This past Saturday was interesting. Fellow TEAM missionary Paul Nethercott woks with helping the Japanese church integrate the arts and worship. As part of that work, he helped organize a concert that featured a collaboration piece between Japanese traditional drums (wadaiko) and gospel music. The piece was based on "Ride on King Jesus." The rest of the two and a half hour concert featured many other gospel choirs and up to 300 people.

Paul asked me to anchor the camera and tech crew. We set up four HD digital cameras, an intercom system and gave the director a video feed from each camera to watch and call the shots from. All in all a long day (left the house at 8:30 am and got home after 11 pm) but it was fun and interesting.

Our shoot is not edited and ready yet: when it is, we'll link to it here!

In the meantime, here is a home video of the drum piece that Paul's wife, Nancy, uploaded to Facebook. Take a look! (You'll need the latest Quicktime player installed on your computer to watch it.)

Kotake Cho Bible Church, the little church we attend in the neighborhood, has not had a Sunday School since our two kids (now in their twenties) 'graduated.' No kids.

But our new young pastor and his wife have a 4 and 6 year old, and we've decided it's time to re-start our Sunday School. They have friends and pre-school and first grade, so conditions are good. So with the start of the new school year (April, in Japan) we have relaunched Sunday School. At first it was just the pastor's two kids, but friends have come and we've had as many as 8! One young mother faithfully brings her two, a boy and a girl. She says she wants them to get grounded in moral training that she never got herself.

Pray with us that through our little Sunday School, kids would have a chance to come to know their savior!

Aileen and I are both involved, and every week I am amazed anew at how good Aileen is with kids. Our two were lucky to have such a great mom!