Celebrating Christmas W/Family in Hawaii

In Japan, since December 25th is not a holiday, Christmas is celebrated on the Sunday closest to the 25th. SO, after having our Christmas celebrations here on the 23rd, Taka & I headed to Hawaii (via a one night stay in Seattle!) to be with my parents' and one of my bro's family. We had accumulated enough miles for free tickets to Hawaii & Seattle. We arrived in Maui on Christmas Day. It was treat to be able to be with family on Christmas and especially to see my nephew, whom we hadn't seen since our wedding over two years ago. He's grown so much! Here are some pics from Hawaii. PHOTOS: Taka getting a lesson on Leap Frog from Robbie....The beach where Taka is standing is the one that is behind the house where my brother lives. It's not good for swimming, but the surfers & kitesurfers go there in droves on the weekend.... The rainbow shot is one that I took one Christmas day to show my nephew. He had asked santa for a rainbow for Christmas:) (Our trip was a little "eventful" but we'll save those photos for the next post....enjoy these calm pictures...haha)

Christmas Service & Lunch

Here are some pics from our Christmas Service. I don't know how many people ended up coming, but it was a full house. I tried to catch some candid shots during the greeting time in the worship service (you can see the surprise of the gospel choir leader:). You may notice Samantha is wearing a face mask to cover her mouth. Don't be scared! In Japan, people often wear masks when they are sick so as not to spread their cold.

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to everyone! We hope the end of your 2007 was wonderful...and that 2008 will be wonderfullll as well! We were able to use our miles to go to Hawaii to visit one of my brothers and his family (my mom & dad were there too)...and to Seattle to spend New Year's with my mom's side of the family. We'll post some pics from that soon. But first...must catch up on photos from the end of last year. This photo is of my Wednesday morning English cell group. We went out to lunch for our last cell group of the year. The first woman on the left is Maris. She's from the Philippines & is an English teacher in a town about 20mins. away, but she worships w/us & comes out for our cell group. On that day, we went to her area because she was swamped w/work as one of the teachers at her school had left & she was teaching for two. Next to her is Samantha, a missionary teacher at our church. She's doing her senior year here (field study from Liberty Univ.)...then I hope you know who the third gal is. The woman to my right is Jennifer. She is from New Zealand and is a missionary teacher as well. We have one more woman, LaVonne, who is a part of our cell, but she was sick that day:( It is a blessing to have these women for encouragement/fellowship in English. I also have a Japanese cell group on Wednesday afternoons.