"Volunteering" in Japan

By God's grace, we've been building momentum over the last few months in getting to know students. This last weekend, we tried something new to break out of our normal routines, and challenge students to look at their world a little differently. We took a small group into Tokyo to volunteer at Second Harvest Food Bank. It was a great experience!
We worked from 10:30am to 4:00pm, preparing, serving, and cleaning up. It was fun and group building to prepare the meals from donated ingredients (from Costco Japan, etc.).
We then took the train to Ueno Park in Tokyo, where we were all amazed to find ~550 homeless lined up and waiting to receive food from Second Harvest.
It was a hot day, but we were blessed that our part of the serving line stayed in the shade the whole time! :)
Ueno Park is over an hour trip from us, but we had a great time. The experience deepened our relationships with each other, and provided opportunities for types of conversations that don't normally come up during lunch break on campus!

Pray with us that God will use this experience, and others like this (we hope to do in the future), to open students hearts to the power and truth of the gospel - through the deepened relationships formed through serving together.

Our Pastor's family

It has been such a pleasure to partner with our pastor, Dedachi-san, at Oyumino Alive Church. Usually, one of the two of us leads worship, with the other one translating into either English or Japanese. We're far from perfect translators, but we have lots of fun trying!
We had the opportunity to have Dedachi-san's 5 kids over for an evening so he and his lovely wife get out for a much needed dinner date (before #6 is born!)
Sarah helped the kids make chocolate chip cookies. They really got into it, and it gave them something to take home, too. :)

Dedachi-san is quite an experienced Dad, and he showed off some of his tricks on how to make babies laugh!
Please pray for their family as they prepare for the joy AND busyness of a new addition. Pray that God would give Dedachi-san energy, balance, wisdom, and grace as he continues his many roles at Oyumino Alive and serves his wife and family.

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!