Skills to pay the bills

Last year we celebrated Christmas with the Australian Team, but this year we celebrated with the NewZealand Team. 12 NewZealanders came up kind of as a Gospel singing group, Malcom, Matthew, Jesse, Rosa, Dwaine, Catherine, Simon, Jonathan, Dawn, Peter, Michelle and Andrew. This is the 4th time a team has come from NewZealand to our church. They went around a lot of pre-schools and some old folks homes singing and performing.

The pictures above is the men on the team doing the Haka. The Haka is the Maori war chant and is ment to be very scarry. I heard that the All Blacks Rugby team in NewZealand do it before games. If you want to know more about the Haka you should check wikipedia. The Haka was one of the things I really enjoyed watching. I wanted to put a video of the Haka that the team did, but I don't know how to put videos on my blog, so here is the link of the All Blacks doing it. Also here is the other one called Kapaopango. The Kapaopango is newer and different, but I quite like it.

My dad and people from church also planed many special Christmas meetings at various community centers, so we invited people we knew and the team also did tracting door to door inviting people to come. The picture above is after the Christmas meeting we did in Hirakawa.

Eating and having fellowship at the Jonan kaikan.

Group photo at Jonan kaikan.

The team with kids at a pre-school.

Over all it was really good having the NewZealand Team over for Christmas this year. Other than seeing them and listening to them sing, I got to know them very well, by eating lunch and supper(or tea, if I say how they do) with them almost everyday, playing Foosball and Table tennis together, getting ready together for Christmas meetings and stuff. After getting to know them very well and having a great time with them, it will be really great if I can see them sometime again.

On every Tuesday, Karl and I drive up to Kanagi to teach English classes after I have a piano lesson with Armin. I help out with the kids class from 5 and Karl teaches the adult class by himself at 8. Right after the kids class we go to the big store nearby called the Super Store to get some food for supper. It's a little different kind of Japanese store. It's similar to Wall-Mart because it not only has food, but also has clothes, building material, a book store and other stuff. As usual we were hedding to the food place and I saw Mountain Dew in a glass bottle sold for 50￥. I was so surprised. They usually don't sell Mountain Dew at very many places in Japan in the first place so I was surprised to see it in a glass bottle. I don't know how they sell Mountain Dew where you are, but this was something really strange for me.

This is the new living room of the house after being all nicely insulated.

This is the hallway floor that I helped insulated with styrofoam. With all the insulation and Styrofoam the house should keep really warm. Not like old Japanese houses that hardly have any insulation.

This is the best friend I made while working. I always had it in my hand when I was drywalling or screwing in outlet wires into it's boxes. It is a Black＆Decker screwdriver that works very well. It was possible to screw in a screw in just 2 seconds. The batteries last for quite a long time, at least enough time to let the other battery recharge completely before running out of power with the one you're using.

It even has special bits attached to it.

The house is now finished with new rooms, a new bath tub, a new entryway etc. and new people. The Chinomi's who will be living there from now moved in today with all their things. Now they will be coming to our church and helping with the Bookstore and cafe.

It feels great to have it done. Thanks to my Dad that did mostly all the work.

This year's Thanksgiving meals were really good as they always are. My Dad says that it's good to be a Canadian married to an American. That way he can celebrate Thanksgiving for a longer time. Well, me having a Canadian Dad and an American Mom is great also, because I can celebrate Thanksgiving for a long time as well. This year my family had numerous Turkey meals with various groups of people from church. The picture above was taken at one of the meals we had at a church members house sometime in October(that's why I'm wearing a t-shirt).
I know that you often see the outside of a Turkey bird, or when it's cut up, but how often do you see the inside of a Turkey?
After the last Thanksgiving meal I had this year, which was with the International church service people and other new people, a lot of us played with the the new Foosball table in the fellowship room. Everyone was getting into it and having a great time. We got the table from Bruce Truss who got it from Misawa. It's the really nice kind so it's fun to play with.
The church kids that play with it on Sunday afternoons are really wild with it so it looks as if they will break it sometime, but I hope not. Now we have a great thing to do on Sunday evenings while the table tennis room stays cold.