This past Saturday was quite an adventure… for my stomach. No – Theresa and I didn’t try some new Japanese food or get sick off the sushi we are so fond of. I have had occasional bouts of indigestion and, although it is easily treated on an as needed basis with stomach medication, my doctor in America recommended that some time in the future I have an endoscope examination (that’s the camera on the end of a long tube that they stick down into your stomach).  I didn’t have time to get it done before we came to Japan and have been putting it off for a while until we got more language under our belts. With having passed the level 3 test and having some recent heartburn, I finally decided to make an appointment. We talked with some Japanese friends here and they recommended a doctor that they had used.

When I called for an appointment, they were able to get me in quite quickly, but unfortunately, the appointment was at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. So much for my day to sleep in. After talking with the doctor for a few minutes, we were taken into a room where I was given some medicine to drink and then had to lay down while the nurse put a tube coated with a local anesthetic into my nose. After a few minutes the doctor came in and off we went.

I will save you all the unpleasant details (unpleasant being the optimal word) but suffice it to say, they had it set up so there was a big monitor just inches from my face with a feed of what the doctor was seeing on the camera. It was a great review of Japanese anatomy words as the doctor paused at each interesting junction to play tour guide and snap a few photos with the camera.

Thankfully, Theresa was there to play translator for some of the more complicated instructions as it would have been rather hard to use my dictionary in that position. After hunting around for a while and taking a few samples, he proclaimed that he didn’t see any obvious problems and then removed the device. (It’s still making my stomach turn just writing about it.) I was given a bluish-green liquid about the viscosity of honey to drink to stop the bleeding from some of the scrapings he had done and was given a supply of more of my stomach medicine and sent on my way. The whole thing was over in around 45 minutes – fairly efficient for what is supposed to be a socialized medicine system.

The more pleasant part of the morning (as far as my stomach was concerned) followed as Theresa and I went to check out a large shopping mall in the next town over that a number of people had told us about. One of the reasons they directed us there was that the mall had a large international food store. Although the prices were a little higher than usual, it was nice to see familiar snacks – the most important of which was Theresa’s coveted salt and vinegar chips and a block of Colby cheese! After picking up a few things for ourselves and some gifts for our language helpers, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed home.

Praise the Lord for our continued good health. Pray that we will continue to have health and strength as we learn Japanese and connect with people.

Just this past Sunday, Valentine’s Day, it made a year that Colby and I have been in Japan.  Because we arrived on February 14th last year, Colby likes to tell people that he gave me a trip to Japan for Valentine’s Day.  If you think of it that way, then we’re still enjoying our 2009 Valentine present!  (By the way for you ladies out there, don’t worry, he still got me something for Valentine’s Day this year – flowers!)

This past year has had the usual ups and downs of a missionary’s first term and then some I think.  In looking back, there are a few that stick out to me.

Last February we got settled into the house, began with our language tutor, and bought our first car here in Japan.  In April, we had a work team from Atlanta come to help with the church and apartment remodeling.  They were a wonderful help and raised a great deal of money that enabled us to have a finished and functioning church and apartment.

The Atlanta Team

Then in May, one of the families we worked with unexpectedly decided to return to America.  Also during this month, we had our first visitor, a college friend of ours, who came to stay with us for a few days.

June saw us back in America for a week for Colby’s sister’s wedding and almost as soon as we returned we moved from the house on the property to our apartment.

The dining room and part of our living room of our apartment after we moved in.

In the fall we started our English classes and got our Japanese driver’s licenses.  A highlight was our annual retreat with the other missionaries and then afterward our trek up to the Tokyo area for the Church Planting conference.  Christmas and New Year’s festivities were our next highlights as we took time off from English classes and Japanese study to spend time together and with the other missionaries.

The Christar Japan missionaries at our annual retreat.

Thus far this year, we have seen our other teammates also return to America, as well as begin our partnership with another family here on the field.  We have had the joy of passing the first of our language tests and have begun with our religious study.

Needless to say, it has been a full year.  Have we grown this past year?  Oh my, yes!  Maybe I will recount some of the ways we have in future blog posts as it would certainly make this one too long.  And the great extent to which we have grown, we have also seen God’s hand and heart over us.

We have appreciated your many prayers for us this past year, thank you!

The long-awaited-for day dawned rainy and a bit chilly this past Monday morning.   After sleeping in a bit to make sure we weren’t too tired that morning, we ate a healthy breakfast of eggs, pineapple, and yogurt – all designed to help stimulate our brain functions to the highest level.  Then, after making sure we had two sharpened pencils, the timer set, and our heads on as straight as possible, we began to take the first of our Japanese language tests.

We started with the kanji and vocabulary section.  For those of you who don’t know, kanji are the Chinese pictorial characters the Japanese use in their writing system.  In this section of the test, we had to identify the correct readings and kanji for various words.  We also had to choose which answer was most similar in meaning to the question.

Next came the grammar section and reading section.  Here, we had to identify the correct particles, verb tenses, forms, etc. to complete various sentences.  At the end, there were two short articles for us to read and answer comprehension questions about.

Lastly, was the listening comprehension section.  This was the part we were most nervous about.  It involved listening to dialogues on a CD and answering various comprehension questions.  Because of some of our prior listening practice, we were afraid that the dialogues would be fast and difficult to follow.

After having completed the test, I am pleased to say that each section was actually much easier than we thought they would be.  We understood both the kanji and grammar parts well, and the listening dialogues were actually a very good speed.  We took our answers to our language tutor’s house the next day where she graded them and we found that we both passed!  It is a wonderful relief and weight off our shoulders to know that this first of many milestones is now behind us.

What is next you ask?  Well, because of preparing for this test so much last week, we actually did enough study to cover last week and this week.  With that in mind, we are going to take a bit of time off the rest of this week so that we can catch up with various things around the apartment.  Next week we will begin with our religious language studies with the help of one of our friends here at the church.  We will focus primarily on that for the next few months until we have gone through that material and then we will continue on with regular Japanese study at an intermediate level.  We are excited for the change of pace and look forward to continuing on in our learning!

Thank you all for your many prayers for us concerning this test.  Praise the Lord with us that we were able to pass it.  Please pray that the grammar concepts and words we worked hard to learn would become second-nature to us in daily conversation.