Pretty things, funny things, tasty things

Here's a quick update on the kinds of things we see here every day. Some things (as the title indicates) are pretty, some things are funny, and some things are tasty... we'll start with the funny things.

Did you ever think you would see a Hello Kitty violin or ukulele? Hello Kitty is on everything.

Chocolate covered potato chips... both tasty and funny... it was funny to find something we thought was unique to North Dakota here in Japan.

"Mt. Rainier" coffee out of a vending machine. (Seattle is quite famous. We see pictures of Ichiro everywhere.) Unfortunately I only read the English advertising "espresso and milk" but not the katakana, which said "burakku" (black). No milk to be found in this coffee...

Peeing statue we found while we were away at a conference... it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the park. Oh well, someone has a sense of humor.

Pretty things...

The sky is so dramatic here! This is the view of our neighborhood from our apartment.

Trees changing colors...

especially ginko trees...

Stained glass at a local community center...

Children. These ones are pretty nice. Transitioning to tasty things, those buckwheat crepes they're eating were pretty tasty...

Ramen is famous in Sapporo. We eat it about as often as we can... and we eat every last drop.

Sushi! A guy from our church is a sushi chef! This is the meal he prepared for us. It was really helpful, since it was our first time going to a "real" sushi restaurant, that the food was prepared by someone we know... we weren't afraid to ask dumb questions or just chat (and blatantly stare as he was working).

Life is beautiful.

What I'm Thankful For

(I started writing this last Monday, but didn't finish it, since I realized I was going to need to go make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner. Oh well. I'm still thankful.)

Here in Japan, today is 体育の日 (Health and Sports Day, or something like that), which, oddly enough, is a national holiday. In Canada, today is Thanksgiving! Ironic. I will celebrate Health and Sports Day by eating a lot of food and loafing on the couch.

Usually on Thanksgiving, it is my habit to think about what I am thankful for, and more importantly, to give thanks to the one who gave me all of those things. Here's a short list of things that come to mind. I'm thankful for...

Keith. Yes, very thankful for the husband. He is peeling potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner right now. He is my companion on the crazy adventure that is our life. I'm glad God sent me to Japan with Keith.

Family. Even though they're far away, our family is supporting us in prayer. Sorry, I don't have any recent pics since we haven't seen them for a few months... use your imagination or look at the other posts. ;)

Friends. We miss our friends at home in Vancouver, and all the other places we have lived before (Colorado, Boston, North Dakota, etc.), but we are thankful for the new friends we are meeting here.

Dinner out with fellow missionaries

Eating ramen with Mikiko, our conversation partner, and her son, Yuugo. Well, actually all of the ramen is gone at this point. Delicious...

We're also thankful for our new friends at church. Um... once again there is food in all of these pictures? That sounds like a segue...

Food. I love the fall since there are wonderful things to eat. As I have previously mentioned, I think there's something special about Hokkaido's soil. God is indeed very good...

The vegetable stand at a local church bazaar

 

Our Thanksgiving Dinner hosts with the turkey, imported from North Carolina. I promise you the rest of the meal consisted of delicious local Hokkaido produce...

 

Work. Is that weird? Perhaps it is, but we are thankful to be doing the work God has provided for us. We get to study Japanese, meet with college students for Bible study and conversation, play for concerts and worship services, and other stuff too. We love our job.

We played for some mini-concerts at an art show put on by a church.

My heart is filled with thankfulness. That's the title of a song that I like, actually. God has truly provided abundantly for us.

Our Church

(I finally have some pictures in which we are not eating. It was getting a bit embarrassing... all our pictures seem to revolve around food. We like food... but we also like other things.)

Since we've been in Japan, we've been attending Satsunae Lighthouse Church. Our church is about 10 years old, and it was started by OMF missionaries. It is still pastored by foreign missionaries (Tony and Pat Schmidt), but most of the other leaders are Japanese. Right now the church is in the beginning stages of preparation to call a Japanese pastor. One of the first steps was to become a part of JECA (which I believe stands for "Japanese Evangelical Church Association"... but don't quote me on that).

The church is small, but it feels big because it's so lively. There are children everywhere. I'm finally starting to figure out which children belong to which parents. It's taken quite a while since no one seems to sit together with their families in the church service or during lunch. We meet in what used to be a large house. Tony and Pat live on the second floor.

Today we helped lead worship. Keith played the piano and I played cello. Kaori-san planned the service and sang. Maybe we will lead singing someday too, but for now it's nice to play the cello, because then I don't have to worry about text! Singing is great language practice, though.

Every Sunday after church we eat lunch together. On the first Sunday of the month, there's a potluck. My contribution (lentil and bean stew/chili/whatever) is in the red pot in the foreground. Today there was also a birthday cake for Keith and four other people. (We couldn't escape entirely from food now, could we?)

Please pray for our church:

• As I mentioned, we are making preparations to call a Japanese pastor.
• We are starting an Alpha course in 2 weeks (October 18). Please pray that this class would be a blessing to the neighborhood... and that it would be well attended by people who are curious about Christianity and eagerly seeking God.
• Our pastors (Tony and Pat) are currently on vacation in Vancouver! Please pray for their safe travels and for those who are taking care of things in their absence.

September Newsletter

I haven't posted in a while. Now I guess I'll make up for it with one big post... our newsletter! I would have just posted the PDF version, but I didn't want to post our contact info. Let me know if you want a copy, and I'll email you one. Here goes...

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オルソンは日本へ来ました
The Olsons Have Arrived in Japan
Newsletter #1, September 1, 2009

Dear friends,
After living here in Sapporo for a month, we are filled with thankfulness, and we are eager to share our news with you.

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The Daily Grind

We’ve been thinking a lot about what we do every day... since for the past couple of weeks, daily activities have been a major topic of study and conversation in our Japanese classes. In fact, last night’s homework for Kanji class was 300-400 characters on our weekly schedule. Here is a short sample from Celia’s assignment: 私は午前六時におきます。　そして聖書を読みます。　毎朝七時になっとうとげんまいを食べます。 (I get up at 6:00 a.m. After that, I read the Bible. Every morning at 7:00 I eat natto and brown rice.)

We are presently studying 4 days a week. Each day we have 2 sessions of conversation and grammar class and 1 session of Kanji class. We were expecting to find the grammar easy and the conversation difficult, and such has proved to be the case. Celia is dealing with the second language problem, and thus has actually started speaking German in Japanese class. Progress seems slow, but when we look back, we really have come a long way. We can talk to people! We can mostly talk about the weather and our daily activities, but we are gradually adding more vocabulary and conversation topics to our repertoire. Every small gain is exciting.
 

The rest of the day is usually taken up with studying, cooking, grocery shopping, other housework, and occasionally meeting friends for a meal. Amazingly, we still have enough time left over for pleasure reading! Although we currently live upstairs in the same building as the school, Celia has been diligent about making bentos to make sure we are able to eat a healthy lunch. It’s also conveniently packaged to bring downstairs to eat in the student lounge. We usually eat Japanese food, since it’s delicious… and also a lot more economical than eating a lot of imported food. We are starting to think there’s something magical about the soil in Hokkaido. The vegetables are amazing, even out of urban gardens here in Sapporo! Every last bit of empty land is carefully cultivated… or paved.

Celia practices her cello every day. She will be playing frequently in our church, along with Keith on piano, and Celia will play in other churches as requested for worship services and events. Currently the music of choice is Bach and Bach alone, but other music will be added as it is requested.
 
