Today is the day that the Lord has made

Today we slept in as usual for a Sunday.  Flow and I had a friend from SYME school come to visit last night named Seo K Wu.  He is a Korean guy who is iterning with SYME Japan right now.

He speaks awesome English and we all really enjoy getting together and laughing or whatever might come up.  Seo and I stayed up untill 3:30 this morning having a great Theology talk.  It has been a while since Bible school days when I would stay up all night dicussing God's greatness, and our confusion with his word.  It is fun to really get into the Bible for things, really examining why we believe the things we do.  Seo has only been a Christian for two years I believe but I was just astounded with his extensive knowledge and memory work of the scriptures.  It was quite encouraging to see how his life had been changed and how much he cares to learn. After church we were rushed outside to the sight of snowball fight of epic proportions.  It lasted probably in the nabourhood of 20-30 min and involved just about all of the almost 30 people congregation.  Young and older(nobody to far clear of 50) partook in the great time, involving snowballs, facewashes and fullout tackles.  After our grand fight our German friend Jon came over and we had store bought sushi and watched some TV.  Even sushi from the grocery store is very good quality here.  A full stomach and a good day, time for bed before we start another week of work.

Josh

OUR PICTURES

Warm February Air

Things have been going pretty well this week. We are continuing our work here and things seem to be going smooth. Florian has been doing some of his Professional Tile Setting and I have been banging away doing the interior framing (walls and ceilings) I plan to get started on the front portion of the roof next. We are having a vaulted ceiling in the front portion of the cabin. However this means that the two old logs supporting the roof will be coming down to be replaced with 2x6 roof joists, we think maybe this will create a little more rigidity than the existing 2x2 that is there now. Cliff had his Japanese Electrician friend come over today and much like Cliff had warned us in the past he said. 2x4 walls hmm this is quite the waste of wood isn't it?

To me what seems like average interior framing is quite excessive compared to what they are used to. However we also have insulated the floor with styrofoam and we will be insulating the walls as well. This is a huge difference to heat , the cabin that we are working on like many others are not insulated at all at this point. And the fuel bills will greatly appreciate this fact for years to come. Cliff went back home to Tokyo this afternoon and will be bringing Phil and Sue to the airport tommorrow (Friday). My sermon went well last weekend, I spoke on the Lord's Prayer. There are some christians and some who have not yet recieved the Lord at our church but it is a great little community in and of it's self. We attended a going away party for Randy after church last Sunday.

It was a great time especially when we all split into goups and played a game. It was a game Jessica made up where Samurai's had to fight each other. So each group recieved a bag of balloons and a new pair of pantyhose. The balloons were filled and stuffed under sweater around the torso for armour and the pantyhose were filled with balloons and placed on the fighters head for a helmet sort of thing. Maybe they looked a little more like multi coloured caterpillars than warriors, but it was a blast to watch two puffy guys attempt to pop each others balloons sometimes without hands at all. Wednesday Sue and Phil took us out for our last meal together before leaving for Tokyo.

This morning we said our goodbyes and watched them leave for the train station. We really enjoyed getting to know them. Having them around was a blessing. Looks like we might have to start cooking for ourselves a little more. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Thanks Sue!

Thanks for following and praying!

Joshua Klassen

It's Official

Florian has went through with Air Canada and changed our return flights.  We will now be staying a little longer and not flying out of Japan untill March 30.  Today we managaed to get all the windows installed.  This is great news for our chilled fingers and toes.  It was a little bit on the cold side today.  Cliff said it wasn't much colder than minus 5 but we still felt cold.  This means one of two things: either we are declimatizing from Canada or the humidity actually does make it feel colder out!  There are new pictures on Picasa our photo album link.  Thanks for the prayers and we ask that you continue to pray for us as we witness to a close friend.  Cliff gave us a new budget this morning and once again it appears we still have yet to conclude our paper trail that was supposed to lead us to Japan not follow us here.  Or at least thats what I had thought.  Oh well it comes with the territory I guess.

Thank you to everyone reading I hope you are enjoying this!!
And once again any comments, suggestions or concerns please feel free to drop me an email at j_j_klassen@hotmail.com  I would love to here some feedback.

Joshua Klassen

Tokyo Break

Hi Everyone!
This week Cliff took us to his and Marg's home in Tokyo for the long weekend. He said we could use a break, and I agree. I feel that a big part of doing a short-term mission trip is to enjoy the culture you are immersed in for the time being, and since we haven't had many opportunities to do so yet this weekend was a real treat :) Because Cliff and Marg were gone for the first 2 days of our stay in Tokyo, Josh and I decided to take over the city on our own. We were quite impressed with our public transit skills, as we only took a wrong train once. We found lots of parks, free museums, interesting shops, and some very delicious food in some small, obscure restaurant. On friday afternoon cliff took us to electric city, the dream of every electronics junkie, nerd, and computer whiz in the country. Basically it is like the strip in Las Vegas, but instead of casinos, there are computer, camera, appliance, and gaming stores as far as the eye can see. This leads me to an interesting aspect of Japanese culture. In Japan there are approximately 1,000,000 "hikikomori", these are young men who basically spend their entire life indoors on their computers, and have no social life except that obtained online. It is a very interesting and very sad subculture, and Marg lent me a book about it that I am currently reading.

