These last 3 weeks have been kind of slow. We finished our Spring season but because the weather is not so good until July so don’t get many guests. Most of the staff have taken some off time to be with family and travel around a little bit. From tomorrow we are all back and ready to start our summer prep which consists of a few key things.
Training New Short term staff (this summer we have 1 new staff from the US named Andrew)
Cleaning, Cleaning and more Cleaning in under and around the lodge.
And of corse we will spend a good amount of time in Prayer about the upcoming season.
Summer is one of our longest seasons and should have a lot of people coming to Norikura but this year has been a bit slower than normal I think partly due to the state of the economy. Please pray for us and the staff as we desire to have guests to serve. We have started to feel the hit that the economy has taken and things are getting tight for us.
This photo was taken from our living room window. The summer skies here are so beautiful.
We hope your all doing well and enjoying your start of the summer. Here in Norikura things are going well and we are enjoying some down time before the summer season really gets going.
We have been talking and talking about starting a garden (hatake in Japanese) to grow some of our own vegetables and so finally the other day we went and asked our landlord if it’s okay to use a small plot in front of our apartment. They said it was fine and so this morning we went out to cut some weeds and clean it up a bit. We didn’t have a lot of time so I thought we would maybe work for 30 min or so and they I would go to work. About 15 min into cutting small branches and not really know what was okay to cut or not cut, our landlord shows up with a machine and clears a plot 3 times bigger than we were thinking. Needless to say I was not able to get to work until a little later. He pulled out a bunch of small trees that were blocking the sun from hitting the garden area and dug down so we could sift out all the rocks. And boy is there a lot of rocks. The soil is about 3 pars rock and 1 part dirt so it will take some time to sift through it all.
Kayo, Brad and Michie all came over this afternoon and helped us with the digging and sifting out of all the rocks. It’s a real blessing to have their help. This week we hope to finish our plot and then next week we will work on the other plot for a garden near NORTHSTAR. Fun fun fun. We will let you know how it goes.
So a few nights ago the staff decided to have a BBQ at NORTHSTAR. The only bad part was that it started raining that day and so we couldn’t have the BBQ outside. Instead we had it on the front steps of NORTHSTAR which is still outside but out of the rain. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with the other staff and hang out together.
At the moment only the full time staff are here which is Ken, Kayo, Michie, Brad and I. Dan is in the US on a support raising trip and will be back next week. He is speaking with many pastors and missions leaders about NORTHSTAR and how people from the US can get involved with ministry in Japan. Good stuff. If your interested in hearing more about that please let us know and we would be glad to give you some more info.
Some people think that skateboarding is dangerous and other think that little kids should only play in the sand and grass where they can’t get hurt. I think those people need to meet my son. Here is a photo from last June when we bought Ezekiel his first skateboard when we were in the US. He was only 5 months old then. Now he is a year and 5 months old and has been practicing a lot lately. We keep the little skateboard in the living room and he uses it after meals. Pretty funny and cute.
Then the other day we decided it was time to let him have a real go at skating outside. We borrowed a helmet from NORTHSTAR and let him go for it. He was so stoked to ride outside and to watch me skate around, too. He actually likes sitting on the longboard with Mom or Dad better but he will get the hang of it.
Praise God, our Savior is risen! We hope you all had a great Easter remembering that death has been conquered by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that we have been given everlasting life in Him! How great a salvation!
I feel like it’s been a while since I posted anything and let me tell you it’s not because there is nothing to post about. The end of our winter season was super busy but at the same time super good. Let me share a little bit about each thing that went on at the end of our winter season.
We had a great season in the snowboard park this year and were able to spend a lot of time with people who would come and ride in the park.
To give you a bit of background about the park, the ski resort here has been struggling financially and was planning to shut down the park due to lack of funding. We went to the ski resort with a proposal to run the park with volunteer staff. It was not immediately accepted but they ended up letting us (NORTHSTAR) manage the snowboard park. We had a YWAM team from Switzerland come and volunteer as the park staff along with some of our snowboard instructors.
The season ended with an annual event that we call the “Norikura Hotdog Jam” which is a free slope style competition where the riders get to judge each other while riding together. We also setup a hospitality tent and served lots of hotdogs to the competitors. It was a great end to a great season.
Some of you may remember our friend So. He use to work at one of the rental shops here and come to the community English classes. Through those classes and the relationship we built with him we were able to share about Jesus with him and he later accepted Christ and was baptized. He came to visit on the last day of the season and I got to go riding with him for a bit and spend some time together. Please keep So in your prayers as he is struggling to get plugged into a local Church where he lives now.