Keith will start teaching English this week on Fridays and Saturdays. This job has some perks: the church holding the English classes recently acquired a pipe organ, and Keith has been invited to play it between classes! “It has manual action!” Keith exclaimed excitedly.
 
Sundays of course we go to church. Since most Japanese are extremely busy during the week, including Saturdays, Sundays tend to be very busy days: church, social engagements, rehearsals, and meetings all happen on Sundays. Monday morning we are exhausted! Our church is small and family oriented. We meet in the living room of a large house. Tony and Pat, our mentors and the pastors of the church, live upstairs. After every service we eat lunch together. This is a great chance for us to practice our Japanese! Many of the other missionaries find the formality of Japanese churches hard to take. We don’t really mind, since we are accustomed to worshipping in a set pattern every week. It’s very helpful to us as foreigners, since it’s easier to follow what’s going on with minimal Japanese. Tony and Pat give us their sermon outlines so we can follow along with the sermon. This is also very helpful, since when we know what to expect, it is much easier to start catching some of the Japanese.
 
Our work is picking up a bit, with more to come when the university starts up again in October, as we will be involved as English conversation partners and in Bible studies and other events. At that point we will drop back to 1 or 2 days a week in language study so we can manage our workload.

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Some Japanese Words

Bento (おべんとう): Japanese boxed lunch. The preparing of bentos (cute or not) is a fine art in Japan, and it is catching on elsewhere in the world.

Gaijin (外人): foreigner. That would be us. This is our excuse for all kinds of mistakes and (unintentional) bad behaviour.

Kanji (漢字): Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. With so many homonyms, Japanese would be incomprehensible without them. By high school graduation, students need to know about 2000 characters, but there are about 80,000 characters total. We’re aiming for those first 2000…

Natto (なっとう): fermented soybeans. They taste (according to Celia) like coffee-flavoured cheese. Westerners typically find natto rather vile, because of the stringy consistency and strong smell. Celia loves it. Keith’s comment: “I don’t like coffee; what makes you think I’d like coffee-flavoured cheese?”

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Feelings of Helplessness
Things aren’t all a bed of roses. Here are some of Keith’s experiences with Japanese language and prayer.

At church last week, we broke into small groups to discuss the sermon and prayer topics. Obviously, the conversation was in Japanese, and in the month I've been here, I have gotten used to not following any Japanese conversation. During the discussion time, however, I felt that I was hindering the intimacy of the group because I had nothing to contribute. Someone spoke after me in my group and said something so moving that it brought tears to another group member's eyes. I have at times felt frustrated at not being able to distinguish face cream from toothpaste at the grocery store, but this was the first time I felt like I was really missing out on something good. It made me question what I am doing here.

Yesterday made me question even more. I have been playing soccer on Fridays at the local recreation center. Usually this is fine because I don't need to say much to kick the ball around. Last night a kid on my team tripped over the ball and landed on his arm hard. When I came up to him I saw that his left arm had a very unnatural dip in the middle. I wanted to tell the staff at the center what happened, call his parents, and send him on his way to the hospital. Basically, I wanted to take charge of the situation, but I did not even know how to tell him not to move his arm. I played soccer with this kid three times already, and I don't even know his name. "What am I doing in Japan? What can I do for this kid?" I asked myself. I can pray, so I did. It may have been the first time that anyone has prayed for him specifically. I can let these situations of toothpaste and broken arms make me question my calling to Japan, or I can let them encourage me to act in ways I normally would not and spur me on to learn the language. When the kid broke his arm, my first instinct was to take charge, and only when this was not in my ability did I pray. Perhaps I have put too much stock in communicating with words; what I really must concentrate on is how I can communicate the love of God in actions.

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Prayer Points

Looking back, we are thankful for…

• Our safe arrival in Japan, on time, and a relatively painless transition to life here
• The guidance of our leaders (Alaric Dunsmore-Rouse and Tony and Pat Schmidt)
• New friendships among the students in the language school and at church
• Our praying and donating friends who enabled us to come to Japan
• Good health, good food, and a chance to rest from all the craziness that surrounded our departure
• Progress in our studies and our work. We are glad to have had some Japanese before becoming more involved in the churches here.
• Evidence of God’s work here; we are excited and thankful to be a part of that.

Looking forward, we are praying for…

• Satsunae Lighthouse Church, where we are attending: our church, which is currently missionary led, is preparing to call a Japanese pastor. This will bring a greater financial burden on this small congregation. In addition, the church will need to make some changes in order to welcome a Japanese pastor—in short, become more Japanese. Change happens slowly in Japanese churches.
• Our language studies: patience, patience, patience! Also, diligence in private study, courage to speak when we are out and about… and to avoid offending people by accidentally saying something impolite. Japanese language has a complex layering of different tiers of politeness. Luckily most Japanese people seem to be very willing to forgive a gaijin who is trying to learn their language.
• Keith, who has been having trouble sleeping. This is not a new problem, but the new environment, with so many interesting things to see and think about, has exacerbated it.
• Celia, whose cello practice sessions have been going very well! Pray for confidence, diligence, and flexibility in preparing for worship services and concerts coming up this fall.
• The people we will be ministering to in our various teaching and musical engagements: that they would come with open hearts, and that in serving them, we would model the love of Christ. (We’re not going to mince words: we are here to tell people about Jesus. We want to convince them, by our words, actions, and prayers, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. It is our prayer that all of Japan would be saved.)
• The church in Japan: unity in the Body of Christ, faithful living every day of the week, not just Sundays, and the strength to persevere in the face of pressure from society and family
• The Japanese people: that they would find true hope in the One True God. We have already experienced a “delay” on the subway, which is code language for “someone threw him/herself in front of the train.” The economy is in bad shape; in this time of crisis, pray that people would turn to God and not to their pocketbook or even the new government for hope and security. We do also pray for wisdom for the newly elected government to effectively care for the needs of the people, especially the poor.
• Our future: we still are waiting for God's call either to full time ministry in Japan or to something else that he has planned for us. May we see the sign when he gives it, may we have strength to follow it, and may we be patient until it comes.

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Celia’s Cooking Corner
Recipe Contest

I love cooking! Exploring all the new flavours (and enjoying certain familiar flavours for significantly cheaper than in Vancouver) has been quite a thrill. However, now that autumn is upon us, I’m starting to crave the rich soups and stews of my native land… and finding it somewhat difficult to adapt the recipes I’m accustomed to, since some of my standard ingredients are hard to find here.

Thus I solicit your advice. You’ve supported me in prayer, now I ask you to support me with recipes. Whoever sends the best recipe gets some kind of cute Japanese prize! Here are the rules:

1. The recipe must be for soup or stew. That’s what I’m craving. More contests may follow with other themes.
2. The recipe must contain onions. We live in an onion growing region. They are fresh, cheap, and delicious.
3. The recipe must contain a source of protein: the best options here are seafood, pork, and tofu. Beans are also nice, but here they are expensive and limited in variety.
4. Recipes must not require fancy equipment. We are limited to a stove, a tiny oven, a cutting board, a couple of knives, a soup pot, a frying pan, a vegetable slicer (last weekend’s splurge), and some measuring cups.
5. Extra points for economy. We’re on a missionary budget after all…
6. Recipes will lose points for using imported ingredients. Typical Japanese flavours are rice, soy sauce, sesame, rice-based vinegar and alcohol, shiitake mushrooms, vegetables (especially root crops, cabbage, and leeks; no zucchini or beets, to my surprise), and the above-named protein sources. These are cheap and easy to find. Try to avoid: cheese (milk and yogurt are okay), “exotic” herbs and spices (including what you would typically find in Southwestern or Mediterranean cooking… sigh…), lime, peanuts, lentils and other “unusual” legumes, wine (too expensive, and technically we’re not supposed to have any), and regionally specific vegetables (use “hot peppers” instead of “jalapeno peppers,” for example.)

