June 2019 Update

The Month of June was as lively as ever! Starting right off with my birthday!! It was a blessing especially as Melisa came by in the morning to pick me up and she took me on a day trip around Okinawa! It was just what I needed as it was a little break from the regular life at the church and also just a fun time! The month continued to roll by as I had a couple of weeks to prepare for the upcoming SOS (Summer of Service) which is a summer program we host here in Calvary Ginowan for those who desire to serve in Japan for a month! But those couple weeks blew by while we were just doing regular ministry here in the church! The music school I was working at closed so I had my last day of work there and just said my good byes to the owner who is a Christian on island! I just told him to be blessed and just asked him to continue to pray for me and the different ministries that I am apart of. 
    As SOS rolled in it was a blessing to meet the two ladies Malaika and Yael. Malaika is from London and I did ask if she knew the Medrano’s but she did not. Yael is actually from Hawaii and her dad is Bud Stonebraker who is a Calvary Pastor in Hawaii.  Malaika came in first and actually on her first day here we were throwing a party for Pastor Tom here and so she met everyone immediately but it was fun because we are were on the beach. Then the next day was our Sunday morning service so she got to see how things would be. And that Sunday night Yael came in and by Monday orientation our Summer of Service kids were all here and we were ready to rumble. The first week is really a week of adjusting for the students as they have to jump into our schedule with 9:00am breakfast, 9:30am devotions, 10:30am classes, 12:30pm lunch, 1:30pm cleaning, 3:00pm Haisai daycare help, 5:00pm dinner, 6:30pm nighttime actives, home by 9:30pm and it all starts over again! 
This year I was in charge so I decided to do some interesting classes including Missions, Children’s Ministry, Worship, Japanese and a new class Multimedia in Missions. These classes are just to help them stand up while doing ministry here but also be able to take it home to their home churches and really serve wherever they go. Now this new multimedia in missions is new and fun talking about how to use multimedia including social media to better serve the church and ultimately Jesus! As you may know with the team here in CCBC Japan we put stuff out on Youtube and Instagram a lot. This is not just because we enjoy it but because we desire to reach out to the next generation especially here in Japan. So we shared our vision and just little bit of insight on how to make good content and really send them off to run our social medias. It is super fun and one of our interns here Anna has done a lot of research on how to utilize social media especially for advertisement and she has a lot of knowledge in this area now. 
    Two weeks into the program the students are thriving and just growing alot! The Worship class that I was teaching has now converted into a How to Study Your Bible class which has been great! It’s fun to see a need and just change a class because I know God desires these ladies to read His Word and just fall deeper in love with Him. Being in charge of SOS has been pretty fun but challenging for sure! Balancing life, ministry and these SOS students is not as easy as I anticipated but its all apart of the growth that God has for me! I am excited for the month of July as I take the students to Kagoshima! And also return to the states for a few weeks as well!
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