A Far Green Country

Loved Ones,

We are in Shizuoka City! We arrived on the 29^th of December around 5:30pm our time, which is 13 hrs ahead of CST, 12 ahead of EST. We were picked up by our team leaders, the Tak & Lana Oue, & we spent the first night in Tokyo. It was surreal to be driving through the city you've only seen in pictures on the internet, & then to suddenly be in it & among it. The next morning we drove to Shizuoka City. David got to drive about a third of the way which was easy on the highway, but more difficult once entering into the city because you drive on the opposite side of the road on the opposite side of the car, sometimes on very narrow one way streets. Melinda has also gotten to practice her driving some now.

We love our home. It is small as most Americans would understand, but the Lord has always provided small places for us to live, so we feel very blessed by our amount of space, the location, & quality of the home. Obviously a home is not what you come to the field for, but it is a blessing to have a place to live provided for you. It is a very high tech home, all the gadgets that work security, heat/ac, toilet, shower/tub, stove, & oven. All of them have just Japanese characters on them & so we were grateful that the Oues & another couple who will be in our city for 1 more year, the Collins, have gone out of there way to teach us what is what & how things work. Speaking of the security buttons, David was shopping with the Oues one evening when the Collins came by our home. In order to get into the building, the visiting party has to buzz your room & you have to let them in via a button on a touch screen in your living room. Unfortunately, I had been told what to do but Melinda was trying to put Luke to sleep when I had that lesson, so without me around, she started just pushing all the random buttons, hit the emergency button, & I came home to a security officer & 6 cops in our home! Needless to say, it was only funny until after it was over! But rest assured, we are safe!

Since we've been here less than a week we don't know much yet, but we really like our city. If you look out of our windows, it looks like you could be in China, Japan, or Indonesia – all Japan is not Tokyo the way all America is certainly not Hollywood. It's hard to explain because it looks like we're surrounded by a million people, but you can here the birds chirp or girls on their bikes laughing from blocks away – it is very quiet. We are in a residential area, but it looks like a small downtown. We're eager to see the heart of downtown sometime soon. We can see Mt. Fuji from our bedroom in all its grandeur very clearly. When we walk in our neighborhood very few people stare at us & no one speaks. Yesterday when we were walking we didn't notice that Luke's toboggan had fallen off & this sweet 4 year old girl ran about 3 blocks to give it to us. Poor thing gave it to us out of breath in a subtle bow and a warp-speed burst of Japanese that we obviously did not know. All I could tell her was "arigato" (thank you) which is one of like 2 words I know now. How badly we want to be able to relate & function in this language.

Speaking of language, we have a meeting with all Japanese personnel in a few days for about 5 days at a retreat center, & shortly after returning from that, we'll meet with our language teachers & helpers & learn about our language study over the next few years.

Sometime in the next few weeks our crate with our belonging should arrive & we'll get more settled in. There is so much we could share but want to keep this brief as possible. We are grateful for you & your prayerful support of us. I hope 2009 is full of Kingdom advancement & the joy of Christ in your lives. Following this email I will send a separate email with pics of what we see when we look out our windows. Also, please feel free to check out our blog which we will update as time allows: http://davidrainer.blogspot.com/

Answers to Prayer:

1) We're here! Luke did as well as he could for an 8 month old on a long, long flight.

2) It looks like our language details are falling into place & that we will have teachers & helpers.

Prayer Requests for January:

1) Please continue to pray for Luke's adjustment. With jet lag & his schedule about to change yet again at our annual meeting, he just can't quite get Mama & Daddy to give him a break & keep things consistent. His sleeping is all messed up & so we're tired too, so please pray for that.

2) Pray that we would keep our focus first & foremost on Christ. This is not about an adventure for our family but about God being glorified through the redemption of lost Japanese who put their hope & faith in the all-sufficient Christ. All is in vain if we work in our flesh.

3) Language learning: Please continue to pray for this, & please persevere in prayer for this as it may be a request every newsletter. For this month please just pray that the teachers we get, the helpers we get, & the babysitter for Luke will all be blessings orchestrated by God & that a supernatural measure of grace will be granted to us for learning Japanese & trusting someone else with Luke who we do not know yet.

4) Please pray for our marriage. Pray that as we learn a new way of life, language, culture, that our relationship to one another would remain a priority so that our lives & love for one another are examples to the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who live among us, & that we would glorify God before Luke & give him a living example of Christ & the church.