That’s it! Email me if you have questions.

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Engrish of the Month

“To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.”

—Music composition notebook

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We hope you have enjoyed our very first Japan newsletter. Hopefully we will be doing this with some regularity. Until next time, keep praying! Blessings on each of you.

Love,
Keith and Celia

What we are doing

Time for a "serious" post. Yes, we really do things here besides cooking, eating, and looking for Engrish.

Our primary task at the moment is studying Japanese. We came having already learned hiragana and katakana (the two syllabic writing systems), so we were able to pretty much start right in on grammar, vocabulary, etc. Learning a language takes a lot of work. When we learned Greek and Hebrew, we could always go look things up in the lexicon. We didn't need to communicate. We always spoke English in class. Therefore, fluency could definitely slide. Now, being that we are daily in situations in which we need to communicate with people on some level in Japanese (without constantly looking up words in the dictionary), we need to practice until every word and sentence pattern comes naturally. So yes, it's difficult, and it's a lot of work... but compared to Regent, it seems like a fun challenge to undertake on a summer holiday... I've been assured that it will get much harder. ;) It's kind of infuriating to completely understand the grammar behind a given sentence pattern, but then to be completely unable to use said sentence pattern in actual conversation. There's also the 3rd language problem. I keep wanting to speak German. I've managed to do this in class only once... All in all, we're excited to learn and enjoying our studies. Every chapter finished, and every successful conversation, is cause for celebration. :)

Our other task is generally learning to live in Japan. This has included shopping trips complete with attempted conversations (I managed to hold a somewhat successful conversation with the saleswoman in a tea shop), participating in cultural activities (fireworks), going to church (we had our first sunday at our new church last week), and doing some tourist-like activities. We have visited 3 nearby parks (the parks are fabulous in Sapporo), and yesterday we went to the beach.

So, yes, parks. We went hiking last Saturday at 円山 (Maruyama) park. (We got there by subway! I love it when I don't have to drive a long way in order to go hiking!) Hiking might be a bit of an overstatement. However, the mountain (that second character, yama, means mountain) was quite steep, albeit not very tall. There was a great view of the city from the top of the mountain. We live near the white dome-like thing in the upper left of the picture. (Unfortunately, it was kind of smoggy.)


What's a hike without a picnic? I made bentos with Japanese style potato salad, homemade tsukemono (pickles), stir-fried broccoli, and rice with peas and salmon. Then there was mugicha (cold barley tea) to drink. I was hungry... so I didn't think to photograph my special picnic bento until it was half eaten. Oh well.


Um... culture shock? This buddha is wearing a Winnie the Pooh bib?? There were 82 (I think) statues along the trail. Many people left offerings for the statues, hoping for good fortune. We also had a quick look at the Hokkaido Shrine, which was nearby. More about this later...


We saw an awesome green bug, a couple of large-ish snakes (Keith almost stepped on one), and a lot of big, nasty crows. Apparently the crows here divebomb people...


The beach. We went with our leaders/mentors, Tony and Pat. It was good to have a chance to talk with them, since they had been busy with a team from Hong Kong when we got here. Yesterday was the official last day of the swimming season, so the beach was very crowded. There were a lot of families. Many people brought little grills with them... the whole place smelled delicious, like grilled fish! The water was pleasantly cool and refreshing. Hooray for swimming in the ocean... or rather the Sea of Japan!


A bit about church now. I don't have any pictures, unfortunately. How silly of me. One of these I'm going to get on my bike and ride around taking pictures of things. Maybe tomorrow, actually, since we don't have classes on mondays. We will be attending Satsunae Lighthouse Church this year. It's a small congregation by North American standards (although about the same size as our old church in Grand Forks), which meets in a large house. Tony and Pat live upstairs, and the church meets downstairs. It's a lovely building. Since it is a house, it really feels homey. There's also a nice big kitchen, lending itself to meals after church. :) Going to church is good language practice for us. Of course there are many people to talk to, and we will sometimes hear words which are repeated in songs and in the sermon, which we can look up later. We have already connected with several people from church who have offered to help us get adjusted to life in Japan! We are very thankful.

Speaking of which, tonight Kondou-san, one of our new friends from church, took us out for conveyor-belt sushi. :)






Before dinner, we ran across this place, which is apparently an American chain? I'd never heard of it, but Keith got all excited.


If you would like to pray for us, here are some things you can pray for:

• We're thankful for God's provision in so many ways: we (obviously) got our visa in time, we are both healthy, our language studies are going well, and we are meeting people in school and in church who are welcoming us and helping us.
  
• Please pray for Mr. Chain-Smoker in the building next door. We hear him coughing all the time. It sounds painful.
  
• Please pray for the students here at the language school: that we would have good fellowship together and support and encourage each other, and that we would be able to quickly (and cheerfully) learn the Japanese language.
  
• There are schools all around us where we live. Pray for the Christian students who are faced with a decision whether to join a club or continue attending church. Many clubs, including some of the most popular (baseball, etc.), meet on Sunday mornings. (Pray too that the adorable screaming children at the preschool next door stay adorable. ;)
• We're in the "honeymoon" period right now. Everything is new and exciting. Please pray for us that when we come to the end of the initial excitement, we would remain steadfast in our work, rooted in God and in fellowship with other believers.
  

Japanese food adventures

Being that I love food and cooking and other such things, I have been eager to try out the flavors of my new home. Here's some of our adventures thus far...

Our first Sunday here, we had a meal after church. The particular church we visited (Sapporo International Church--not the one we will attend regularly) has a large population of Koreans and other foreigners. This particular meal was topped with a big scoop of kochujang, a spicy Korean bean paste (unfortunately the kochujang is not in the picture). Our response: "we're in heaven." Yep. We went right out and bought some of that stuff.


I insisted that we buy the "nice garlic." Keith wanted the mean garlic.


We were given a big bag of potatoes. We added a bit of garlic and leek and sauteed them until they were crispity crunchity. Then we added soy sauce, miso, mirin, and a little salt and pepper. Keith ate them straight out of the pan. We still have a bunch of potatoes left, so next time we'll try adding kochujang.


We went out with the other language school students to eat okonomiyaki. This is a savory cabbage-based pancake. You make it yourself at your table. Here Stephanie, one of our fellow students, is getting ready to flip one. It was delicious... and cheap! 700 yen (about $7) for a nice, filling meal!



I saw what appeared to be a cucumber with warts in the grocery store. I inquired, and found that it was called "goya" or "bitter melon." Despite the warnings, I had to have one. I discovered that goya are frequently found in Okinawan champuru (stir fry) dishes, so I set out to make one.

Here is the goya as I'm preparing it. Observe the beautiful, jewel-like skin.


I first stir fried some pork, then added onions, tofu, and finally goya. Then I seasoned it with mirin and soy sauce. The final addition was a couple of eggs.


Then I topped it with a drizzle of miso, mirin, and soy sauce and some bonito flakes...


...and the goya tasted like earwax. Have you ever scratched your ear and then licked your finger a few minutes later? It was like that... in big, beautiful green slices. So sad. Most of our poor goya went in the trash. The rest of the champuru was delicious, though... I think I'm going to explore that cuisine a bit more.