On March 29th we all took one last ride together through the snowboard park and then closed it down for the season. It was great working together and seeing how our staff worked so hard to gain trust among the lift workers and local staff. In the past our relationship with the lift workers had not been so good but through a lot of prayer and hard work we have earned their respect.
After a few more days of cleanup and work to close down the lodge before our spring break we all went to Tokyo to see our seasonal staff off. We had staff from the US, Canada, Finland and Switzerland this year and they flew back to their homes the first week of April. But we got to spend a day or two together in Tokyo before they flew out. I always think it’s good to go to Tokyo and experience (for a few days at least) what a lot Japanese deal with on a daily basis.
Harajuku Town
This is a photo taken in Harajuku which is one of the fashion centers of Japan. Millions of teens and young people go there to find something new or different to wear. It’s also right across the street from one of the largest shinto shrines in Japan, Meiji Shrine.
Happy Boy
The last photo I will show you is this nice photo of Ezekiel. He is such a blessing to us and we can’t believe how fast he is growing up. Every day brings some new thing or some new sound he makes. One of these days he is just going to blurt out an entire sentence. At the moment it’s more of a series of grunts in different tones. Pretty cute though, even if we don’t know what he is trying to say.
Please keep us in your prayers as we start our Spring season here in Norikura. We will have a camp from tomorrow for 4 days then next week we have 5 days of first aid training for our full time staff. It’s going to be a busy next few weeks as we get back in the swing of things and start prepping for Summer as well.
We went to Tokyo last week and said goodbye to Sarah on Saturday when she flew back to OR. It was really fun having family here these last 3 months. I can’t wait to go visit OR in the fall.
We went to Ueno park to see some art and the cherry blossoms that are out now. There was so many people there, it was crazy. There was some cats who were sleeping in one of the trees and people were freaking out about the cats and taking thousands of photos of them. I didn’t think the cats were all that interesting so I took a photo of the people taking photos. See if you can count how many cameras there are.
Dear praying friends and family. The last few weeks have been quite busy with many different camps and some great opportunities to bless people. We had a CCC (campus crusade for christ) group for a weekend and we had some great chances to share testimony and give them an adventure as they learned to snowboard. After that our staff had a chance to lead worship at our local Japanese church which is about an hour from here. It was really good to see the church doing new and creative things to get more young people involved and we are looking forward to more things like that.
I also want to tell you about a camp that starts today and runs until Sunday that is put on by SFC Japan (snowboarders for Christ). This will be the 4th annual snowboard camp and the 3rd annual snowboard competition and outreach event. In the past years we have run the event and had a good turn out of people both competing and watching. This event is also the highlight of our winter season outreach and we will have one of our staff share a testimony, a YWAM team who is here will preform a skit and there will be a gospel presentation. We will also have bibles available for people to take home.
Please pray for this event and that Gods word would be heard by the Japanese people who come.
Pray for the NORTHSTAR team who are putting on the camp
Pray for the SFC Japan team who are putting on the comp
Pray for Travis who will be sharing his testimony
Pray for the YWAM team who will do a skit that talks about being fake and having masks to keep people out of your life
Pray for Dan Junker who will be giving the message to wrap up the evening
Pray for good weather so many people will come and hang out at night in our park
Pray for the locals in the community, that they will come and hear the good news of Jesus Christ
On Thursday night we had our worship service here at NORTHSTAR for our staff. It was so good to worship God together, pray together and fellowship. I played guitar and Michie helped lead a few songs then our pastor named Takeshi from our home church, Azumino Family Chapel was there and shared from Matthew 11.
He shared about “Rest for the Weary” which seemed like such a timely word for all of us as we are getting to the end of our winter season and have been working so hard. He reminded us to keep our eyes on Jesus and to come to him to be refreshed.
Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
This last Sunday some of the NORTHSTAR staff got to lead worship at our home Church called Azumino Family Chapel. Given the fact that we are a hospitality based lodge we are normally not able to go to Sunday service so we have our own service usually held on Thursday nights. Michie, Sarah, Anni, Amanda and I led some worship songs and Ken gave preached. It was really cool to see how the team worked together and we had a good time leading together.
Please pray for the Azumino Family Chapel. Pray that they would be a Church that goes for God and want’s to see this country changed.
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