It turns out Aileen has an occasional gripe about me. I Know! Hard to imagine, but true nonetheless. One is that, in spite of being married to a photographer, she has precious few good photographs of her magnum opus. Er, opuses? Opii?

Guilty as charged. Sorry, kids -- your modeling sessions never happened.

But Mom's getting me in shape for when grandkids arrive and the other day set up a shoot with the Owen and Sarah Ames family, to take a few pictures of their newborn, Joshua Owen Ames. The Ames' are working on a new TEAM church planting effort, not too far away from where we live. This is the first step in a plan that will see several new church plants taking place in metro Tokyo. So they're dealing with two 'newborns' at the same time! Now you know what you can pray about this week.

Anyway, Joshua was a champ. Well, sort of. Nap time was right there on his schedule, but did he cooperate? Not really. Every time we took his blanket off, stuck a silly prop on him or tickled him with feathers, he woke up and started crying! And even though he knew we'd taken his diaper off, he still wet the blanket, and, um, er, (how to put this delicately?), soiled his Daddy.

But he was awfully cute. And Aileen and I had a lot of fun.

Not sure he did.

But you can judge for yourself -- his pics are here.

Well, lessee.... we got to Japan 28 years ago and started attending Kotake Cho Bible Church. In that time, our kids were born, passed around all the 'aunties' at church, grew up, moved out and got married. Aileen and I went from being wet-behind the ears kids just out of college to being one of veteran couples in the church. We've had four pastors, and even moved to a new building. BUT, we are still using the same hymnals!!

In a long overdue move, at our annual meeting last February the church decided its time to update our singing a bit with new song books, with the Big Change happening this coming January 1. This is ground-shaking stuff for most of the folk here :-)

But the recession has hit us pretty hard. Giving is way down, and barring the Lord's intervention, before the year is out we're not going to be able to pay the pastor his full salary. And with the overall small size of the church in Japan, it's hard to get 'economies of scale' going on Christian materials. The new hymnals are going to cost $40 each! (Well, $42 but let's call it an even $40).

Unfortunately, our young pastor is kinda getting himself worked up in a knot over the finances. Aileen and I plan to kick in for a good handful of the new books, but we'll need about 20 more. With this once-in-a-lifetime recession going on, it's crummy timing, but we were wondering if some folk back home might want to bless the church by buying them a hymnal or two.

If you'd like to encourage the folk here in that way, you can click the Paypal button here, which will let you use your credit card online -- pretty quick and easy. Unfortunately, we can't give you a tax-deductible receipt that way, though. If you'd like such a receipt, you can send the funds to TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL 60187 -- put in a little note saying that it's for Selanders/Hymnals.

Hope you don't mind us asking for your help like this -- we're not trying to pressure anyone. Blessings!

With a tip o' the hat to Aretha Franklin, I gotta tell you I am respecting Aileen more than ever these days. And I'm so glad she was back at church this weekend.

As I've mentioned here before, our little church started up Sunday School again after at least a decade hiatus and Aileen and I are having fun working with it. Along with singing, a Bible story, praying and play time, Aileen has been doing an English corner with the kids, too. They eat it up.

Well, last week, TEAM sent her to Taiwan to help translate for meetings between folks from HQ in Wheaton, and Japanese missionaries. So on Sunday, I inherited the English corner!

Can you say, "disaster" boys and girls? Good, I knew you could!

Where Aileen has flawless kiddie control and has them eating out her hand, and having a ball doing it, I had said barely three words when this cherub-faced four year girl hollered, "I hate English!" and every single kid there took off running in different directions screaming at the top of their lungs. Managed to herd them back together for another attempt at a simple game using English, which merely disintegrated into more pandemonium. There was nothing to be done, but laugh. The other adult leaders were in stitches, the kids were bouncing off the walls. Time to admit defeat and chase them all outside to let them play for the rest of the time.

And there she was today, that same wild bunch of kids just putty in her hands, eatin' it all up and loving English. I am married to an amazing woman.

Can you say, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" boys and girls? Good, I knew you could!

Click above video to play.