Today's breakfast: natto and brown rice. I'd describe the taste of natto as "coffee flavored cheese." It's famous for being rather vile, but for some reason I really like it. The strings stuck to my chin do get a bit annoying, though. One of our fellow students thinks my desire for natto must be a sign from God... otherwise there's no way I could possibly like it. We'll see. ;)


More on food later... and other stuff too.

This notebook comes with Engrish.

It's for real, and it's everywhere... of course I am talking about Engrish. Here are some of our favorites so far. It's not always bad grammar/spelling; sometimes it's just wrong or inappropriate usage, or use of odd superlatives or claims for a given product. Anyway, click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see the writing properly. Enjoy...

I am not making this up. There really is a beverage called Pocari Sweat. It's somewhat Gatorade-like.


This one is a coffee creamer.


Keith's manly bento box will provide endless delight.


We cannot figure this one out. Just weird is all. It's an おにぎり (onigiri=rice ball) box.


We aren't sure we want to know what kind of music they're referring to...



On an entirely different note, did you know it is possible to make a 1 円 (yen) coin float?


Here's how:

We're here!

We made it! We're in Japan!

Shall I describe the end of the visa saga? We heard on Thursday evening that OMF Japan had received the certificate of eligibility, and that we would receive it on Saturday. So, we made arrangements to go out for lunch with some friends on Friday. 20 minutes before we were supposed to meet them, we unexpectedly got the parcel a day early... then we hastily filled out the application, picked up friend 1, went to get passport pictures, picked up friend 2, ate lunch, left friends at Van Dusen Gardens, went to the consulate, applied for visa, returned to spend the rest of the afternoon with friends. We heard from the man at the consulate that we would be able (most likely) to pick up our passports with the visas on Wednesday morning before our flight, and that we would know for sure Tuesday morning.

We moved out on Saturday morning, had a goodbye party Saturday night, played for worship on Sunday morning, slept all afternoon, then resumed the cleaning and packing frenzy on Monday. Tuesday morning we called the consulate, and the visa was ready to pick up! So, we went and got it, then resumed the last-minute preparation frenzy. (Did I mention that while all of this was happening, it was 90 degrees F/33 degrees C in Vancouver? And no air conditioning anywhere, except in the car?) The result of all this is that we were already completely exhausted when we got on the plane...


Wednesday morning we went to the airport. My brother and several Japanese friends came to see us off... apparently going to the airport with your friends is a tradition in Japan. It was very nice.


I found out that Japan Airlines is definitely the way to go for cellists: there is actually a procedure for booking a seat for cellos and other large objects. The person at the check-in counter greeted me with "Ah, you're the one with the cello. They told us about you in briefing this morning." No one batted an eyelash as I went through security and boarded the plane. On our second flight, the flight attendant helped me carry the cello, and she went right to the correct seat and proceeded to strap it in for me. Yes... very impressive. There weren't any worries at all about whether or not I would be allowed to board, as is the case with most US airlines.

We met Tony, one of our hosts, at the airport. I felt bad because we had so much luggage (5 suitcases, 2 instruments, and 2 backpacks--but what can we do? We had to bring winter clothes too!) We got into our new apartment around 10 p.m. and immediately passed out on the bed. Unfortunately we were up by 4. Ugh. Oh well, today we managed to sleep until 5. Maybe tomorrow we'll make it until 6.

Yesterday we were out most of the day. We went to a supermarket and the local department store (which includes a supermarket, restaurants, and a variety of other shops), talked to a lot of people, ate some ice cream, and went to a fireworks display, at which we fell asleep while sitting upright. Oh dear.




Some observations and reasons to be thankful:

• The water tastes good! Yay, I won't get dehydrated.
• The milk tastes good too. It's creamier and sweeter than I'm accustomed to. It makes me want to try some cheese from this region when I get the chance...
• The weather is cool. There's no bugs either. I'm so glad we're not in Vancouver at present. When the weather clears up a bit, we're looking forward to seeing the mountains, but we're really not in a hurry...
  

I learned some new words.

• ふくろはいりません (fukuro wa irimasen) means "don't give me a bag, please." I'm a tree hugger, what can I say?
• There are two hymnbooks commonly used in Japanese churches, mostly consisting of translations, but still treasured: さんびか (sambika) and　せいか (seika).
• Sapporo (our city) is written 札幌.
  

I ate some interesting things:

• I ate a lot of little tiny fish. They're a little larger than mosquitos. I'm not sure I want to think about how many animals I ate yesterday.
• I also had soft serve ice cream with red bean, mochi, banana, and green tea syrup. It was delicious.
  
• I want to try おこのむやき (okonomiyaki--cabbage pancake/frittata thing with toppings) and the ramen which is a specialty in Sapporo. I'll probably wait until the weather gets a little cooler.
  

More pictures soon, and generally more posting. Check back often... or subscribe through Google Reader or something! :)

4 more days! For real this time, we hope.

Just a quick update... as I will be put to work as soon as Keith gets up (it's moving day). We received our certificates of eligibility yesterday (this is the preliminary document from the Japanese government which enables us to apply for our work visas), and what followed was a whirlwind of activity in which we hurriedly filled in visa applications, picked up a lunch guest (the documents arrived 45 minutes before we were supposed to have lunch with some friends), got passport photos taken, picked up the other lunch guest, ate lunch, ditched the lunch guests and went to the consulate, applied for the visa, went home to drop Keith off for another social engagement, and then I rejoined our lunch guests at Van Dusen Gardens for the rest of the afternoon... it was a crazy day, and I didn't even mention the frenzy of packing that happened all evening.

To summarize the immigration document drama, we had been waiting for a certificate of eligibility, but there had been a delay. We thought we would need to change our flight. We still might, if there are delays processing our visa, but barring no further problems, we will be picking up our passports with visas inside at the Japanese consulate on Wednesday morning... then we will go straight to the airport! I wanted to take a picture of myself holding the claim slip with the date "July 29" written on it, but I didn't get to it yesterday, and right now I'm in my pajamas. Please keep praying for our visas to be ready on time! We will know for sure on Tuesday morning.

As I mentioned, we are moving out today. There's still quite a bit of stuff left to pack, but much of it is "last minute" stuff which we will need until Tuesday. Luckily the storage place is fairly close. Keith has a couple of friends from church to help him. Meanwhile, while they go off to unload the truck, I will be preparing the house for our party!

This has all been very rambling... I'll try to be more coherent in the future. ;) I've got a lot on my mind...

Getting ready to go

The countdown is on. The schedule says that we will be leaving next Wednesday. However, we have yet to see our immigration documents. There might still be hope if we receive them tomorrow or the next day, but after that we'll have to start looking into changing the flight to a later date... this is all very frustrating. We're already well into the process of uprooting ourselves from our current home and ready to move on. Today, for example, all of our instruments except my cello and treble viol go to new homes for the time we are away. I'm very grateful to have found people who will look after them and make good use of them, but definitely sad to leave them behind.

Anyway, we've been doing lots of preparations for leaving, even since before graduation. First there was the application process for the work we will be doing with OMF. Then after graduation, when we started having a little space to spare in our brains, we started studying Japanese. We can't do much on our own, but we've become somewhat comfortable with the writing system, and we're enjoying learning about the grammar. We have found it a little frustrating that most Japanese textbooks assume that the student has no desire or aptitude for grammar, and thus skims over it in an effort to teach the student to intuit the language, teaching phrases rather than vocab and grammar. This doesn't fly with us. We are language nerds. Luckily we found a good textbook finally... I am thrilled with the pages and pages of grammar notes. I have an intense desire to understand how the Japanese language works! We are excited about our upcoming Japanese language lessons with a real teacher.

