D-DAY

Well, it's official.

Friday night I received word from my coordinator that after a long wait, 3 weeks past our original departure date, I am finally returning to Tokyo to begin my STINT Year #2 this Monday, September 26th, aka tomorrow morning. I depart from Dallas/Fort Worth at 9:50 am and arrive in Tokyo approximately 3:15 pm on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the rest of my team has still had no word regarding their paperwork needed to get their visas (called Certificates of Eligibility), and therefore will be unable to travel with me. It seems unlikely that they will be able to leave before October 1st, and so their support-raising deadline has been pushed back to Thursday. Please continue to pray both for their remaining funds and their Certificates of Eligibility to come in as soon as possible so that they may join me quickly and we can begin our STINT year as a team. Please especially pray for my teammate Amanda Sever, who still needs to raise about $15,000. If you would like to support her financially, you can go to her giving page here: https://give.ccci.org/give/View/0646423.

Once I secure my own visa renewal in Japan and get settled in, I will begin to rebuild connections with students I met this past year and start to rebuild a foundation my team can grow on this year. Hopefully by then my team will have joined me and we can begin ministry together.

This morning at church we sang my favorite song, entitled "Your Love Never Fails." There is a line that says "You make all things work together for my good," based on Romans 8:28. It reminded me that even though my STINT year has not started out as I had planned, God has a plan and purpose in it.

It doesn't feel like I'm leaving tomorrow though. It feels like a normal Sunday evening. I'm sitting on the couch with my grampa watching football highlights. The only differences seem to be that my dad is cooking hamburgers and onion rings in my honor and I can no longer find my bed underneath the mountains of things that should be packed away in my suitcase already. I've made progress though- the mountain used to be in a pile on my floor and big round chair, now it's semi-organized and transferred to my bed. That's progress, right? ........we'll see if I end up sleeping tonight. The one nice thing about a 12 hour flight is that I can sleep a lot. And I'll be flying by myself, so unless my future husband ends up sitting next to me, I don't have any obligation to talk to anyone and can get lots of sleep.

AHHHHHHHHHH I LEAVE TOMORROW! Now it's slowly starting to hit me....after all this anticipation and waiting, it's finally happening, but my brain hasn't processed it yet. Hopefully once I get there it will sink in once I realize no one is speaking English.

Please be praying for my team, for a safe flight and for an easy transition back to Japanese life! God bless!