Another post precipitated by hard disk housekeeping... I found this recent video of the last official recording PBA's Rev. Akira Hatori. Rev. Hatori has been with PBA nearly since its beginning, serving as chairman and main radio pastor for decades. Over the years, other men have also come on board to make programs, and run PBA -- but it was Rev. Hatori who worked tirelessly travelling around Japan, building a network of churches that would reach out to their cities, towns and villages with gospel radio, and then TV. PBA is a successful ministry because it works with over 2,000 churches around the country, connecting broadcast listeners to local congregations. He is a man of prayer, and I believe has been anointed by the Lord. People respond to his preaching more than any other minister I know.

Rev. Hatori has been trying to retire for years, but the staff has begged him to stay on. But finally, it was time. I'm glad that as he was headed into the studio for the last time, the head of our radio department came running to get me -- "Tim, we have to get this on tape!" Hadn't thought that far ahead myself!

Also have some photos of Rev. Hatori and the TEAM missionaries from PBA's early days here.

Click above video to play.

Just a quickie today. One of the drawbacks of working in video and TV is that your hard disk fills up really fast. I've got 500GBs in my laptop (main machine) but a couple of months after putting it in, it's full. Mostly video footage in various stages of editing. While looking for big files I can safely delete, I ran across a slideshow/video that I shot and edited for TEAM Japan's annual conference in August. Each year we have a required attendance conference of worship, seminars, business meetings, annual picnic, and more. The slide show was shown at the end of the conference. The guest speaker this year was Dr. Jim Meyer, from Philadelphia Biblical University. Numbers were way down; bunches of people in the US and Canada on furlo this year.

If you don't know any other folk in TEAM Japan, this tain't gonna be too interesting! But since a lot of you DO know at least some of these folk, well, here it is! (About 5 minutes, need a recent version of QuickTime to play. And it's big -- may need some time to buffer.)

P.S. Right after the conference was over, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary by inviting the TEAM gang that was still around for a big BBQ bash - 30 or 40 people. Unfortunately, no one thought to take pics :-(

The old man is me. 'Old' may be an exaggeration. The young'uns on the TV crew think I'm some kind of walking historical artifact just because I can remember a time when VCRs didn't exist. But to me, old means remembering a time when TV didn't exist!

But no doubt I am getting older, and I find that the older I get the easier I emote. Is that part of aging?

We had a guest speaker in church today, Rev. Okamura. Spent his career serving in TEAM churches. He talked about how the Church is a family, and a place for families to get saved. When he took his church over from a missionary, the verse from Acts, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you and your family will be saved" was written on the church sign. He liked that, so he got in the habit of making it part of the benediction and had the congregation repeat the verse each week.

Years went by. One Sunday after everyone else had left, a housewife came to talk to him.
     "Pastor, it's no good. I'm hopeless. I'm going to quit coming to church."
     "Now, why is that?"
     "It's been 20 years since I got saved, and 20 years I've been saying that verse about your family getting saved. But I'm still the only believer in my home. My husband and daughter want nothing to do with Christianity. I'm ready to give up."
     "You know, that's not just something painted on our sign. That's a promise from God Himself! Let's pray for your family and for you to believe God's promise."

Rev. Okamura continued the story, relating how the daughter moved and made new friends who were believers, and it wasn't long before she believed, too. But the husband was another story. The housewife had bad arthritis, so he would drive her to church -- but would always make a quick getaway before the pastor could say two words to him. The arthritis got bad enough that she was housebound, so Rev. Okamura and his wife would often go to her home to visit. Her husband would make tea, bring into the three of them and then run away to another part of the house. After many visits, "I was finally able to get him to sit down and chat a bit. Now he knew me a little, and couldn't run away anymore! We kept visiting, chatting about all kinds of things, but always making sure he was there when we read the Bible and prayed for his wife's health."

In time, the housewife got better and was attending church again. But her husband fell seriously ill, and was in intensive care for 6 weeks. Finally he was out of intensive care and the doctor said he could have visitors. "I want to see your pastor," he told his wife.

