Spring Update

Hannah, Seth, Ezekiel

Happy Easter!

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.

God Bless

The McAllisters