We've also gone on a couple of trips as part of our preparations. First, we went to Colorado for OMF orientation. This was fun, challenging, and exhausting at the same time. We had many rewarding conversations with the other people who are going to do short term mission trips this summer, as well as with long term workers. We also became vividly aware of the places where we had become rigid from being in our comfortable church and school environment, surrounded by like-minded people. We were confronted with Christians from all different backgrounds, not just Regent-style Christians. That was a good wake-up call--learning to trust God and not be quite so suspicious of other Christians from outside our little tribe. There was time for some fun activities too...




Incidentally (and slightly off topic), we got to visit some dear friends in Colorado while we were there. We finally got to meet Janelle and Kelly's two children, Elaine and Elliott! We didn't do much with them other than cooking, eating, and talking. That's great... since that's what I wanted to do most!

Keith purchases a baby (Elliott) at the grocery store...



We ate hotpot for dinner... yum! (that's an understatement!)


Kelly taught Keith to play Chinese chess.



We had dinner with Don and Amelia and Inara! Don, who will shortly be opening a brewery, gave us a tour of his Bierkeller... including samples. :) Keep your eyes open for Grimm Brothers Brewhouse! It's going to be delicious...




We did a little hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park too.




I already posted a week ago about our road trip, so I will only add a few comments here. Part of the purpose of that trip was to visit all the churches to which we are connected. Keith preached a sermon at our former church in Grand Forks on John 20 which was interwoven with his testimony. That church had played a particularly large role in Keith's faith journey, so it was important for him to tell his story there. We were surprised (and delighted) to find that a new congregation, made up of Mexican immigrants, had grown out of the old congregation. The church welcomed us to attend the Spanish service as well. It was good practice for being in church in Japan... no idea what was going on. Oh well. It was good to be gathered with other Christians even if we weren't speaking the same language. Both the English and Spanish congregations prayed for us and sent us off as missionaries. We were encouraged by the support given to us by the new congregation, even though we didn't know any of them! (On a side note: at orientation we learned the following missionary motto: "Where he leads me, I will follow; what he feeds me, I will swallow." This was put to the test for me at lunch that Sunday... an interesting Mexican soup was served to me with the comment, "It's probably better if I don't tell you what's in it." So, I ate cow stomach for the first time... and discovered that I liked it!)

Finally, we're having a "goodbye bash" on Saturday night! Feel free to drop by any time after 7:30 if you happen to be in Vancouver. I'm not posting the address since sharing personal info on the internet scares me... email me if you need it. Keith promises to entertain you by juggling. There will probably also be a fire and roasted peeps. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should just come to the party.

For those of you who are praying for us, here are some things to pray about:

• The visa. Argh!!!!! (And Celia's sanity until everything is worked out. Keith is amazingly calm.)
• We're moving out on Saturday. So, please pray that everything goes smoothly and quickly... we get to use the moving truck for a total of 4 hours.
• Safety in travel. As I mentioned, we're supposed to be leaving on the 29th.
  

Having a look at our home country

We've been on a road trip, but we're back home in Vancouver... for another 2 weeks! That's right, we leave for Japan 2 weeks from today! Feeling excited and antsy and a bit nervous...

Anyway, before we left for Japan, we wanted to spend some time with both our families. Keith really wanted to take a road trip. We flew way too much last year, then we flew to Colorado in May, and of course we have a lovely 12 or so hours on the plane to Japan to look forward to. So, we decided on a road trip.

First stop: Newcastle, WA. We spent time with my parents and brother, and we visited all my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and cousin.

Second stop: Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. It was hot and moist. This means it was beautiful and green. Last year there was a drought.




Third stop: Grand Forks, ND. We had an eventful time. There were many people to visit, steak to eat... and a sump pump to fix. Keith stayed up half the night bailing water so that the basement wouldn't flood more than it already had. Yuck. Other than that, we spent just about every waking moment with special people. Keith also preached a sermon at our old church. Our nephew, Michael got a lot bigger! He loves his meat like his daddy, and he loves the piano like his mommy and Uncle Keith.



He likes to show affection by giving kisses... awwww!!




Fourth stop: Aberdeen, SD! Here we met our nephew, Alexander Timothy Sweet for the first time! He was born on June 11. However, I have to say that his older sister, Elizabeth upstaged him most of the time... she's smart, cute, and 2 years old! We celebrated her birthday on July 3.


Comparing Alexander with the sleeping face of his grandfather...


Big sister is still Daddy's little girl.


We read lots of books together.



Grandpa is the master at burping the baby!


Elizabeth went down every slide at Storybook Land.


Fifth stop: Fort Dodge, IA. I think by this time I had run out of picture-taking steam. There was just too much cuteness among niece and nephews. Anyway, we had some much needed rest and enjoyed spending time with Keith's parents.

Sixth stop: Glacier National Park, MT. (Yes, Montana, not Glacier BAY NP in Alaska.) This was the "anniversary vacation" I suppose--we celebrated our 4th anniversary on July 9! Well... on that particular day, we actually spent 13 hours in the car. Really we celebrated over the next few days.

This is what highway patrol is like in Montana, apparently. This guy was sitting in his car by the road where we stopped to buy some cherries.


Our first day in Glacier we drove the park road and took 2 short hikes.




The second day, we hiked the "Garden Wall" trail, so named for its spectacular wildflowers all summer long.



We met a friendly goat and some friendly hikers on the trail.



We took a very steep spur trail to a lunch spot, and we were rewarded with bighorn sheep, marmots, and great views. How many bighorn sheep can you count in this picture?


Answer: 6! It was amazing to watch them running carelessly around (or so it seemed) on the scree.




The last few miles of the trail were not as fun. The sun came out, and because of recent forest fires, there was no shade. At present, I look like a half-cooked lobster. Yikes.


Seventh stop: Leavenworth, WA. We ate a great meal and then camped in a beautiful place. Keith played with the fire. He likes to do that.


Final stop: Edmonds, WA. We hung out with my brother, looked at pictures, and ate vegetables and rice for dinner. That was a nice change from meat, meat, starch, and meat. We ate a lot of meat on this trip. Looking forward to eating lots more rice and vegetables when we get to Japan!!

We're glad to be home in Vancouver, even if we don't have much time left here! Give us a call or an email if you want to hang out. :)

Update 5: Dealing with my yarn stash

I've been a busy little beaver the last couple of weeks. We're moving out of our apartment in a month, so I have been organizing all kinds of things around the house. My most recent project was the yarn stash. There were a lot of unfinished projects and random balls of yarn. I packed up the random yarn and a few projects, but I took a number of them along on the road trip to work on in the car. So, on to the knitting projects...


Remember this one? I thought this shawl was for me, but then I decided it wasn't for me, it was for Sindy. It looks a lot better on her, so I guess it was meant to be! Sindy gave me a scarf that her mentor made.


While I was on that particular trip to Peru, I visited a delightful yarn shop. Sindy and our translator, Silvia helped me choose yarn for a blanket I had been wanting to make. I went straight to work as soon as I got home. I ran out of pattern, but still had a lot of yarn left over (the yarn was smaller than the pattern called for), so I started experimenting a bit on my own. I was very happy with the result... it's beautiful and soft and warm!



When I was done, I still had quite a bit of yarn left over, so I set about making hats for Elizabeth and Michael for Christmas.

