you lose some, but the Lord has a way of redeeming things. ☺️

Wednesday, February 26

This day we made some new friends at Kyoto Mustard Seed Church!

Mark and I have friends who used to work at Osaka Mustard Seed Church (shout out to the Cobos family!) and they absolutely loved the community there. So we reached out to Kyoto Mustard Seed to connect for the day.

We got to have coffee with Jared and Ben who both work for Kyoto Mustard Seed. It was fun to hang out and joke, but also to hear about their church’s vision for Japan.

Thursday, February 27

We didn’t do much during the day, but attended Mustard Seed’s English Connect Conversation Meet Up at night. It was a lot of fun meeting people and getting to know them through games and discussion questions. Both Mark and I loved this ministry and could see ourselves doing something like this in the future. I could tell Mark missed teaching English, he was going hard on the lessons. 😌

Friday, February 28

Tourist day 2.0! We went to Arashiyama, a mountainside that holds a bamboo forest.

Really we just skipped the touristy areas and walked through the city as it winded up the mountain.

It was so beautiful and serene, and offered a great time to talk about how we were both doing and what we wanted for our future in Japan. We also discussed this blog and what platform we want to use this as. 🙂

Saturday, February 29

Tourist day 3.0! We went to Fushimi Inari Taisha, a series of shrines and gates leading up to the top of Mount Inari.

This time we couldn’t just skip the touristy areas. 😅 All the way up the mountain you’re in a tunnel of red gates, so you’re really committed to being surrounded by crowds.

Despite the crowds, we had fun hiking and found the history to be interesting.

Sunday, March 1

A chill day— just getting things done at our Airbnb and preparing to go to Sanda tomorrow. We’ll be helping at Flip English Education Center for the month of March. Some of my friends have worked with them, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about the work they do. We’re so pumped. 🙌🏻

Thank you for reading! We appreciate you all a whole lot!

Laura & Mark