Dear Friends,

Here's a nice Japanese "poem" (tanka) I recently discovered:

    The bell ringing?

    Or is it the stick ringing?

    Between the bell and the stick,

    It rings.

Hmmm...  Life's all about relationship, isn't it...  It's about something happening "in the middle..."

The picture this month is of some of the college students in "The Fellowship" group here at Kanto Gakuin. The last few times I've been at our meetings, I've remembered the bell and the stick.  For any kind of ministry to happen, there obviously has to be a "meeting," the effect which goes both ways.  The stick rings the bell; the bell rings the stick.

This month, a group of 12 visiting Christian Korean exchange students have been spending time with students in our Fellowship group, making friends and encouraging the Fellowship students to explore Christianity more deeply.  Some good friendships were forged, our students were encouraged (the Korean students threw a big party for them one night!), and of the group of visiting Korean exchange students, two of them left Japan feeling a call to return to work full-time in Japan as missionaries.  So who rang who???

On the home front, Kari and the kids have been back for about six weeks now and the patio grill has been going pretty much non-stop!  We've been having people over almost every weekend, catching up on a "lost year" with old friends.  Continue to pray for us in the next few months as we make new friends, too.  We now have some new tools (and a new space) to begin offering some basic Christianity sprint-type courses here on the Kanto Gakuin campus (similar to the Alpha program), and we're planning to have a regular worship gathering in English here at the mission house starting in the fall.  We're in the planning stages of both of those activities right now...

And here's just a word of thanks to all of you.  We wanted to share with you all that the last year in the States was a great year for us--not only because we got to be with family and friends (old and new), but because we had the chance to step back from Japan for a while and to re-group.  The year was spiritually refreshing for Kari and I--we read some great books, heard some good sermons, took part in many engaging discussions...  It was great to be back with our denominational family again.  Literally from Bangor, Maine to Seatte, WA, we had the chance to share a little about what God was doing here, but just like the bell and the stick, the effect went both ways.  We came back to Japan really re-energized. So thanks again!

P.S. One little commercial: It's not too late to register for the World Mission Conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, July 29th through August 4th.  For more info, see www.internationalministries.org

Continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers this summer,

Grace & Peace,

Dwight & Kari Davidson