I drew Cat this year in the Olson family Christmas draw, so I made her a purple scarf. Purple is her favorite color.

Not much knitting went on this spring. I had bigger fish to fry with all my arts thesis stuff. Not to mention, I had no projects in a state where I could just sit down and knit. I had a lot of planning to do. That explains this sweater: it sat in a bag for two years when all I had left to do was sew on the arms (my least favorite part), sew in loose ends, and block it, but I just never found the time. Oh well, it's done now! I finished it on a very lovely day sitting on the deck of a vacation home on Gambier Island. :)





We went to Colorado for OMF orientation (more on that soon), and took the opportunity to visit Kelly, Janelle, Elaine, and Elliott! We hadn't seen Kelly and Janelle for 3 1/2 years, which means we had never met either Elaine or Elliott! I brought big sister/little brother hats for them. (Elaine was wearing the yellow sweater I made her in the previous knitting post.)



We have a new nephew! His name is Alexander. I made him a little sweater vest. I designed it myself, and I used the same yarn as our other nephew, Michael's sweater.















I'm still working on the green fisherman sweater which was supposed to be for Keith but it turns out it's going to be for me. It was just too small, especially around the shoulders, even after I restarted it once. I'll try again later with a sweater for Keith. Izumi tells me that there are fabulous yarn shops in Sapporo! I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Update 4: Graduation Festivities

Okay, now we've caught up to about 2 months ago. Has it really been 2 months since graduation?? Actually, yes...

The last day of classes, which was also the day of Keith's comprehensive exam (hence the odd apparel--he likes to dress up in various ways for exams, usually like the professor... this time, he threatened to shave his head to dress up like Phil, his adviser, but I told him no, so he did a 3-piece suit and Klompen instead... but I digress...) we held a surprise farewell party for one of our professors, Dr. Clemens, who is retiring. Keith and I had been his TA's in Greek and Hebrew for the past year. We gave him gifts, said nice things, and prayed for him. He has been an inspiration to all his students! Dr. Clemens' comment when all of his students came into the classroom with a cart and drinks was, "Those of you who know me well will know that this is making me very uncomfortable... give me something to parse!" He's a very humble guy, and doesn't like people making a fuss over him. (I kind of hope he doesn't see this.) We will miss him! (Thanks, Roger for the pics!)




















There was an end of the year party for school. We're not really party people, but I made Keith go anyway. We ended up sitting at the CRC table... most of the people at the table go to our church. The "Love Crusade" performed old-school Christian rock from the 1980's, complete with appropriate clothing and sound equipment. Good stuff, that.








Graduation weekend was crazy. On Saturday, we went to three parties. One was brunch (at the BullTucker house), the second was lunch (Brazilian BBQ with Carla and her family), and the third was dinner (a BBQ in honor of some different Brazilians--Rene and Sarah). In between, we ate gelato.

































On Sunday, my Arts Thesis quartet played for the Graduation Tea.




































Monday (April 27) was graduation day. We went to Van Dusen Garden for lunch.






The Arts Thesis trio played for the ceremony. There are lots of pictures of us, since we were sitting right in the front row! In case you were wondering, both of us received Master of Christian Studies degrees. Keith's concentration was Biblical Studies, and mine was Christianity and the Arts. Each of us received 2 prizes. Keith's were in Greek and Old Testament, and mine were in Christianity and the Arts and Hebrew. It was a bit overwhelming... We used the prize money to pay our deposit for our trip to Japan.


































On Tuesday, the pressure was off, so we went to bother our friend, Kayoko at work. She made us drinks.










On Wednesday, we had a picnic.






















On Thursday, Carla and her parents came over for dinner: North Dakota steak! They told us the "polite" way to kick guests out of your home in Brazil: put the broom behind the door. This has become a running joke.



On Friday, we visited the Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC.











On Saturday, Keith played with our three broken laptops (not the one in the foreground... thankfully that one still works! It's been a bad year for computers.)

Well, there you have it. We graduated! Hooray!

Update 3: Random stuff this Spring

Here we go again. Another update. We didn't take too many pictures this Spring, since we were busy all the time with schoolwork. But hey, there's a few pictures of that...

Taste of the world. It happens every year... but this year is our last year! The lovely Carla Faria was working on that day (having already finished school anyway), so instead of doing what I usually do (joining forces with the Brazilians), I represented... sigh... my own country. I made Green Bean Casserole. It's my favorite unhealthy-Campbell's-soup-based-Holiday-recipe. (I was so embarrassed--I had to check the box for "contains MSG" on the tag.) I also "dressed to represent" our country as our fearless leader (Eunice) suggested... I went all out with Red Sox garb, complete with red socks. There is a picture on Facebook if you are interested. ;)

Keith "represented" with his full PE uniform stolen from Grand Forks School District. Of course, the usual spam display also made an appearance.





My cello students had starring roles in their school play. Awwwww... The two in the overalls are my students. Student #3 was in the choir. The kids also put on a 3 course dinner! I was impressed...


My birthday, like usual, came right at the end of term. I decided to celebrate by doing nice things for Keith, since he was too busy studying to do anything fun. Here he is marking Greek quizzes, and preparing to eat a bento that I prepared for him.

Then, I went home, and I cooked and cooked and cooked. The result? An impromptu birthday tea party in the atrium at school. Anyone who walked by was welcome to join in and have a piece of chocolate cake.

Yes, it was a crazy semester... see previous update post. Soon, I'll actually get around to posting pics from graduation festivities, and other good stuff. :) Oh, it's so hard to re-integrate to normal life after all that school craziness.

Japan Newsletter

We're going to Japan... pretty soon! Here's our "support letter" for OMF. Enjoy!

Dear Friends and Family,

We would like to share with you some exciting news. First, both of us have graduated from Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada with Master of Christian Studies degrees. Keith’s concentration was in Biblical Studies, and Celia’s concentration was in Christianity and the Arts; Celia completed an “arts thesis” project, titled “Praise the Lord with Stringed Instruments: Instrumental Music as Participation and Contemplation.” Both of us served as teaching assistants in Biblical languages (Keith in Greek and Celia in Hebrew). We have greatly enjoyed our studies here at Regent, but we are also glad to be finished and moving on to the next stage in our lives.

Over the past several years, the people of Japan have been weighing heavily on our hearts. This is not really a recent development; both of us have been blessed throughout our lives with Japanese friends, teachers, and colleagues, and we have come to greatly value Japanese hospitality, food, and culture. The Japanese language we also find fascinating, and we are excited at the opportunity to learn it. That being said, the next stage of our lives will take place in Japan. We will be leaving North America for Japan in late July and returning at the end of March.

We have been accepted to take part in an “Individual Placement” short-term mission trip in the city of Sapporo through OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship) International. We chose this particular organization because of its emphasis on the indigenous church—missionaries from outside Japan are there to serve as supporters, with the intention of uplifting the Japanese church so that it can stand on its own. We want to be part of this work. Our specific tasks will be to join in the work of a local church in student ministry and in worship music ministry, and to give concerts. Celia is particularly interested to continue the work she started in her arts thesis and to see how instrumental music can be a bridge in cross-cultural situations. Keith is particularly interested in the possibility of teaching Biblical studies in the local church and in ministering to those on the fringes of society. We will work under the leadership of long term missionaries and leaders in the local church. Our desire in going for this short time is to learn more about the needs of the Japanese church and the Japanese people, and see if our gifts are well suited to meet any of those needs. It could be that God will call us to work in Japan for the rest of our lives!