Some other things we did this weekend was: Take a ride in a rickshaw, which, embarrasingly enough was pulled by a young woman who did it as a part time job. Josh and I felt a little awkward being pulled around by a girl, but hey! at least she spoke english! Marg took us on a boat ride down the river, led us through the old black market (which is now an open market) through a touristy section of the city, and finally to the memorial for aborted babies. This was a very sobering experience for me, because they have hundreds of little baby statues set up with brightly colored clothes on and pinwheels in their hands. Just seeing these hundreds of snuffed out lives (a fraction of the actual number) was almost too much to handle.

On sunday We attended Cliff and Marg's home church, and were very warmly welcomed. Marg translated the message for us on paper, so that was very helpful. After the service the young people invited us to have lunch with them. They took us to the convenience store, and we let them pick out food and drinks for us, which, for the most part were delicious. Good job people!

In closing, sunday evening Josh and i went up the tokyo tower to admire the city at night. To our dismay we forgot it was valentine's day, and so you can imagine who the majority of people in the tower were. It was spectacular despite this slight annoyance :)

Pictures soon to follow

-Flo

Sunday of Snow

        Today we slept in as we usually do on Sunday mornings.  Always a real treat(Tim that was for you if your reading this).  On Friday evening we went night snowboarding at the Prince ski resort again.  Kaitie a girl who is living here and attending language school was planning to go so Phil, Flo and I piled into her new (Very small for four people, two snowboards) vehicle and headed off for a couple of hours of fun.  A few new rails and a big new jump in the snowboard park kept Flo and I entertained for a while.  Yesterday we spent quite a while researching looking at different attractions in Japan, by the end I had an internet trail that seemed endless, and yet it felt like I had hardly accomplished anything.  This is just another joy of limited translated Japanese sites and a Canadian at the keys.  Today we were invited up to SYME after the church service.  It is a language/ Bible school that the majority of our english speaking friends from church attend.  To get there we needed to transfer into a four wheel drive Nissan van before making the trip up the mountain on snowy, icy, sharp switchbacks they call a road.  Luckily we had a driver who faces that road nearly everyday as Kevin is involved with the school.  As I was finishing eating dinner it was time to take a detour half way back down the mountian to help a lady who got stuck in the ditch.  About 9 of us piled into the van and headed down to push or dig her out.  She was on her way within about 5 minutes and we all got back into the van this time litteraly pilling in I think we had six guys in a heap on the back seat. 

Nothing like Bible school bonding for you!  Then it was back up the jill oops I mean hill to hang out for a while at SYME with students, and english teacher and Kevin(There were others there from church also but I just figured I tend to ramble and I could spare you all the minor details of who else was there and everything we did, saw and shared).  Kevin is also the leader of the english church we attend.  I plan to preach there this month.  We had a great time hanging out with some our friends from KIF the Karuizawa International Fellowship(church).  We take time to pray for a different country each week as part of the service we break into different language groups of our heritage and we take time to pray it has been quite neat attending andf getting to know some people our own age from Korea, Japan, and Germany. 

 To spend time with them now over dinner and fellowship this evening was a real blessing.  We had a great time laughing, listening and just plain old hanging out over coffee really creating some relationships with these neat people we had only known at church. 

 Tommorrow morning it is back to work for a few days before we head off with Cliff on Wed to go hang out with him and Marg in Tokyo for a few days to explore and find some adventures.  Flo and I still are searching whether each of us or both of us will end up staying a while longer.  We thank you for remaining faithfull in prayer for us we are so blessed by it.  Please feel free to pass on the blog address to anyone interested and feel free to send me an email if you have questions or would like to talk j_j_klassen@hotmail.com Oh ya and I'm almost a hairdresser now I cut Flo's hair and didn't completly destroy it!!

Joshua J

Hello everyone!

This week has been great,  There was a ladies retreat at Megumi Chalet (a Christan conference centre nearby) so we lost our cook for monday tuesday and wednesday. Luckily Cliff came to the rescue, and fed us very well for the time Sue wasn't there. It also snowed earlier in the week, and evrything just looks incredibly beautiful! 

On the work front, we have been making pretty good progress. we have the exterior housewrapped, and the facia and soffit completed. Also we tore out the old floor and some of the old beam in the floor and are now in the process of building a new one out of treated lumber as well as insulating it with 4 inch styrofoam. When Cliff showed us our options of what kind of plywood we could use for sheeting Josh and I were in awe. The thinnest sheeting they use for floors is one inch thick, but most of the Japanese use plywood that is over 1 1/4 inch thick! it has no flex whatsoever! who even needs floor joists with that stuff?

We are thoroughly enjoying having the freedom to drive around a bit now that Josh has his international driver's license and we are hoping that we can do our own snowboarding trips now and not have to sucker one of the other people into driving us.

Both Josh and I have began to seriously consider staying for another month (till the end of march) but have not made a firm decision yet. We feel that it would be a real blessing to Cliff and TEAM if we could get more than just the early stages of our cabin done. Please pray for us as we make this decision, neither of us are depending on the decision of the other for our own final call.

Till next time, thanks for praying!

-Flo