Sermons, Shinkansens, and Schools

Sermon:
I'm preparing to preach my very first sermon every this week! IN JAPANESE! However, unlike the title of this blog, there will be no three point alliteration. :P My pastor is going to Korea for the weekend, so he asked me to fill in for him while he is gone. I'm totally excited for it! And feeling a bit nervous about not feeling nervous, if that makes sense. PLEASE please PLEASE please pray for me!!! That God will give me the right words to say, content-wise and linguistically, and that the people He wants there would be there. :)

Shinkansen:
I had a lovely weekend in Tokyo this past weekend. I got to see Yoshi and Satoru, two of my best Japanese guy friends (for the first time all three of us got to hang out together!), my AMAZING host fam in Yokohama, and my friend Lucas who is a TCU student. I'm toying with the idea of maybe trying to move to Tokyo next year, because then I could live with a family rather than by myself... I have to re-contract for next year the beginning of February, so that would only give me a few weeks to find a job in Tokyo... which doesn't seem practical, so I am leaning towards staying here. Please pray that God will guide me and put me right where he wants me. :)

Schools:
School has been going great! I love my students and the Japanese teachers I work with so much! I have been given a lot of favor in my schools, so I am really thankful for that. The vice principal of one of my schools takes me on a morning walk around the school with him each day so we have time to chat. He's letting me announce about church Sunday to all the teachers in the morning meeting tomorrow. I saw the prefectural adviser for the JET program today, and turns out I work with her sister at my elementary school, and she said "all of the teachers at the school love you!" Stoked... I've bumped heads a bit with one of the teachers at one of my schools, but things seem to be smoothing out a bit. (If you could keep praying for that tho, that would be great!) I got to work with some students in a special program for kids that don't want to go to school due to social disorders last week. The kids were super awesome (the teachers said they were way more energetic than normal! YAY!) I did a "how much?" shopping lesson that ended with a little talk about human value, as well as taught them about Thanksgiving and taught them how to say what they are thankful for.

(the alliteration is over... moving on!)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!
I celebrated on Tuesday with an American missionary family here, so fun!! They have two little kids, and when we were going around saying what we were thankful for, their 5 year old girl said in a HUGE voice "I'M THANKFUL FOR JESUS AND THE WHOLE WORLD!" Best answer ever! May my heart echo that each day! I hope each and everyone of you have an AMAZING time with friends and family, thanking God for everything he has given us.

HOME!!!!
I'm coming home for Christmas in less than 3 weeks now! YAY!!!! Hopefully I will get to see a lot of you!

Thanks for your encouragement and support of my journey thus far! It really means the world to me!

LOVE YOU!!!!!! (Yes, YOU!)