Kyle's first weekend in Japan

Uncle Kyle got here on Thursday! Sterling was so excited. Him and Luke rode the bus to go get him. The first day he was here we took him to the mall play area.



We spent the weekend with my teacher's family and it was such a great weekend. We spent Friday and Saturday night there. We had sushi the first night and Kyle thought it was pretty good- although more like an appetizer than actually dinner :) They played skip bo and Luke won, of course.



On Saturday we went with them to the Aichi Expo park. It is a huge park with outside and inside play areas. Sterling loved it and Kyle was a big hit with the kids. He played tag with them and chased them all over the place.




We had okonomiyaki for dinner on Saturday night. It is Japanese style pancakes with cabbage, shrimp, potatoes and onions. They are topped with pork,sauces, seaweed and dried fish flakes. We liked them a lot!


The school that Sterling has gone to all year had a going away party for us on Sunday. It was an afternoon tea party and it was so much fun! The teachers completely spoiled us with all kinds of treats.


One of the teacher's did a traditional Japanese tea ceremony for us. It is very proper with all kinds of rules about how to drink the tea and how to hold the cup. We all enjoyed it- even the guys!




One of the teachers brought kimonos for us to try on- it was so cool!

Sterling's teachers and us.

The teachers gave the kids origami and Japanese books for going away presents.

Special Update on our Family

For those of you who haven't received this letter, we wanted to make sure you had a chance to read it from us :
Dear Friends and Family,

You all have been God’s blessing to us and our family as we have served in Thailand and now Japan in efforts to spread God’s love and grace. Our time as “foreign missionaries” has been short in the grand scheme of things, but wow, have we had some great experiences! We have had the privilege to meet many amazing people along the way, witness God working and moving in the lives of people who for the first time have heard the name Jesus, see some of God’s amazing physical beauty that he put here for our enjoyment, all the while we have been exposed to some of the world’s most delicious food.

While our time in Japan has mainly been devoted to studying the Japanese language we have had many opportunities to share with Japanese people of God’s love and salvation. We have been blessed to live in an apartment complex with a few families who also have young kids; which has made for a natural connection and lots of laughs. There have also been a few people that our entire team has been able to witness to and build relationships with. We think it is only a matter of time before some of these people make decisions for the Lord. We praise God and give him all the glory and we pray that this is just the beginning of fruit that will be seen by the team.

However, life is going to change for us. We will be leaving the ministry of Mustard Seed Global Fellowship. This past year has been full of challenges. We, along with members of the MSGF advisory board, have come to a decision that we would all work more effectively for the kingdom if our family left the ministry. It has not been a good fit and everyone is at peace with this decision.

We are very sad about this. This is not what we had planned or wanted. We do not believe this is what God had planned or wanted either. We are currently trying to gain perspective and insight on what God would have us do. We have grown to love the Japanese people, we have invested in the language, and we have tried our best to give ourselves to these people. So, now to be leaving after such a short time feels agonizing to us.

We have treasured each one of you from day one and we will always be grateful for God’s grace in providing you as partners with us in reaching more people for Christ. We are by no means done serving the Lord, but we are going to take some time to visit family and churches as well as seeking God’s will for what he would have us do next. We have already explored other ministry opportunities in Japan to see if God would open a door for us to serve alongside an existing church here. Over the last several weeks we have talked with many pastors and ministries to see if God would open a door for us to serve. Even though the need in Japan is huge and there is definitely a need for ministers of the gospel, we believe God is leading us in a different direction. We will be returning to the U.S. to rest a little before seeking a new ministry stateside.

We cannot begin to express to you our sense of gratitude and overwhelming thankfulness for your partnership with us in spreading God’s great love to the nations. We have been honored to serve in this way for the last few years in Thailand and Japan. Our hearts will forever be changed by our experiences of living in other cultures and we desire more than anything to continue to minister in an effort to spread God’s love to the nations.


Sincerely,


Luke, Kacie, Sterling, & Nelson Chase

Please change our email addresses to:
lukerchase@yahoo.com
kaciechase@yahoo.com

Maku and Luke's class

We went to McDonald's the other day with Miku and her mom. In Japan they call it "Maku" for short because in Japanese it is pronounced "Ma-ku-do-na-ru-do-su". Luke and all the kids sat in the back of the van, it was pretty funny. Sterling and Miku had a blast running and playing and being goofy together. Nelson slept!



Luke's classmates came over to visit last Friday because it is their last quarter. They have all been in class together pretty much since we started at this language school. Syaka is from Taiwan and Neil is from England. And then there's Andy too!

Another cute Nelson Video

Here are just a couple of pictures from Mark and Lori's trip here to visit us. We all went to Tokyo together and had a great time! Mark and Lori got to visit some of the places that his dad worked and lived when he was stationed here in Japan. They also read many books to Sterling!

Nelson's smile

Miku and her mom Kazuko came over for brunch this morning. Afterwards her and Luke talked about Christianity (my Japanese is not quite good enough to fully keep up with them). Luke had given her a Bible a couple of months ago and then he also gave her some literature about the basics of the gospel. She was very interested in it and asked a lot of questions. She was saying that a lot of the things she was reading she had never heard before because Christianity in Japan is basically non-existent. When she was leaving this morning she really wanted to talk again about everything. Luke did his best to explain everything, but it's definitely still a challenge for him with the difficulty of the Japanese language. I'm proud of him for working so hard though! All I did was make pancakes and eggs :)

Sterling was trying to entertain Nelson this morning- and he was doing a pretty good job because he got Nelson to smile! Just in the last week or so he's started smiling quite a bit- and it's ADORABLE!


Many of you know that Sterling has his pig that he has had since he was born, so we got Nelson a cow. We're getting him introduced early.

We went to the park on Saturday and Sterling was in the middle of telling Luke something really important when I snapped this picture.

Luke and Nelson- so handsome!

Here are the boys playing with some things that the Weltz family sent us in the mail-- thank you Zoe and Harris! And I caught Luke in the act of pinching Sterling's cheek, he just can't resist it! Sterling wanted to get a picture of Nelson in the fish glasses :)

Trip to Tokyo

This past weekend we took a trip to Tokyo. We took tons of trains and subways, which Sterling loved. We took the bullet train called the Shinkansen, which is his favorite. He wanted to do the peace sign for this picture because that's what all his little Japanese friends do.
I don't have pictures of our whole trip, just the fun things we did. But the rest of our trip was spent going to different churches and ministries in the city. It was really cool to see all that God has going on in Tokyo. We went to a prayer/worship meeting on Friday night, an international church on Sunday, and a missions organization's headquarters on Monday and Tuesday. It was a fun trip and we were blessed by all the people we met along the way. Luke got to talk with a lot of pastors about the work they are doing in the city.


The first day we went to a kids castle. Sterling got to go to a play area called waku waku land, he got to paint and do a craft as well as play musical instruments along with a band. He loved it! And the entrance fee was only about $5- quite a deal!






Eating rice and ramen noodles in our room for dinner. We let Sterling pick what he wanted from the convenience store and he chose plain white rice and a bag of peanuts :)

This is in a part of the city called Roppongi. The statue is a big spider.


We went to the top of a building that has a sky view of the city and it was really amazing to look out at how huge Tokyo is. It is the biggest metropolitan city in the world with over 32 million people.