Girl's Night!!!

Last Friday night we had a Girls Only Party.

The girls wanted to learn how to decorate fun cakes,
so they chose a bear cake.

They were quick at picking up the technique!

Calvin always enjoys having girls over.
He gets held a little more than usual!

Such sweet girls

The finished product! We were all very proud of our work! Good job girls!

Fun with our friends, Missionary Kids

Such sweet friends....Olivia, Noa Noll, and Annabella

Fun watching a movie with William, Isabel and Noa

Calvin and his little friend Martha ... they usually wear each other out!

We love playing with Isabel and William Stewart!

Calvin and Martha, growing up together

The kids had such blast building this tent with Andrew Coulburne

The girls are thankful to have Meg Dingle back!
They can do grown-up girly things like painting their toe nails!

Olivia and Annabella's Birthdays

We wanted to share some of the birthday fun in our house over the last six months. Yes, you read that right....we have been a little busy, but we still wanted to share the pictures with you all.

February 21st...Olivia's fourth birthday

We had our good friends the Stewart family and Megan over for a birthday celebration. We had Cincinnati chili for dinner.
One of our girl's favorite meals!

Olivia wanted a Cinderella castle cake this year

Pure excitement!

Yummy!

Our second birthday girl was Annabella on June 16th. She turned three.

We turned her party into a college ministry night. Olivia and Annabella were the only kids in a room full of college students. They loved every bit of the attention!

Since we only had adults, the girls were able to win all of the games!

Yes, my sweet girl chose a dragon cake

She was totally in love with her cake. Over the next couple days after the party, she kept running up to the cake calling it her, "Birthday party!" She was so sad when it was all gone saying that she had lost her birthday party.

We are so thankful for these little girls and for the friends that God has put into our lives to celebrate with us. God is so good!

Aunt Molly with us for 6 weeks

We were so blessed to have Aunt Molly stay with us for six weeks this spring. Here are a few pictures from her trip.

The excited nieces and nephew

Molly even mastered the art of holding a baby and eating with chopsticks!

Molly was so brave...she was always willing to try new foods!

Fun at the Chiba zoo

This was by far Calvin's favorite position! He definitely misses this!

Silly girls

So Sweet!

This was Molly's sixteenth birthday cake.
It was such fun to make it together!

Molly made many friends here. Many people were sad to see her go.

Molly actually was the first in our family to meet a Sumo wrestler!
Go Molly!


Molly, thank you for coming to Japan. Thank you for serving our family in such amazing ways...getting up with the girls in the morning, washing dishes, holding a fussy Calvin, and the list could go on and on.
We love you! The Pfeil clan

Baby Calvin - growing up!

Here's Calvin, all grown up at almost 3 months old! He is such a sweet little man, and we are so blessed to have him in our family. He has been a good sleeper, and pretty flexible with all that we have going on. Oh, and he just laughed out loud for the first time today! We all love him so much. It is really cute to hear Annabella say to him in the morning, "Heh-woah shun-shine boy"! :)



Here is Calvin showing of his dance moves, with a little jig ...

Summer Teams: PCPC

Our final team from America this summer was the 20+ group from Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCPC) in Dallas. Five people returned from last year's trip, plus four more, made quite a big group this year!
They had a running commentary of their trip on their blog, 20PlusJapan08. Check it out for some interesting stories.

The members of the PCPC team did a great job of engaging students in a personal way, helping us establish current relationships as well as make new student contacts.

Their big event of the week was a "Texas Night" party at Oyumino Chapel. We had a mix of students, church friends, and PCPC team members adding up to 32 people. We ate taco salad, played "chubby bunnies", heard a testimony from a PCPC member, and learned some line dancing. It was quite a festive night, and capped off a week of lots of contact time with college students.


The day the PCPC team was leaving for the airport, three Japanese college students showed up and presented each of them with personal gifts to take home. I have never seen this level of gratitude for a short-term team before, and clearly showed how much love the PCPC team shared with the students all week. God definitely uses short-term teams for His glory!

Summer Teams: NCCC

Our church from Cincinnati, Ohio - North Cincinnati Community Church - sent a team of four guys on a vision trip to check out our life and ministry here in Japan.

They kept track of their trip on their blog NCCCinJapan. Check it out to get much more detail of their adventures!

Here is a photo of the team with the Uchida family and 2 of the girls who went on a homestay to Cincinnati in February. Some you friends from Cincy will recognize them. :)

The climax of their week was an outreach event we titled "Oyumino AliveHouse & English Cafe" - which was an open mic/coffeehouse atmosphere where NCCC team played some music, and Japanese students also performed. We interspersed musical performances with English conversation games and activities. It was our biggest gathering of the year (since school started in April) with 12 Japanese students - 7 whom came for the first time!

We were so thankful for NCCC's involvement this week, and their faithful support of us over many years.

Summer Teams: Music Ministry

April-June are busy months this year with visiting short-term teams. In April, a group of teens from the Philippines called 180 Degrees came and did a number of outreach concerts and events.

In May, a Gospel choir from Mississippi called "Gospel Voices of Jackson" came and sang in a number of pre-evangelistic contact making concerts to hundreds of Japanese.

Black Gospel music is actually quite popular in Japan, and has been a good way to meet new people, and introduce them to the real "good news" that the music is all about!

You can see a joint concert with Gospel Voices of Jackson and Midoridai Church Gospel Choir. It was fun to see this "integrated" choir of African Americans and Japanese!

College Ministry "Homeparty" Style

Over this last month since the schoolyear started, we've tried some new ways to gather and get to know students - including ホームパーティー　(home-parties). Several College Ministry staff and friends from Church along with around 4-6 new students each Thursday night makes a great atmosphere.

The kids (our 3 plus sometimes 2 from the Noll family) also help put everyone at ease.
One night we had the theme of "Taste & See", where we did blind taste testing of various sports drinks, green teas, colas, etc. We also asked everyone to bring their favorite drink or snack to introduce to each other. I then made a simple connection at the end of the party, with how it is so natural for us to want to share with others what we ourselves love. For us as Christians, it is not a cultural identity, or an obligation, but because we love Jesus, we want to tell others about Him. I then encouraged them to "taste & see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8 ).

Sarah's sister has been staying with us, and has been fun to have her engage with students and experience first hand our life and ministry here in Japan. :)