     "I have three requests," he told the pastor when he got there.
     "Okay, what are they?"
     "All these years my wife has talked about going to heaven when she dies. I want to go to heaven too. Please tell me how I can do that. Next, when I die, please look after my wife. Finally, I want you to do my funeral."

So Rev. Okamura explained the gospel to him, explained how he could have his sins forgiven. He prayed, and still flat on his back in the hospital bed, tears were streaming down the sides of his face into the pillow. He kept repeating,'I'm so glad. It's so good.'"

Two days later, at the husband's request, the pastor came back to baptize him. And two days after that, he was gone. The pastor kept his promise to do his funeral and the church is looking after his wife.

As our speaker wrapped up the story, relating the wife's joy at seeing both her daughter and husband finally saved, it got hard to see for the tears welling up in my own eyes. I never used to cry. Am I turning into an old softie?

Or am I learning how precious it is when a Japanese family is saved?

One of PBA's interesting outreaches is their "Summer Camp." The word "camp" has not been brought over into Japanese very well -- there is nothing camp-like about it. It's held at a Bible Conference Center that's related to TEAM and located in a mountain resort town that became especially famous when Japan's current emperor courted his wife there many years ago. They played tennis together, setting off a huge tennis boom in Japan. Ah, but I digress...

The purpose of our 'camp' is to give seeking listeners and viewers a chance to come meet with Japanese Christians, listen to our radio pastors in person, and get counseling if they want it.

Unfortunately, while we often have about 200 people there, attendance was way down this year. Last year, we maxed out the facilities and had to turn down late applications. This year there were only about 60 folk. We'll have to try to figure out why that happened!

Still, there was a real good spirit at the camp, and it felt a lot more intimate than usual. It ran last Wednesday thru Friday, so I haven't heard about any results yet. In addition to messages from our radio pastors, we had a music group come and give a concert too. They were a lot of fun. They've taken a Japanese music style called 'Enka' and put gospel lyrics to it. Enka is strongly associated with bars and alcohol, and generally has themes that are like US blues -- my woman left me, the law is after me, farewell cruel world. But these guys have redeemed enka in the same way Martin Luther redeemed German drinking songs by turning them into hymns of the Reformation.

We taped the concert and the messages, so I was busy with the TV camera. The photos here were taken by another PBA staffer. When I get a chance, I'll put up a video of the group's music.

This coming week will be spent at TEAM Japan's Annual Conference. Messages and seminars in the morning, mission business sessions in the afternoons.

Setting up for the shoots...




Long shot of the concert...

Medium shot of the concert. That's me on the camera over at the left. Sorry, no close ups!

Growing up in the midwest, "cruising" had nothing to do with boats, and everything to doing with driving aimlessly around with your friends, preferably at night or the wee hours of the morning.

Well, ya' live long enough and anything can happen. Took my first cruise this past Monday, on the good ship "Bianca," and travelled hither and yon on Lake Biwa -- the largest lake in all Japan!

'Course, I didn't have Aileen with me, so that was a bummer. (She was with our church on its first ever retreat, which I missed.) And I wasn't there to kick up my heels and snooze on a deck chair in the summer sun. The rest of the TV crew and I were there to shoot a concert, interview and evangelistic message. LifeLine is broadcast in the Lake Biwa area, and the cruise was co-sponsored by PBA and the church group in Shiga Prefecture that sponsors the broadcast there.

The four of us got to the dock with two vans full of TV and PA gear at 6:30 in the morning to load into the boat, and at 9:30 p.m., finished packing the gear out of the boat and back into the vans.

And in between was a three ring circus!

The boat had three large meeting/conference rooms, and the churches created a program that used them to the max! We had professional accordion concerts, southern gospel choirs, a classic concert and a gospel singer solo concert. There were 5 or 6 Bible messages, a kids' program and a drama team. The place was hopping. One meeting in the morning, three in the afternoon, and two at night -- in each of the three rooms. So, that's like, what, 18 different events in one day?!

