Japan Day 1 & 2

Okay so this is about the millionth time I've tried to work on this blog and post pictures, but it is taking a ridiculously long time to load a single one and I know all of you are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear to hear aboutJapan and see all the pics. and such. I am going to have to put up the pictures over several posts though because there are just too many.First of all, I should state that we went to Japan to work with the teens of one of the churches there in Okinawa. A family who used to go to our church here, is stationed there and asked if we would be willing to come out and work with the youth group. And we said of course!!! Who wouldn't want to visit Japan?? And I have never been out of the country so I was super stoked!

We departed for Japan on December 14th and stayed for a little over a week. Today I will give you a little glimpse of our first two days in Japan. Day 1 and 2 were planned to be relaxing due to our loooong travels (30 hours) and the time change (Okinawa is 14 hours ahead of us). So we got to take a little tour of the city, visiting Kokusai Street and a Chinese Gardens (built in 1992 to commemorate their relationship with their sister city in China) and then we got to meet all the kids we went to see. Kokusai Street is a long strip of booths where you can buy just about anything you need or want.

Eating Soba and drinking Calpis! Yummmm....

Kokusai Street

The fish market

You can buy all kinds of colorful fish!

Anyone need some clothes?

You can purchase your sweet heart some beautiful flowers!

Or you can choose from a million different little Shi-Shi Dogs...I'll tell you about those later.

Here's something for all you liquor drinkers out there. What you are seeing above is Habushu, containing two poisonous snakes inside. It actually didn't taste as bad as I thought it would.

Or for the more healthy eater...you can get yourself a nice big ol' raddish!

Potato Bread...from a purple potato, it was so delicious! It tasted like funnel cake.

I will have to finish uploading pictures of the Chinese Gardens another day, it is taking FOREVER to load a single picture! Oh and P.S. in case you freaking out about the snake liquor, I didn't actually drink it! Ewww...

2011

Wow! I can't believe it's 2011, this year has really flown by and unfortunately for you, I did not do a good job at updating you on the goings-on of the past year. Soooo...hopefully within the next month or so I can do some highlighting of things that happened in 2010. Seems like right when summer hits, things don't really calm down for a long time.

With that being said, I will leave you with a scripture in dedication of the new year. I know I, as well as many of you I'm sure, make plans for the upcoming year, whether it's goals/resolutions or plans to buy a house, or plans to start a family, or to change jobs etc. and sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all these plans and get discouraged when they don't work out and lose focus on God and what his plan is for our life. And no, we are not planning on starting a family, but we are going to try and buy a house! But we'll see, it didn't work out last year, so we are holding our breaths (and praying), hoping it happens this year!

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you."