Happy early Independence Day from Ichinomiya! Today, we will celebrate America’s birthday in a traditional way: with a BBQ! We will be helping Liz Kuwahara with her Poochy class (pre-K English class) and then have our BBQ with the kids and their families. But before that, we have a full day starting with a traditional Japanese breakfast at Hotel Otsuka, followed by our first team visit to the local special needs school. This is an answered prayer for us because we have been praying for a long time to be able to build relationships with the administrators running the school. Last time we were here, we were able to participate in the net pull fishing event with them, but we were not able to visit the school and build relationships. We are so excited to visit the school this morning! Pray for great things to happen there.

After lunch, half the team will go to Misaki church for English Cafe hosted by Cheryl and Daisuke while the other half will go to Pastor Yuya’s house to help prepare for the BBQ tonight. And tonight, we will celebrate the end of a great day of ministry with a visit to an onsen. So we start the day with a Japanese tradition, end the day with a Japanese tradition, and sandwich an American tradition in-between!

Yesterday, we did another beach cleaning and weekend activity advertising among the surfers followed by a great cooking class taught by Mike with 8 mothers and a roomful of young children. When the cooking class was over, we were greeted by a torrential rainstorm. Unfortunately, the rain kept a lot of people at home so we had a lower than expected turnout for our English Cafe, but the people who did come got to speak a lot of English and we had deeper conversations with people than what would normally be possible. Overall, it was a great, full day of activities and meeting new people. Despite the full schedule, some of the younger members of the team got up early to go surfing this morning.

Please pray for:

• A great time of relationship building and opportunities to love the kids at the special needs school.
• Good sharing times at the English Cafe and Poochy BBQ tonight.
• Physical healing for minor injuries. Haj’s back was acting up from the beach cleaning but a soak in the tub has helped a lot. Ayumi scraped her knee pretty good and we’re watching it carefully to make sure it doesn’t get infected.
• A second wind from the Holy Spirit. We’re half way through the mission but we’re feeling physically, mentally and spiritually worn down. This is the time for the enemy to attack, so we pray for God’s protection over us.

Thank you again for your partnership with us in prayer. Greater things are still to be done in Ichinomiya!