This was another of the LifeLine 20th anniversary "Thanks Giving" events. Down towards the middle of Japan, in an area called Kansai -- and the cultural differences from Tokyo were very evident. Much less uptight, "It'll work out!" "Hey, let's have fun!" -- a little more, well, America-like than I'm used to here in Tokyo. No one got seasick, the footage looks okay (I've been feeding it into the computers for editing this week.) and the audio was fine -- the engines weren't nearly as loud as I feared they might be.

And even amidst the three ring chaos, there were plenty of times to reflect on what God has done through 20 years LifeLine broadcasts. PTL.


The Bianca! (Not exactly the Queen Elizabeth, but, hey, it's a real live cruise ship!



The Skippers. No Gilligans on this crew -- made all ports on time and got back home safe and sound.


Boarding the Bianca. Stairs? No gang plank? I'm terribly disappointed....



The Bianca's rear deck. (Okay, I don't think it's really called a rear deck -- how about one of you nautical types leave a comment to straighten me out!)




Accordion Concert by Manabu Hiyama. Has studied in Italy, won all kinds of awards -- and played 4 concerts in one day on a cruise ship on Lake Biwa, Japan!



This guy was a mixed bag -- I think there were as many wee ones that ran away screaming in terror as there were who hung around to get a balloon!




LifeLine host, Rev. Hirooki Sekine, kicking off a meeting.



Rev. Murakami, PBA board chairman, bringing a message from the Word.


Gospel Choir



Evening Concert

This weekend's LifeLine TV program will be a lecture by English missionary Patrick McElligot (Spelling?? I've never seen his name written out in English, only Japanese!)

This lecture series was taped at a seminar sponsored by Family Forum Japan (FFJ), which is the Japan affiliate of Focus on the Family in the US. I've been on the board of this organization since it started over 10 years ago. We've had tremendous ups and downs, but the Lord has seen fit to keep us going this far. Less than a year ago, it looked like we were going to hit the financial brick wall at the proverbial 100 miles an hour... but God was gracious, and we stopped inches short of disaster, and have been slowly backing away from the wall.

Family issues are huge in Japan, and there are not nearly the resources available here as in the US -- secular, let alone Christian. FFJ has a good ministry -- very popular radio program in two prefectures, lots of resources, both translated from the US and original from Japanese authors, and a heavy schedule of speaking in churches, to school groups and more. But financing the work has been problematic, and our extremely dedicated staff work for embarrassingly low wages. Seems to be a recurring theme to ministry in Japan.

This broadcast of lecture series has been very well received. This will be the fourth program. Common Biblical themes for those of us in the Christian West, but really kind of radical, eye-opening stuff for Japan.

As a P.S. here, we'll be traveling some 10 hours away from Tokyo to tape a LifeLine 20th anniversary event this coming Monday -- a national holiday. The event will be on a cruise boat on Lake Biwa, Japan's biggest lake. Will be my first time on a cruise boat, and the first time (duh) to film on a cruise boat. It's going to be a full slate with gospel and classical concerts, kids' program, various speakers and more. I'm slightly worried about seasickness, but even more worried about recording decent audio -- how loud are the engines on a cruise boat?!

Okay, so Aileen and I had forgotten how wound up 6 year old boys can get! It was like having Nic back in his prime. There were only three of 'em, but, wowee, the energy! And the noise! Running in circles, hollering at the top of their lungs, jumping and laughing. One of the girls kept up with 'em pretty well. The rest of the gang -- younger kindergardeners and one three year old -- looked on enviously, and tried to join in the fun, but were completely outclassed.

Fortunately they were able to rein it in when needed, and the Kids' Fair was a grand success. We had 12 kids; hoping for more but 12 is good. There was singing and stories and English Fun and Other Games. The guitarist in the pics is our pastor, and the story teller is his wife. The story was of the 99 and 1 sheep and the good shepherd.

Aileen did the English Fun time, teaching the kids numbers and fruit names, and then turning it into a big game with picture cards -- "Go find 3 watermelons!" The kids ate it up.

Finished off with other games. Everyone seemed to have lots of fun, and we're hoping it leads to some new kids in Sunday School!