How can you participate with us in our work? We are looking for people to encourage us and uphold us in prayer. We will be sending out periodic email updates as well as making posts to our blog to keep you informed on our adventures, our work, and our prayer needs. Our current prayer needs and contact information can be found on the reverse of this letter. We are responsible for our own finances, amounting to about $34,500 (US) for the eight months we will be in Japan. If you would like to contribute, please see the instructions below. (We understand that many of you are already heavily burdened by the financial crisis; please do not feel obligated. Please do support us in prayer even if you choose not to support us financially!)

We are very excited as our date of departure draws near. Please keep us in your prayers, and contact us if you want to hear more!

Blessings,
Keith and Celia


How you can be praying for us:

• For details in all sorts of areas to work out, including flights (Celia will need to book a seat for her cello) and visas.
• For minds that are ready to learn and hearts that are ready to serve.
• For energy to keep working even when we are tired.
• For our hosts, Pat and Tony Schmidt and Alaric Dunsmore-Rouse, and for the work of Satsunae Lighthouse Church, our host church.
• For the people of Japan: Christians make up about 1.5% of the population. Japan is famous for its intense work ethic, and the pressures of society lead to high suicide rates, withdrawal from society, and troubled family life.
• For many fruitful conversations, meals, concerts, and worship services, and for the patience to keep trying even when we cannot see the fruit of our work.
• For our Japanese language skills to blossom, and once again for patience when we are frustrated at being more or less illiterate and unable to communicate.

How to Give:
You can give a tax deductable donation to OMF for the benefit of our work. There are 2 options to do this.

On the internet by credit card
Be sure to designate your donation for
“Serve Asia (OMF USA): Keith and Celia Olson.”

By mail:
Send your check, payable to OMF, labeled "Support for Keith and Celia Olson (Serve Asia, OMF USA)."

In the US, mail to:
Serve Asia—OMF International
10 W. Dry Creek Circle
Littleton, CO 80120-4413

In Canada, mail to:
OMF Canada
5155 Spectrum Way, Bldg 21
Mississauga, ON L4W 5A1

**Note: If you want to give, please do so before July 10. We need to have all our finances in order for the entire trip before we leave for Japan!


Enjoying a meal at home with some Japanese friends...

New Blog

I've just been on a roll lately. Not only is this the third post this month on THIS blog, but I started a new one too! If you are interested in the work I've been doing for my arts thesis, I'm going to be writing a series of articles/posts/whatever related to the topic of instrumental music in worship. Eventually I will branch out into other topics--I'm guessing working in worship ministry with Japanese churches will provide me with ample food for thought and comment (yay, so excited!!)

The aim is to develop a bunch of material for a potential book on the subject of instrumental music in worship. In the process of writing my arts thesis paper, I already had far more ideas and material than I could write about in the time and space allotted. I really think this is an important topic; the responses of the participants in each of the worship services suggested that there was a great need for silent, contemplative prayer, to foster the disciplines of stillness and listening. We live in a noisy, busy world, so we desperately need to be silent before God.

I'll still be posting on this blog. This is our "personal blog" (I say "our" even though Keith has never posted anything... ha ha), so we'll keep posting our stories, pictures, concert announcements, etc. here. I still have several more update posts to do before I'm caught up... :)

So, the new blog: http://celiaolson.blogspot.com/
Please visit, comment, and share it with any friends you think would be interested!

Update 2: Big Projects

Here we go again: another update. This was a busy semester, and now you will see why.

Keith took his Old Testament comprehensive exam. He read 9000 pages for the OT and NT exams together (he took the NT comprehensive exam in December), and was tested on all that material. He met weekly with Professor Bob Derrenbacker last fall and with Professor Phil Long this spring to prepare (hooray for awesome professors who take time to meet with students!) That's Phil's book he's reading upside down there. Keith also took classes on the books of Mark and Joshua and continued working as a teaching assistant for two Greek classes.



I spent this year working on my "arts thesis" (officially it was called an "interdisciplinary project in the arts and theology"), which was a huge project with both written and practical components. Having finished my worship internship at our church, I was ready to use what I had learned through the internship and in my classes at school to try something new: contemplative worship services with a rather high proportion of silence and instrumental music.

This was not something my congregation was accustomed to, and there were concerns about how the congregation would be able to participate in a worship service in which they were "observing" someone else's worship. With the help of my two wonderful advisors (Janet Danielson and Maxine Hancock), I set up four worship services with the aim of educating the school and church community in worshiping through music and silence. The first three services progressively had less words, until the only words in the third service were the call to worship and the benediction. I expected that one to be really difficult for most people, but I was surprised that people seemed to respond well. The final service took a more balanced approach, incorporating the passion narrative from the Gospel of John (read by Keith), a few hymns, and a lot of vocal and instrumental music.

I wrote a paper, too. It was very long. I traced the development of thought among Christians from the early church to the present on the subject of instrumental music, and I dealt with possible problems. I actually want to write a book... and Maxine suggested that I might want to start a blog with weekly posts on this subject and other worship-related topics. I'm sure I will have lots to write about in Japan! So... look for that coming soon. And now, pictures.

Part 1: "All Saints Day: Community." Lots of musicians, lots of singing (Genevan Psalms and Reformation-era hymns), lots of scripture. I posted about this service previously.



Part 2: "Advent: Longing." Music for cello and piano (played by Andrea Tisher and me), scripture readings, a few hymns. There was also a chance for everyone to light prayer candles. Most of this service took place in the dark. This was hard for the word-oriented people. Still, using candles as a symbol of hope is not effective unless it's dark.



Part 3: "Epiphany: Joy." This one had no words at all other than call to worship and benediction. Well, that's not entirely true. There were printed words to guide the times of contemplative prayer, but people were free to use them or ignore them. Music was string quartet, piano trio, and string duo (viola and cello), provided by Kathy Kwon, Jon Ng, my brother, Colin Wilson, and me.



At one point in the service, we did "origami prayer." Everyone received instructions to fold an origami star for Epiphany. The sounds of rustling paper became the sounds of prayer.


Here is the string quartet. I also had some wonderful visual elements for this service, including an icon made for Keith and me by a fellow Regent alum (Matthia Langone)! She's still tweaking things on it, and won't give it to us until she's convinced it's perfect. :) Thus you only get a picture of it from a distance.


Part 4: "Lent: Reflection." This service was built around the reading of John 18-19 (read by Keith) and Isaiah 52-53 (read by Maria Beversluis). In essence it was a Tenebrae service, but not on Good Friday (that would have been too late in the term), and we heard an entire passion narrative rather than bits of all four. After each section of the reading, some of the candles on the table were snuffed out, until we were left in darkness. (The sun cooperated too--sunset happened 10 minutes into the service.) Music this time was a variety of ensembles made up of the same crew plus Catriona Day, who teaches cello with me at the Saint James Music Academy. The selection of music was chosen to fit with the scripture. Afterwards everyone had a chance to ask questions about my project.






Oh yeah... when I wasn't busy with my arts thesis (when was that, you may ask), I continued work as a teaching assistant for 2 Hebrew classes and studied Biblical poetry and the Dead Sea Scrolls--in Hebrew! (My update took up much more space than Keith's... there's just not as many pictures to be had from a comprehensive exam. Although he did wear a 3 piece suit with Dutch clogs the day of the exam. That would have been worth a picture...)

More updates coming. Look forward to it!

