hub shrub

...with its convenient location and roominess, our home is fast becoming the hub for our church to share time much like a family does...eating together...leisure together...pray and study scripture together...work together...already God is answering our prayers to join with our church in experiencing the joy of "being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind" (phil. 2:2)...

...today, after our sunday morning worship service, where we met two visitors (a university student and her mother) who came to our church for first time last week...




...some of our gakuentoshi chapel members came to our home for fellowship and quick bites from bento lunches (small tray-like meals of rice, meat, and sides)...



...and prepare for our christmas outreach event to the neighborhood -- a christmas concert featuring a well-known handbell choir followed by a message from our supervising church-planting pastor, fuji-sensei...

...something that we're still getting used to: the organized and efficient way in which our church team gets things done...so today's task marks the beginning of a week-long effort to distribute over 6,000 thousands invitational flyers (chirashi) for the christmas handbell concert to every resident of gakuentoshi...brother kokubu-san, using city-planning maps to assign members to the different quandrants, had us all running on all cylinders...

...with our marching orders and hundreds of chirashi, ryo -- a wonderful brother who is as sharp a thinker as he is a dresser -- set off with us to get the word out...



...forgetting our umbrellas, we wanted to coooperate with the moody weather...

...during our time together, we got to know kokubu-san's eldest son...ryo loves books (right on!)...he is a huge fan of shusaki endo, whom many call the c.s. lewis of japan...among japanese authors, endo's works -- the life of christ; silence; deep river, just to name a few -- have been the most widely translated into english...what's exciting is that we decided to start reading the works of endo and lewis in turn with the dual purposes of (i) growing as friends in christian maturity and thinking (i'm intrigued by the prospect of hearing endo through a critical pair of japanese eyes) and (ii) returning his english to the tip-top shape it was in a few years ago...needless to say, we're excited by this new horizon...

...when we came back home, the rest of our team was busy writing personal invitations to church members...

...ryo started to help izumi study for her big exams which begin on monday (tomorrow)...

...so claire and i started to assemble and dress our christmas tree!...yes, we mean assemble...fresh trees are expensive, but our "nude" tree (that's the name by which it is sold) did just fine..."haji-me-mashitde (nice to meet you)," says claire with her characteristically sweet smile...

..."don't worry, we'll get some clothes on you soon"...

...with many helpful hands...

...our nude tree became....vwa-laahh...our hub's christmas shrub...

...after a full afternoon of groupthink and grouptask, we had dinner together like family at a nearby chinese restaurant...as everyone returned to our home to pick up their stuff, we prayed together, in japanese and in english...we paused to thank God for giving us the true meaning of christmas...with our shrub nearby, we thank God for sending into the world His Son Jesus Christ our Lord and true hub for the holidays...