From Japan to Prince Caspian

What an awesome weekend we had! We began our Saturday cleaning the third floor of the new building. We cleaned with Kevin, Kate, and a few of the other members of our homegroup. We were in charge of windows and walls. After we had all cleaned about ninety percent of the walls, I got in trouble for cleaning the upper part of the wall that was painted.(the bottom half of the wall was some sort of waterproof covering). I just took the blame and when the cleaning police guy was gone we all had a good laugh because we had all been cleaning the top and bottom for about two hours. At 3:00 we headed outside for the festivities. It was the 13th anniversary celebration of the church. The kids had an inflatable slide and a bouncy castle. Sarah had some cotton candy and we each enjoyed grape slushees. The soccer area had been converted into a concert area with hundreds of plastic chairs. At around 5:00 the worship started. One group of church members had prepared a couple of songs with only horns. There was also a more basic worship team and an all men's choir. The highlight of the event was a group from Tanzania that came to worship in their own unique way. It really reminded us of times that P.S.U. students from Africa would do similar presentations. It was amazing. They sang in English and worked on getting the crowd into it. (a little beyond a typical service). I put some of the pictures on flickr.
That evening we loaded up in Kevin and Kate's beautiful new car and headed for the mountains. We went to an old lodge about an hour away from our apartment. Our church scheduled an ice breaking, relationship building retreat. We go to church six. It's the best one of several services offered at Wonchon Baptist Church. It's quite a bit different than any baptist church I've ever experienced. Much more like Covenant Harvest. Anyways, back to the retreat! We traveled well off the beaten path and finally arrived at almost 10:00 Saturday night. By the time the rooms keys were all sorted out it was 10:15 and we were completely exhausted. Then we found out that we had a meeting at 10:30. We were running on fumes but it was still fun. God's grace. The fact that Kevin and Kate were there helped. We slept on thin mattresses on the floor. (Korean style). We stacked up all three that we had in our closet. Our homegroup leader and his wife shared a room with Kevin and Kate so we could have our own room. We were fine sharing, but I think he just wanted to be extra accommodating. We slept likes stones, became part of the mountain that rested beneath us. Sunday morning we all gathered in an amphitheatre that had been built into the side of the hill. Pastor Joseph Kim preached for a while and then we moved to a shaded area and broke into groups to perform team building, ice breaking exercises. Lunch was followed by an afternoon of free time. Sarah and I hiked throughout the entire resort. The view of the mountains in the distance was beautiful. After our hike we gathered for a meeting for couples. The pastor and his wife tag teamed the meeting. Then we had dinner and headed home. It was a great weekend.
On Monday, we went to Japan. No big whoop. Oh, you've never been to Japan? I hadn't either. It was very nice. We were on a God-trusting adventure. We don't quite have our work visas, so we went to Japan for a few hours so we could re-enter Korea with a new thirty-day tourist visa. We also got stamps in our passports that said we overstayed our first thirty-day visa. Immigration may or may not push us to pay the penalties. The school is looking into it, but we know God is in control of the situation. (the penalty is $100 per day per person, we overstayed about 57 days, You do the math!!!). I can't wait to see what God does. He is so amazingly and abundantly awesome! I think the worst case scenario is the school paying the fines, but we don't want that to happen either. Pray with us and rejoice with us when God shows His power in this situation.

Today (Thursday) was Teacher's Day. We received hand made cards from our students that reminded us very much of a package of letters that we got in the mail yesterday from all of our young friends at Covenant Harvest School. Thank you so much! It was great to read all of your letters over lunch in Blooming Beans. We love you all so much! Your thoughts and prayers mean so much to us.

I'd better get some rest. Tomorrow I'm going with the sixth graders to see Prince Caspian. I have such a rough job! ; ) ~Micah