9/10/11 A Royal Priesthood

Hello Readers!
Allow me to begin by sharing something from my journaling. (1 Peter 2:9)
"you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." We are not only priests but also sons and daughters of the King since we have been adopted into his family. It is as though his royal status/name has legally been trasferred to us. I know of a family at the school where Dad teaches who decided to name their son Prince ______ and their two daughters Princess _____ and Princess ______. Their names, when on legal documents begins with Prince/Princess. The father in this family is one of the best I have ever seen. He loves his children and always wears a smile. Even on their backpacks and belongings their names are evident. Similarly, our lives as believers and children of the King become a testimony to those that hear. "Who are you?" I am my Father's child"

Be encouraged and know that your worth is found in the fact that your Father is the great King!

Maintenance Work at CAJ
At CAJ I've continued helping out with various jobs around campus such as sweeping, taking care of trash, weeding, uprooting some dead tree roots, digging, and power spraying the school courtyard. As I walk around and do my work there are a number of students that know me from having attended Joy Bible Camp during the summer. I have been greeted in a number of different ways including:
Mr. Eby
Mr. Victor
Mr. Victor Eby
Mr. Coach Eby
Coach Eby
Cheerio (my JBC nickname)

....one little girl even said, "Hello Joy Bible Camp!" :)

Tutoring
I am now tutoring 4 times per week and am enjoying it thoroughly. I especially have enjoyed working with a little 1st grade boy named Minoru. Some of the things that I have done to help him with reading have been using scrabble pieces to form words, taking a sentence strip and cutting it apart into separate words and then glueing it back together as a sentence, recording his reading into a tape player, reading some simple Dr. Seuss books and continuing to review phonics. One day that we were recording some reading Minoru had to sneeze so afterward we played the tape back and got to hear his sneeze all over again and we both got a good laugh out of that.

ALT at UTSS
This last Thursday and Friday was my first time to actually assist in teaching. I will be helping with about 4 different classes. Two classes will be with Kudo-sensei, one class will be with Kawakami-sensei, and the other class will be with Ozawa-sensei. In total I figure that I will be assisting about 40 different high school students in oral and written communication.

I have to commute one hour to get to the school so I often will read on the train and I have been able to read a lot of the Psalms in those commuting times. On Thursday I tried bringing an iPod touch so that I could listen to music/sermon/audiobook and see if that was something I could do while commuting. However I discovered two things:

1. I don't like how people in this 21st century are always 'plugged in' so I am loathe to join the multitudes because it seems to cut down opportunities to talk with people.
2. I got so focused on what I was listening to that I almost missed my train station!
   

Family Time
As a family we have been taking walks in the evening along the 東久留米　river and I have enjoyed it immensely. There is a group of about 40 ducks down river that are an obnoxious bunch of fowl and I am inclined to think that it was these kinds of ducks that Walt Disney got his idea for Donald Ducks voice. They are quite amusing. The carp or 濃い are also very entertaining in that they are so spoiled they assume that any person who leans over the edge of the railing is undoubtedly going to feed them.

For movies we have been watching Hogan's Heroes

I have been amazed at how clean and how truly humorous this movie series has been. Many humorous movies tend to be funny because of the slapstick humor or because they make fun of something else in society but much of Hogan's Heroes is genuinely funny and it has been a real blessing to be able to sit down for a few good laughs as a family after dinner.

Books I've Read
I've been reading in Psalms, Proverbs, and a little bit in 1 Peter but I have also picked up few other books lately.













Boy by Roald Dahl (A collection of stories from Roald Dahl's growing up years)

The Friendship by Mildred D. Taylor (Historical fiction about life for blacks in the south; same author as Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry)

Noah's Ark: I Touched It by Fernand Navarra (A 1974 publication of Fernand Navarra who was a French industrialist but also had a passion for archaelogical research and conducted 4 expeditions up Mt. Ararat in search of Noah's Ark and was able to bring back wood samples from the ark which is located at a height of about 17,000 ft. His initial expedition was in 1955 not too many years after WWII)

Hero Tales by Dave & Neta Jackson (Tells short stories of missionaries lives ranging from Amy Carmichael to Hudson Taylor)

Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan (Tells the stories behind the hymns. For example, did you know that Be Thou My Vision dates back to the time of St. Patrick in A.D. 400s!?!

Some Interesting Discoveries & Funny Stories

• The other day I was walking through the train station in Kita-Asaka and I saw a picture of a young lady modeling for a wedding hall where young couples can get Christian weddings. It was strange because I thought I recognized her and then I realized that it was a classmate of mine from CAJ...Nastasha Self. It is so strange to see people you know on advertisements or TV.....
  
• When Mom and I were at the store yesterday we found some whole milk and I mean whole! It wasn't skim, it wasn't 3.6...it was 4.5! It tasted like cream!
  

• The students at UTSS are supposed to write diaries and I am supposed to grade them. One of the students had written, "Dairy" and then used arrows to show that the 'a' and 'i' were supposed to be switched. I got a good chuckle out of that.

• One of the best laughs of the week came from a question that a student asked me at UTSS. Taizo-sensei had set aside time for the students to ask me questions so that they could get to know me better. They had asked what my name was and where I was from and also what my hobbies were. Then a girl asked, "Do you have a...garden?" (she had poor pronunciation but I thought she said garden so I proceeded to answer. "No, not really because I'm not a very good gardener but recently I did try planting an avocado. If you put the avocado pit into water it will start growing and I have an avocado plant that is about...oh...30 cm tall." .....She was looking at me very quizzically and so was Taizo-sensei. That's when I found out that she had actually asked, "Do you have a...garfren [girlfriend]?"

....they must've been wondering where I was going with this avocado story... :)