Monday, July 9

This is the first morning that I have had any time to collect my thoughts lately. The 2nd grade teacher has returned from the states and that has significantly lightened my work load. I spent all weekend (oh, I should say my free time this weekend) pulling together all of the loose ends of the musical and chapels. I have two choreography sessions planned, the solos are all asigned, drama parts have also been assigned, and the kids are starting to learn the songs. I worked with Lisa Sorley to try to establish some music classes for the individual grades as well. Tomorrow, I will begin my new music schedule.

Please continue to pray for the kids. I am getting a lot of resistance from the 4th, 5th, and middle school grades. They refuse to participate in chapel, and unfortunately, I just cannot attend to them AND all of the other grades at the same time. Pray that their teachers can reach them, and that perhaps when I have them in music class I will be able to connect with them and break down some of these barriers. The message the songs present is clear and Biblical. I pray that they won't harden their hearts to everything.

Last week flew by in a blur of activity. I cannot even recall any specific activities outside of school. I am sure I did something, but I am not sure what it is. I do know that on Saturday, Max Cruzado took some of us out on his boat to go snorkeling. We were going to go out to sand island to snorkel, but the waves were very bad. I had taken all of my seasickness medicine, but I wasn't as worried about snorkeling as I was about the fishing. We wouldn't have been driving nearly as far away, so getting sick didn't scare me as bad. The waves were worse, but I decided not to worry. Max said that the waves were too bad to boat out to sand island, so he took us up to Maeda Point on the boat. I had a great time, but about halfway there (after a wave crashed over the top of the boat drenching all of us) I wandered back to Max saying, "Max, these waves are bigger than 2 meters!!!" I am not so sure he appreciated my commentary at the time, but I decided to trust him. (I didn't share with the others on the boat that he had told me before that it wasn't safe for the boat with waves bigger than 2 meters) We rocked and rolled along the coast of Okianwa - barely making it by Zampa point, in my opinion, but then we entered the calmer seas near Maeda. It was great. Unfortunately, everone in the boat with the exception of me and Max felt woozy at one time or another (two people becoming quite ill!) I felt great and had a blast. Max warned us that the waves would be worse heading home, but it was fun.

When we got back, Max allowed me to help him with the boat. There was an ocean Matsuri on Sunday, so he wanted to get the boat out of the port. We sent home all of the other people, and then used the trailor to get the boat out. I was able to drive his van a few times and I even drove and connected it to the trailor! Once we got it out of the water we washed it off up at school. I enjoyed every moment.

Then, that evening, Max, Aidy, and Hazel invited Kathleen and I over to their place for dinner. As always, the food and conversation was wonderful. For those of you who haven't met the Cruzados, they are very special people to everyone at OCSI. Max is our head maintenance man and Aidy teaches K4 at school. When I first got here (10 years ago), they were the first people to greet me and make me feel welcome. They gave me a ride to church for almost the first year that I was on island. They feel like family to me, so I especially enjoyed the night.

Sunday, I went to THREE church services. I used to think 2 was a lot, but I packed in a third one this week! The morning consisted of chapel 2 on Kadena, followed by Central Baptist. After church a whole crew of people met for lunch at Obligato. Then, Lisa and I worked out summer school detiails before we left for Calvary Chapel that evening. Trevor Raichura was speaking, so it was fun to go and hear all of that.