some pictures of our time so far...

Eric and Isaac at dinner with us at Yaki Niku restaurant...it was fun and delicious!
This is the CCSI (Christian school) building on the left and Honda chapel on the right
McDonald's. We spent an hour here visiting with Reverend Han and Isaac today. It was fun to seee somewhere familiar, but do different. They sell burgers with poached eggs in them....they also sell burgers without the bun.
This is a few of the kids in the after school program at Kokubunjidai. They played a memory game with alphabet cards, sang some songs, had a bible story and shared a snack. We enjoyed observing that and having dinner with the Han family.
This is our room tonight (i'm about to go to sleep in it)....it's the tatami room (which most japanese houses have a tatami room) in one of the missionary's apartments. We will be joining her english bible study class tomorrow morning.

In all we're having a great time, although we are exhausted from the jet lag and also from the craziness of meeting so many new (and wonderful) people. Our schedule has been packed!

That's all for now....more to come in a couple days! Thanks for the prayers...we are doing well.

We made it!

Tom and I made it to Japan! We're exhausted, but also are grateful for arriving safely and having a pretty uneventful flight. There was a security breach in the detroit airport for 45 or so minutes when we were about to board the plane, but other than that it was just trying to survive the 14 hours on the plane. Eric Noll and Isaac Knopp (both from our Harrisonburg church) picked us up from the airport and took us out to dinner (which was some incredible food). We've arrived at the Pfeil's house and will begin our week of visiting with people and getting to know the team and culture in the morning. Thank you for your travel prayers and please continue to think of us! I got sad when I heard that Matthias was walking into every room in the house looking for me yesterday. :) But....it sounds like they're having a great time with the Stewart's! Hmmm... I wonder who could've moved Poofie? Anyways, I'll try to post more in a couple days!

Mirabella Home Update #1

Tom & Karen left for Japan early this morning. The big kids were home from school today so everyone was together all day long! We had a totally crazy, great day. The highlight for everyone was when Kylie's stuffed puppy, Pooffie, showed up in Kylie's reading lamp. Sadly, Kylie did not notice her there when she turned on her light and began reading. I went into her room and thought I smelled something burning slightly. Then, I saw the stuffed animal and told Kylie to turn off the light right away. We were very sad to see that Pooffie's stuffing was melted on one side giving her a sunburned look. Kylie immediately began an investigation into who put Pooffie in harm's way. We haven't solved this crime yet but we have a lot of suspects, almost everyone in the house!! For a few hours notices like the one below were placed around the house asking for any tips to solve the crime. There were a lot of accusations and theories submitted but Kylie, being very fair, didn't like any accusation that didn't have proof. So, Josiah decided that the crime stunk and he wrote that on a sticky note that he gave to Kylie who then placed it on Mr. Briton's head.

We had so much fun today laughing a lot and playing games. There were some sad moments of missing Mom and Dad but we talked about them a lot and about all of our plans to welcome them home in 8 days! Briton and I love the Mirabella kids and they are a ton of fun! We are so thankful to be here with them during this time.

Happy Birthday, Briton (and Kylie!)

Kylie got her present from Grandma today! We decided to give it to her early so that I could show her a couple things to practice while we're gone. She was very excited about learning guitar...hopefully she won't get discouraged (the beginning is always hard).
Here we are celebrating (again) Kylie and Briton's birthdays! Briton actually had his birthday today...and Kylie's is next friday...the next two pics are of us celebrating with Briton in seminary in 2003. Fun friends, fun memories!

Welcome, Stewarts!

Cute Jonah! We finally got to meet the little "bug" and the kids love having a baby in the house again. The twins can't stop poking his nose and patting his hair.
Here they are! Please pray for Briton and Susan this week...they will need it! :) It's been crazy trying to plan out the week with school and piano and gymnastics and other stuff...but....I think we're good to go. :)

Tampa Aquarium!!

We had a blast going to the aquarium (thanks to our zoo pass and the "swaptember" program that they do) for free on saturday morning before we got the stewart's from the airport. Besides the fact that Leighton threw up in the car on the way there it was fun...the kids had a great time (Matthias especially loved pointing at all the fish). Tom just told me that I don't have time to blog...which is true, but I had to post these cute pics.

Ike...

So, we leave for Japan on monday....and Tom's been watching Hurricane Ike creep towards us since earlier this week and has been worried. I, b/c of being unaware of it, was not worried until 2 days ago when Tom voiced his concern. Thankfully it seems like the most recent prediction has it going a bit more west of us although it still has us in Ike's path. Anyways, it's supposed to be here wednesday morning sometime and I think we've gone everywhere in our thoughts of what could happen. Please pray that this hurricane would veer away. It's crazy how last hurricane season (our 1st year in florida) there was nothing and now we've been seeing so many tropical storms and such creep up on the southeast. Having never gone through a hurricane I really don't know what to expect, but it's amazing how "Charley" and "Andrew" are referred to a good bit...and what an impact something like that can make on so many lives!

Other than thinking about hurricanes, we're getting ready....I'm still not sure how it's all going to get done between now and monday morning, but we are getting excited. We head for the airport in the morning and get the Stewart's...I'll introduce you to them in a post this weekend....I was telling a friend how I'm going to let them be guest contributors on my blog so that I can see pictures and catch up with them on life here while we're away and she said "a blog sitter!, my friend had a blog sitter once!"....a blog sitter....I have never heard of such a thing...but it's funny, and probably an appropriate title. :) More to come....