Update 1: Christmas Break highlights

Oh my, we have been busy little beavers around here. For the past 3 1/2 years, we have been ignoring our friends and relations whilst attending classes at Regent, not to mention ignoring to-do lists and piles of papers to organize, so now we are paying for it. Not that catching up with friends is a bad thing. It's just all happening at once!

So, on to the blog update. (May I say that I still prefer the blog to facebook? The reason I am on facebook at all is so that people can go look at my blog.) I have a whole bunch of pictures from Christmas break which I will now post with minimal captions. And no, I'm not going to try to format anything. Bear with me. I'm going for speed, not quality. ;)

We spent Christmas, and quite a few days on either side, with Keith's family in Iowa: 10 adults, 2 babies, 1 baby on the way (Sarah and Nate's, not ours... don't get excited), and 4 dogs. Things moved a mile a minute...

The usual: Keith grilled in the snow. He usually does. Yes, we are lots of meat. Keith also played a lot of piano. Elizabeth, our niece, got in on some of that action.



We went out for tea. Elizabeth drank tea out of Grandpa's special teapot... decorated especially for a guy (none of that flowery stuff!)


Elizabeth loves to eat. Here she is eating beef stroganoff. Would I have touched that stuff when I was her age? Not a chance...


Ah, so worn out... but there were too many interesting things going on for her to nap in her room, so it had to be uncle Keith's lap.


My Christmas present to the family: lots and lots of bread.


Trying on Auntie Becca's shoes... she's a fine lady now!


Sarah reads stories to Elizabeth and Michael (our nephew)


Christmas Eve dinner: chicken noodle soup. I think it was well received.



Michael sits on Grandpa's lap... or should we call him Grumpa?


Elizabeth has discovered that pictures show up on the back of the camera after they're taken, so now she always wants to look.


Michael's Santa costume was made by his grandma Fleming for whichever grandchild it fits any given year... this year it was Michael's turn.


The Night Before Christmas read by Ilene... (she's good, they actually sat still the whole time.)


At home on Christmas Eve.



Elizabeth and Michael got hats made by me (hopefully there will be a knitting update post soon). Michael decided that in the house was not the right place to be wearing a hat.



Chris got stuck. Sooner or later we noticed and let him out.


And, once again, at home on Christmas morning.



This guy (Michael, not Keith) was crawling when he arrived, and walking when he left. The impetus to finally get him started was that he was stark naked at the time. There are videos which I will not post. I'm saving them for your first girlfriend, Michael. ;)



The girls had tea the day after Christmas. I did the baking, and Ilene helped.




Oh look, it's a picture of me! It's so hard to be the photographer...


Michael was being a good boy at Grandma's birthday lunch.


Then we were off to Seattle to celebrate Christmas again with my family. The stockings (and underwear) were hung by the chimney with care.


Keith shocked my family by ripping apart not only the wrapping paper, but gift inside... he had removed the book (a Greek New Testament) before giving the empty box to me to wrap. Isn't it fun to buy one's own Christmas presents?


Colin, who asked people NOT to give him presents, received two from us: cup socks, and a special made-by-Keith spam candle.



Carla returned from Brazil and spent a few days with us in Seattle before all of us headed back to Vancouver.



Yeah... not as many pictures from Seattle. There's no cute niece or nephew to photograph. Stay tuned for the next update...

Celia and Keith's news, real quick

Hi! It's been a while. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by how-long-it-takes-to-craft-a-good-blog-entry (and a lot has happened too), I'm going to give your our news from the past 4 months blow-by-blow, with the idea that I'll come back to it later with pictures and more details. So, here goes...

1. We graduated!! Hooray! This was on Monday. We each got a couple of prizes (Keith's in Old Testament and Greek, and mine in Hebrew and the Arts), and we felt both honored and... rather nerdy.
2. Since we graduated, obviously that means we finished our coursework--Keith finished his OT comprehensive exam this spring and I finished my arts thesis. We are glad to be done.
   
3. We're going to Japan! Approximate dates will be July-December. More details will follow. We're going to work with a Japanese church, and I might be doing some concerts similar to what I was doing for my arts thesis.
4. Oh yeah... Keith cut his hair. I guess that counts as big news.
   

Well, that's really the big news. There are lots of little things I could talk about. You can look forward to that in a few days. :)

Merry Christmas!

So... it is Christmas (or rather Advent) again. As you can see from the picture, it actually snowed in Vancouver. :) This year Keith and I are with Keith's family in Iowa. (Luckily we managed to get out of there before more snow came!) There will be 10 adults, 2 children, and 4 dogs, all sleeping in the same house. It will be quite the wild time. :) I like being here, because, now that I am finished marking Hebrew finals, all my responsibilities are finished, and I don't need to worry about schoolwork for the next couple weeks. At present, there is a lot of snow, and nothing to do outside the house, so staying in the house and loafing--knitting, sleeping, reading, talking, watching movies, etc.--is the order of the day. Yay! We worked hard, and now it's time to rest.

Traditionally, this is the time of year to reflect on what has happened in the past year. We don't have too much earth-shattering news at present. We have been very busy at school and at church. However, in spite of that, I think we traveled more miles this year than ever before. We started the year with a trip to North Dakota to witness our nephew, Michael's baptism, went to Kauai in May with my family, took a road trip through the Midwest to visit Keith's family in May and June, visited our friends, Alan, Libby, and Anna Thorp in New Zealand in August, I went to Peru to visit another friend in October, and now we are in Iowa again! Anyone want to add up the miles and tell me the total? Really, the purpose of all this travel was to see people who are dear to us and far away. We had wonderful times with both our families, enjoyed hanging out in New Zealand with the Thorps, and I got to meet Sindy face to face for the first time in Peru! This is typical for us; scenery and activities are nice, but people are more important.






















At school, this has been our busiest year ever! I am working on my Arts Thesis, which is a series of four carefully planned worship services making use of lots and lots of string instruments. I will also be writing a paper on this subject. Meanwhile, I am also keeping myself sane by working as a Hebrew TA (teaching assistant)--I get to keep up on my Hebrew skills, while helping other students learn.

Keith has been working as a TA as well, for Greek! My, aren't we a nerdy pair! A common sight over the summer was the two of us sitting together at a table in the Atrium at school marking the daily quizzes for summer language classes. Keith has been very busy taking upper level seminars and language classes, as well as studying for comprehensive exams. He successfully completed the New Testament exam at the beginning of December, and will be taking the Old Testament exam in the spring. He has been supported through the process by some very helpful professors.

At church, I worked as a worship intern from October 2007 until August 2008. It was an amazing learning experience, which has helped me greatly in my arts thesis. In particular, I learned how to better craft a worship service and how to better encourage others to use their musical gifts. Now that I'm done with my internship, we're both still regularly involved in music at church.

On an entirely different music-related note, I've been teaching cello in an after-school music program. I have three students, whom I share with my friend, Cat. They had their first performance in June. We were so proud of them! A few weeks later, we all gathered at my house (with moms) for a tea party to celebrate their accomplishments.

What's next? We're graduating in the spring (April)! I will complete my thesis, and Keith will complete his exams! Then I think we're done with full-time school for a while, or maybe permanently. That will total 10 years of college for me, and 8 years for Keith! As for what comes after that, we have some ideas, but nothing is certain just yet. Stay tuned for next year's Christmas letter! (Or read our blog.)

I hope all of you, our dear friends and family, have a marvelous Christmas, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing! May you always remember our incarnate Lord who came to dwell among us. Blessings on your celebrations!

Love, Keith and Celia



p.s. We'll have an Olson family picture up on our blog soon, too! We haven't gotten to it yet...