Dear Praying friends and Family

This past month has been an extremely exciting one, filled with many beginnings and endings

Beginning . . . Bro. Randy was asked to preach a weekend meeting at a church in Asahikawa and asked me to run the service here.   While I am far from preaching an entire message on my own, I was able to lead the singing, open and close in prayer, transition from one thing to the next, and push play on the computer for the message (that last one was the hardest part! Just kidding.)  I was nervous when it began and ecstatic when it was over – simply because it was over.  It was however a good opportunity to see where I am and where I still need work. (Shellee says: “ Mrs. JoAnne and I both agreed that the Japanese that Duane used flowed well, he  did a good job and it was VERY exciting!”)

Ending . . . In short . . . Shellee’s laptop is dead.   This is our faithful laptop that took us through four years of deputation, playing a PowerPoint presentation that was too big for it to really handle, that I ran over with our Suburban, that was an endless source of joy and frustration, and that ended up being a repository for homeschooling files galore.  I spent most of one day working on it, and I  was finally able to get it working long enough to dump all of the document  files onto an external hard drive before it crashed completely.  So, just to make sure that they were all there, I plugged that hard drive into my laptop, and it crashed.   I decided to do what any rational thinking person would do . . . I went to bed and slept very well.  After praying and finaggeling and praying and scanning and praying and restoring, I was able to get my laptop up and going!  By the time I got back online, a ton of e-mails came flooding in, though there were many in the inbox already that had not been ready and were no longer available.  Soooooooooo . . . if you sent an e-mail and expected an answer, there’s a good chance I did not get it.  I’m still trying to answer all those that came in originally. Shellee’s e-mail address is the same, just moved onto my laptop.
 

Beginning . . . My language helper, Mr. Saito, took a three week vacation down to his family home in Osaka.  His birthday was the day after Malachi’s and we gave him a Japanese New Testament.  He asked us to pray for his trip and said he would have a lot of time on the train to read;  and pray we did!!  When he got back, Mr. Saito told me that he had read the New Testament every day and had some questions for me later.  I am looking forward to it!!  (I wonder how many Christians have read their Bible everyday for the past three weeks?  Of course some have a good excuse.  There are some that don’t have a Bible at all.)  Please pray for this man as he helps me with Japanese and the Lord works on his heart.

Ending . . . The garden is finished!!  The vegetables are canned or frozen, the last couple of watermelons are eaten, the stakes and ropes are all taken down, and the potatoes are dug.  There are still some carrots in the ground, but some of the farmers leave them there until spring, I am told.  Though it was a blessing (and should continue to be through the winter months),  I am certainly glad it’s finished!
 

Beginning . . . Sigh . . . on the 31st a dreaded white powdery substance began to float ever so gently down from the sky.  By the evening, it wasn’t so gentle, and by morning It had blanketed the ground.  And so it begins . . .  the familiar sound of the dump tuck banging behind our house at 3 AM signaled the start of it.  Soooooooo . . . we start buttoning up the house for the winter.

Ending . . . Titus finally got his cast off of his arm.  He was soooooooooo  excited to be able to take a shower without having to have a bag wrapped around his arm.  We let him take a really long one (after all, the skin under a cast stinks pretty bad after 6 weeks J  ).  He seems to be doing fine with it.  He has a few therapy exercises he needs to do, but otherwise everything seems to be going great.

Beginning . . . The Lord has given us another opportunity to reach a Japanese lady.  Shellee was contacted by a lady who wants to help teach her Japanese, and asked if she could do it for free.  We thought the price was reasonable and it was a great opportunity to build a relationship.  Pray for Mrs. Sato and for Shellee as the Lord guides and directs in their classes together.

Ending . . . Noah finished being only “months” old.  It’s hard to believe that he is a year old already.  He has been trying to say goodbye to babyhood for a long time.  He was talking and walking for a while before he turned one (our earliest to do either) and has an infectious smile.  He also has curly hair . . . an oddity for our house.  (Of course, we have many oddities here  !! )
 

Beginning . . . Our DVD project is beginning to shape up nicely.  We have the distribution rights for  a presentation called “God’s Story”  in Japanese and are putting the final touches on it to send off to the company that we will be using to make the copies – 5000 for starters.  We have about half of the money needed for them and we are asking/expecting the Lord to furnish the rest.  We plan to get these out to every home in Nayoro eventually, and figured 5000 was a good start!

 Ending . . .  I’m done.

Thank you for your prayers for us!!  We thank the Lord for you all!!
Duane for all 10
www.hopeofjapan.com